Gill - Larder: from pantry to plate: delicious recipes for your table

For my Dad,

You will always be my best pal, thanks for teaching me lifes most important lesson, how to live life to the full.

INTRODUCTION

MY JOURNEY

My wifes nan, Nanna May, trusted people and generally warmed to them if they were what she called a good eater. She ran the kitchen of a caf in north Dublin and every now and again she would get visits from a local villain who was often in jail for one thing or another. Whenever he was out, he would always make time to pop in for a lasagne, a pot of tea and a large slice of cake. He was a good eater, and she genuinely thought of him as a lovely fella because he ate well and finished what he ordered. I love how food and cooking for someone can have this effect on people: Nanna May, to my knowledge, was certainly anything but a heavy gangster godmother type, yet these two complete opposites had a bond built by the simple process of cooking for someone.

Way back when, I was what Nanna May would have called a bad eater. Until I was about 14, my relationship with food was pretty horrific. I used to love a disgusting Granby beef burger that had been cremated under a grill and slapped into a horrid white processed bun. I also ate terrible-quality frozen pizzas, alphabet spaghetti and all shapes and sizes of frozen chicken-dipper-type things. It wasn't that my parents didn't expose me to good food. Quite the opposite. But for some reason this was the sort of crap that I insisted on eating. I point blank refused to try what they were having at home, or in all the amazing restaurants around the world that I was lucky enough to be taken to. I would have been far happier with a McDonalds. I still don't know why I was like that and its my biggest fear that my son Ziggy will follow in my bizarre footsteps.

It's much easier to tell your mum and dad that you won't try something that they have lovingly prepared for you, but when youre a guest in a mates home, well that's different. Growing up, I spent a lot of time in my best friend Pauls house. His parents, Tom and Deirdre, were amazing cooks. It was the type of house where when you walked into the downstairs toilet you might get quite a fright, finding a brace of freshly shot birds hanging off the showerhead. There were regularly lobsters, crabs and Dublin Bay prawns that had been gifted to Tom in the local pub, and Deirdre made her own pizzas on a Friday. I pretended to have dietary problems to avoid eating certain things (how ironic, as that happens at least once every night in the restaurant karma, I hear you muttering!). Slowly, too embarrassed to say no, I was exposed to all the amazing things I had been missing out on. Looking back, I now realise how much the McNerney kitchen in Clarinda Park shaped and influenced me. Paul had always wanted to be a cook; I didnt know it then but I was to follow him along many of his own chosen paths.

My father was a musician and my mother a choreographer. Both had very long, successful careers in the business and I had immense pressure to follow in their footsteps. Initially I tried music and dropped out, then dance. My father wasn't too happy about that so it didn't last long either. Then it was acting. Yep, packed that in too. I stuck at nothing! I tried all sports too I bought the best gear and packed it in two weeks later. Then there was school Well, I'm sure youre seeing a pattern.

Having convinced my parents to put me into an expensive school in the centre of Dublin for my final year before college, I had reached the final flunk! I decided university wasn't for me and had a mate put me forward for an apprenticeship as an electrician. I came home to tell my parents of yet another failure, but at least this time I had a plan. My parents couldn't understand why I would want to become an electrician as my father said, you can't even change a lightbulb, but he suggested cooking. I had been cooking at home and now at 17 I had a thirst for knowledge plus, finally, a decent appetite.

So, taking some advice, I decided to avoid college and get straight into it. I applied for a job in one of the busiest and highest-profile spots in Dublin. I have no regrets about passing up the chance to go to college as I felt I had some catching up to do and had wasted enough of my time and my parents money over the years. This was my chance to show everyone that I could do something and would stick with it no matter what hopefully with some success.

I have now been cooking professionally for 18 years and I have managed to cook in some of the best and toughest kitchens in Europe, yet I can honestly say that my first experience at that restaurant in Dublin was the most unnecessarily brutal and it has scarred me for life.

Keen as mustard with a brand new set of knives, I set foot into the kitchen, full of energy and excitement. The hustle and bustle of cooks from different lands running around frantically trying to get ready for the lunch service instantly drew me into this new world. This was the place for me. To say I was fresh is an understatement. Within my first few weeks I had several cuts and, as my body adjusted to the 18-hour days, I would literally fall into bed at night fully clothed, only to wake up panicking about the job. I loved how much I was learning and tried to write down everything as the weeks flew by into months. I made mistakes along the way, as you would expect, but what I had not expected was the bullying.

There was a senior team of about five guys from Head Chef down to Chef de Partie. They were the pirates running the ship and seemed quite close. It started with silly pranks, like asking me to run to the basement walk-in fridge to count the produce. Upon my return they would sneer and make degrading remarks. Then there was the aggression when I had hot soup thrown at me and was forced to clean up the mess. For no apparent reason, they all seemed to dislike me. Whenever I asked a question, I was either threatened or screamed at. The quiet evenings were the worst as they had more time to be cruel. One evening they were all standing around a bucket of garlic, peeling it, and I walked up to try to take part. I reached in to grab some garlic, at which they all stopped chatting and glared at me. The horrific intimidating silence was broken by the Sous Chef calling me a fucking queer. I walked away while they were all laughing and struggled to hold back the tears. This continued for months. I dealt with it by telling the stories to my pals and turning it into humour.

We were permanently understaffed because many of the new cooks who took the jobs would not last the day. I stuck with it and began to move up the ranks, to managing my own section. On a Friday lunchtime with 250 covers on the books, there was a backlog of checks that we werent keeping up with. One of the cooks screamed at me, threw me four duck breasts and told me to get them cooking. I was nervous as I didnt know how to do this, so I threw a couple of pans on full blast heat and added two huge ladles of oil. The oil instantly started to smoke. I suddenly remembered seeing duck breasts going into a warm pan with no oil, skin side down, and went back to question the chef. He screamed at me to just cook the fucking things, so I panicked and threw one breast into the hot oil. A flame spurted up as I threw in the second breast. The hot oil splashed up to my neck, chin and face, covering a third of my face. I was rushed to hospital.