WordSmith: Hurry, hurry, for a nostalgic chicken curry...
School dinners send memories of Breifne College flooding back to Gerard Smith in this week's WordSmith column...
Nothing evokes memory and nostalgia more than our sense of smell and taste. You know that feeling when you catch a familiar food aroma and you’re transported back to yonder days.
In October, Breifne College celebrates its 50th anniversary. My neighbour, Liz, is a dinner lady there, along with Peggy and Kathleen. Liz’s chicken curry has garnered legendary status over the years. I asked a young friend who graduated from Breifne this year, “Did you like Liz’s chicken curry?” Her eyes lit up, “Everyone loved it, there was always a big long queue for it every lunchtime,” she enthused. The very thought of it brightened up her Monday morning walk to school.
Liz’s curry has sustained thousands upon thousands of students. And as the school celebrates its golden anniversary; it’s incredible to know the students who first savoured that chicken curry are now themselves in their fifties.
It got me thinking of my own culinary-school-days. When I attended Breifne, then known as The Tech, students brought their own lunch. In the canteen they were served a cup of tea poured from gigantic tin-tea-pots. I was lucky and very much spoiled, for I had my own private dinner lady who served me a delicious home-cooked three-course-meal every lunchtime. My granny’s house is right by the school; and as my peers used sweet tea to detach the Galtee-cheese-sandwich stuck to the roof of their mouths, I was being served a veritable feast.
During maths my mind would wander to the mound of potatoes in the centre of granny’s table; their skins cracked from cooking to reveal the floury whiteness of the spud within. I would start with one spud, smash it open before granny spooned over a rich stew with mouth melting meat. Afterwards, she’d serve custard with home grown rhubarb and a drop of milk. The final course was strong sweet tea and biscuits. I particularly looked forward to Friday, when granny would serve flaky haddock on a mattress of mash, spooning over the buttery milk she’d poached it in.
As a child, I wasn’t fond of food. In Manchester, I’d prefer a packet of crisps over midweek mince and onions. It took my country granny to awaken my fondness for food; and I vividly recall the moment that happened in the following vignette.
I was seven years old eating my dinner at the table. I watched as granny picked up her bowl and threw in a few handfuls of flour. She added a pinch of soda, salt, and a glug of buttermilk; she thrust her right hand into the bowl moving it rhythmically to amalgamate the ingredients.
I ate my food in silence, mesmerised by granny’s instinctual making of the soda bread. Her hands moved in rapture and rhythm as she divided the dough, placing one mound in a second bowl into which she tumbled a mug of currants. There was musicality in her method; she moved like a conductor to create her symphony of soda breads. I sat up to watch her spin two perfect circles of dough, one plain, the other fruit speckled, onto a baking tray. Finally, she used a knife to score a shallow cross atop the doughy-duo, which would result in four perfect quadrants when they were removed from the heart of her range. The combination of eating food while watching granny make it induced in me a deep feeling of comfort. In my first year I had granny to myself. By second year, three cousins also moved back to Cavan from Manchester to attend The Tech. Granny cooked dinner for four hungry kids, five of my uncles, and herself. She made it seem so effortless; yet I now appreciate that cooking for such a number on a solid fuel range was a foodie-feat.
Food and nostalgia are inextricably linked; the actual word ‘nostalgia’ is derived from the Greek word ‘nostos’ which means ‘homecoming.’ I’ve no doubt we all have vivid food vignettes, which transport us back to the comforts of home.
Now, back to Breifne College. As the school gears up to celebrate fifty years of the 1974 building, wouldn’t it be great to bring all past pupils back for a nostalgic school curry. But, can you imagine the length of the queue – it definitely wouldn’t be curry in a hurry!