The same brand names popped up again and again: Tayto, Barry’s tea, Kerrygold butter, Clonakilty sausages and Ballymaloe relish. But another dominant theme was the connection made between great Irish food and the people who put it on the family table. Fittingly enough in the week that we celebrate Mothers’ Day, memories of home and wonderful Irish food are inexorably linked with the great Irish mammy.
"Being in Chicago I'm fortunate that many shops carry Irish goods," says Barry Glancy. "My main thing to load up on is Miwadi. But what I miss is my mother's cooking. She always made bairín breac around Halloween and she made potato cakes and chips better than anybody."
"I always crave a plate of boiled bacon, cabbage and spuds. Nice and simple but it can't be got anywhere else in the world," writes Daniel O'Halloran from Melbourne. "The spuds aren't as floury, the bacon nonexistent and the cabbage is tasteless here in Australia. But at home, cooked by my mother, with a bit of sauce on the side, I truly know I've arrived home."
Sam Parker, studying abroad on an Erasmus year, says "I never thought I'd miss the sound of mam calling me downstairs for breakfast on a hungover Sunday morning. Crispy streaky rashers, Clonakilty black and white pudding and sausages swimming in ketchup, between two slices of sliced pan."
When Elaine O'Neill was living in Australia, she looked forward to the "comfort packages" her mother would send her. "Boxes of Barry's tea, Jacob's Mikados, packets of Tayto and hidden jars of Ballymaloe relish. A Limerick Leader was also thrown in for good measure."
"My mother, ever the economist, used to cook Sunday roast beef, serve it cold on Monday to leave her time to do the washing, then on Tuesday it was my favourite rissoles and bubble and squeak," writes Dolores Walsh.
Mairead Reid, writing from the Pacific northwest of the US, misses her mother's baking, especially gur cake and tea brack, and says, "I also now appreciate all the things we take for granted at home like decent bread, Tayto, good chocolate and, of course, curry chips."
Chip-shop curry crops up again and again. Claire Devine, living in Australia, reminisces about "curry half and half, and battered sausages"
Claire, meet Aoife Gannon, social media manager for Taste Ireland in Australia. “Our best selling products are Tayto Cheese and Onion, Barry’s Gold Blend, Odlums brown-bread mix, and McDonnell’s curry sauce.”
Liam Fleming is off to look for his mother's recipe for gur cake. "It used up old bread, currants and cold tea. Beautiful taste, he assures us. Máire Nic Canna says this particular delicacy is a Dublin treat, and directs us to Odlums and Donal Skehan for recipes.
The dads get a look in too, with Mike Hayes, living in Canada, having mixed feelings about his father's enthusiasm for "barm brack, pig's head and cabbage, skirts and kidneys, and tripe in white sauce with onions. Some were tasty, some were dreaded by me."
Catherine Fravalo is one of many who reminisced about the Dublin classic, coddle. "My late husband used to make it on cold weekend days and to him that meant a culinary trip back to his Dublin childhood."
After 15 years in Germany, Jim says he still misses a big list of things, including Superquinn sausages, and drives back every year to stock up. Let's hope someone directs him to SuperValu to find his favourites on his next trip home.
David Valentine has plenty of options for good bread in London, but “I truly miss McCaldin’s batch loaf from Monaghan town”, he says.
Halogue McVeigh, writing from Atlantic City, echoes our love affair with pork products, and it's a sentiment shard by Louise Purdon, who says: "My family and I have been living in New Zealand for nearly three years and I can definitely say we all really miss Denny breakfast products."
Claire Keane, originally from Cork, now living in San Francisco, missed her favourite Irish biscuits so much that she set up a company selling them. “From caramel squares to shortbread and flapjacks, now I can get a sweet fix in a daily basis.”
"The Irish chipper, after a night out" is what Cait McWeeney, living in New York, misses. John O'Neill wants "a pastie in a Belfast chipper".
Irene McKeever says she is "annoyed that so many fabulous foods produced in Ireland cannot be found outside of Ireland. I live in Malaga – we can get Irish beef but no lamb. I have to rely on New Zealand lamb. Irish stew with foreign lamb!"
Charles McKaig Savage, writing from a UK email address, has a list of Irish foods he misses that suggests he likes to eat very well: "Irish crab, especially from the North, good Guinness, Tom Durcan's spiced beef and Gubbeen chorizo".
Irish butter is a staple that lots of Irish expats crave. “Butter. It has to be butter,” says Hugo André Mac Manus emphatically. “And it has to drip from the toasted thickly sliced end of a black-crusted batch loaf,” says the Milan-based butter lover.
Dolores O’Halloran in Sydney misses “colcannon made with curly kale with a big knob of butter for dinner . . . in the middle of the day”.
Gareth Eoin Storey has excellent seafood available to him in Paris, but he craves "shellfish and bivalves – the best our sea has to offer, with a loaf of bread, a wedge of butter and a bottle of porter".
Closer to home, the counties that we got the most enthusiastic responses from were Donegal – perhaps our mention of that truly unique drink, McDaid’s Football Special, stirred up memories – and Cavan.
Pat McDaid (no relation, he assures us), has childhood memories of Power Pops: "Not sure who made them but they tasted a bit like a McDaid's Football Special ice lolly." McDaid, who says he is now "exiled in Drogheda", also puts in a vote for "Doherty's mince, vastly popular in my native Inishowen. You bought a pound of it and sliced it into your own burgers."
Sara Boyce, also from Donegal and “in temporary exile, in Belfast”, has discovered a local speciality: “Belfast baps, rounded, crusty, burnt topped and almost hollow inside. “ The degree of burntness seems to be an important matter relating to personal taste. They come on big bakers’ trays and you help yourself, pulling from a stringed bundle a little sawtooth-edged white paper bag to wrap it in.”
Edel Erickson's childhood drink of choice was "Cavan coke – this was the mineral us kids would get when my dad would go to the pub. He had Guinness and we had what looked like Guinness, but to me tasted so much better. Long gone but much lamented."
Niall Gaffney lived abroad for two years and what he missed was "a breakfast of brown bread, eggs and tea". Sounds simple to reproduce, but no, he's quite specific in his requirements.
“We have a local shop in Cavan, McCarren’s, that makes brown bread every morning, so it’s still warm when you eat it. Eggs from Clonarn Clover/O’Egg, so they’re super fresh. Thick slices of brown bread, delicious poached eggs and a giant mug of Barry’s tea – that is the perfect taste of home.”
Your favourite Irish foods
Here, in no particular order, are the foods that give a clue to your Irish identity:
Barry’s Tea: Those heartstring-pulling ads have a lot to answer for.
Kerrygold Butter: Whoever did bring that horse to France in the end?
Tayto: Nothing quite matches the taste, and smell, of a packet of Tayto cheese and onion.
Sausages: Yes, there is a pack in almost every suitcase leaving Dublin airport.
Ballymaloe relish :Really? This one cropped up so often we suspect a social media campaign has been launched.
Emerald Caramels: The Irish dentists’ best friend.
Soda bread: Everybody’s mammy and granny make the country’s very best versions.
