Since the 1960s, Bee Walsh has been teaching Irish teenagers to cook - and to appreciate fish and other 'weird foods'. Now she and her grown-up daughter Jill have written a cookbook for adolescents. Claire O'Connell reports.
If there's a teenager loafing around your house, grumbling about not having anything decent to eat, perhaps it's time for them to discover a world beyond breakfast rolls, frozen pizzas and beans on toast. Enter Bee and Jill Walsh, a mother-and-daughter team who have just written a book for anyone over 14 who wants to cook like a grown-up. They want Irish teens to swap toasted cheese sandwiches for bruschettas or crunchy garlic mussels, and to ditch the Hobnobs for home-baked chocolate-chip shortbread cookies.
Ambitious? Maybe, but three decades of teaching adolescents in her south Dublin cookery school has led Bee to believe that we don't give teenagers enough credit for their awareness of food, or for their desire to cook and experiment. "I'm very optimistic about the young people coming up. They want to cook," she says.
In the 1960s, Bee started running summer classes in her kitchen for 11- to 16-year-olds. Children from all over the country came to learn the art of cooking their own food, with proper utensils that were often out of bounds at home. "I would show them all the big knives and say these are lethal weapons and they must always be treated with respect," says Bee. "They love learning how to chop properly because they have watched it on the telly."
Getting to grips with home cooking can also challenge preconceptions, she adds. " 'I don't like fish,' all the kids say. Then we do goujons - I show them how to skin the fish and prepare it, and we serve it with home-made tartare sauce. And they all say, 'Well I don't like fish but I love that!' " And it's not just budding Nigellas who have turned up in Bee's Killiney kitchen to learn how to crush garlic or produce perfect pastry. These days, the boys sometimes outnumber the girls. "Jamie Oliver has made it the cool thing to be in to food; it's not a sissy job anymore," explains Bee's daughter Jill, who assists at the classes. "It's like when Michael Flatley was in Riverdance, loads of boys took up Irish dancing. It's the same thing."
Both Bee and Jill have noticed many trends among their charges over the years. Vegetarianism seems to be on the wane, they muse, and children are becoming interested in foods of other cultures, thanks to family holidays abroad.
Girls, though, are becoming increasingly reluctant to eat the food they make, in case they gain weight, says Jill. "That really upset me. They were prepared to see how things were made but they wouldn't eat them. It's such a pity. There's no need for it. If you eat a little bit of everything it's fine; it's about moderation."
As a four-year-old, Jill used to sit on a stool with her legs dangling during the classes, idolising her mother as "the best cook in the world".
But as a teen, she rebelled against her gourmet upbringing, and crumpled with embarrassment whenever Bee presented Jill's friends with a new culinary creation.
"Mum, being a chef and a home economics teacher, was always trying out new recipes." she recalls. "I was used to having spaghetti Bolognese at other people's houses, and I was mortified when they would come into my house and be having coquilles St Jacques or coq au vin. At the time, because I was getting it every day, I just wanted pizza."
Jill eventually outgrew her embarrassment and is now so passionate about cooking that she convinced her mother to co-write a book, so that a wider audience could tap into Bee's culinary talents. And so The Right Bite was born, a funky and colourful collection of recipes, tips and illustrations, to drive wannabe chefs into action.
"We wanted to educate young adults' palates, to inform them that you can cook for yourself, and that it doesn't have to be beans on toast," says Jill, who adds that the recipes appeal to adults as well.
The book is a watershed for the cookery school, because Bee is now scaling down and looking forward to "sitting back and smelling the roses". But Jill is toying with the idea of keeping the family tradition going. "The book was to mark Mum's retirement. But I love the cooking, and with Mum beside me I might take over the helm. I trained under Mum, and from watching her over the years I picked up a few things along the way."
The Right Bite - How to Cook What You Want to Eat is published by Gill & Macmillan, €18.99
Recipes
FILLET STEAK WRAP WITH SOUR CREAM AND CHIVE DIP Serves 4
200g fillet steak cut into thin slices
1 medium onion
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
4 wraps or soft taco tortillas
10 chives
Cup sour cream
To serve: ½ head lettuce (optional)
Slice the steak into long, thin strips. Slice the onion into very fine rings. Heat the oil in the frying pan until fairly hot. Season and fry each slice of steak on a medium heat, until beige in colour, turning while cooking. Be careful not to overcook it: steak cooks quickly. Remove it from the heat and drain on some kitchen paper.
Add the onion and another drop of oil to the pan, then fry the onion slices until golden. Wash the pan and put it back on a medium heat. Place the tortillas in the pan for 30 seconds each side. Remove to plates. Place the steak and onion on one side of the wrap and fold in half. Using a scissors, cut the chives into tiny pieces in a bowl, and blend together with the sour cream. Serve the wraps with a blob of sour cream dip and lettuce.
THAI FISH CAKES Serves 4
1 medium tin of tuna (198g)
½ tsp fresh chopped coriander
1 dessertspoon lemon juice
½ cup breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper
¼ tsp Thai red curry paste
1 egg
To coat: 1 cup fine breadcrumbs
To fry: 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
To serve: salad, sweet chilli sauce
Drain excess liquid from the tin of tuna. Place tuna in a mixing bowl and add chopped coriander, lemon juice, breadcrumbs, seasoning and red curry paste. Mix well.
Break the egg into a cup and beat with a fork. Add enough to the mixture to give it a soft texture. Use your hands to roll the mixture into four balls, then press the balls down slightly into patty shapes. Place on a plate of fine breadcrumbs and coat the cakes evenly. Chill them for half an hour.
Add one tablespoon of vegetable oil to a frying pan and heat to a low-medium temperature. Fry the fish cakes until golden on both sides. Dab with kitchen paper to remove excess oil, and serve with salad leaves and sweet chilli sauce (available in shops) on the side.