Illustrations by Ciara Coogan
Food writer and MESSY author Aoife McElwain shares her life in food
Aoife McElwain shares her life in food, from her earliest memories to her favourite flavours and culinary inspirations.
Aoife McElwain is a cook, DJ and creativity coach who has called Connemara home for the past five years. She was raised in Saudi Arabia, where her knowledge of global cuisine expanded, though she still holds a special place in her heart for her Irish granny’s potatoes. Her journey into the culinary world began in 2009 with a food blog she started to teach herself how to cook. This led to food writing for the Irish Independent and later to food styling.
Aoife is a messy cook, and she’s learned how to go from chaos to craic in the kitchen, and that’s what her book, MESSY, released on 23 October with Blasta Books and filled with simple recipes for chaotic cooks, will help you do too. Aoife is also the founder of Sing Along Social, who host singing parties for people who can’t sing at weddings, parties, and festivals worldwide.
Aoife is among the foodie lineup at Samhain Festival of Food & Culture, which takes place from 6-9 November, where she will be doing a demo from her new book, as well as a talk around themes within the book.
What are your earliest memories of food?
The power of nostalgia through food is something I’ve written about in my cookbook, MESSY. My parents moved our family from Monaghan to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in the early ‘80s. My Dad had moved to Jeddah a few months before my Mum and my sister, and I have such a vivid memory of him opening the fridge in our new home on our first day there and it being filled with Capri-Sun style juice boxes. I had never seen anything so magical in my life – it was far from juice boxes we were reared!
Growing up in a multi-cultural community in Jeddah meant that our community potluck dinners included my Mum’s cheesy potato gratin side by side with hummus, falafel, spring rolls, hot dogs, and fruit roll ups. Throughout the school year in Saudi, my siblings and I would dream about my Nanny Brigid’s home grown Irish potatoes perfectly steamed and smothered in Monaghan butter, which we would devour on our trips home every summer. These floury buttery potatoes are the earliest experience I had of connecting to someone through food.
How would you describe your relationship with food?
Like any great and meaningful relationship, it’s complex. Food is how I access joy, love and connection. But it can also be a source of frustration, like when something I’m cooking doesn’t turn out quite how I expected it to. What I decide to eat is a reflection of how I am feeling about myself. If I want to eat bright and light, that’s how I’m feeling. When I am reaching for my third bowl of cocoa pops, it might be a sign that I need to phone a friend.
What was the first meal you learned to cook?
I came to cooking relatively late in life, and only really started properly cooking for myself in my early 20s. The first dish I really mastered and made my own was a chickpea and tomato stew spiced with a little Middle Eastern flavour. For a long time it was the only thing I knew how to cook until I started a food blog to see if I could learn how to cook more than one thing.
How did working with food become your career?
By complete accident. When I started a food blog called I Can Has Cook? in 2009 to write about my failures in food and to learn how to cook, it was before people started blogs as an entry into a career. In those early days, food bloggers were really just a bunch of food enthusiasts taking badly lit photos of their dinner. I was lucky that my food blog coincided with the early days of Twitter, a once wholesome and fun place, where I got a lot of support from the Irish food community on my early journeys into learning how to cook.
Those early blogging days led to a column in the Irish Independent and a food reviewing gig for Totally Dublin, and later on in The Irish Times and Sunday Times. I got into food styling, and co-founded a food video series called forkful.tv with director and videographer Mark Duggan. We did some really lovely early work with video that still looks sharp today.
My home cooking really reached a new level when I was isolating alone during Covid. My way to cope was to cook myself multi course meals. By the end of lockdown, I realised that, finally, I really could cook. To be releasing my first cookbook, MESSY, fifteen years after starting to learn how to cook, is genuinely a dream come true and I feel very privileged to be a part of the Blasta Book series.
What’s your go-to breakfast?
I absolutely love Happy Tummy Co’s Happy Tummy loaf, baked in Westport, Co Mayo. I have a slice of it in the mornings slathered in with Harry’s Nut Butter – I love the hazelnut and cacao flavour – and a really good cup of coffee made with
my Aeropress. The Happy Tummy Co. founder, Karen O’Donoghue, is like a good witch of digestive health. I learned so much from her about food provenance and digestive health from one of her courses held at their Mayo HQ.
If you’re impressing friends and family at a dinner party, what are you serving up?
It has got to be my mother’s Pavlova recipe, which is a precious family recipe that I feel privileged to share in my cookbook MESSY.
Who is your culinary inspiration?
Honestly, every chef and cook of every great and good meal I’ve ever eaten. I’ve absorbed so much knowledge from so many people and places, I couldn’t pick one inspiration. What I am inspired by is hospitality being a part of food – for me, great food isn’t just about how the food looks and tastes, but it’s about how people feel before, during and after they’ve eaten it.
What would your last meal on earth be?
I stopped drinking alcohol over ten years ago, as it didn’t agree with me. I don’t really miss it, especially not with all the great alcohol free options available today, but for my last meal, I’d go wild, and have a few pints of creamy Guinness shipped in from the pub on Inishturk Island off the coast of Mayo, and I’ve have a huge plate of native oysters served with crispy golden thinly hand cut chips, and a Tayto crisp sandwich. The dealbreaker for me would be that all of my favourite people would have to be at the meal, too. Can my last meal be a party?
What’s your go-to comfort food?
For me, broth is a love language to myself and to others. I even have a whole chapter dedicated to it in my cookbook MESSY.
What’s the go-to quick meal you cook when you’re tired and hungry?
I am very partial to pimped up noodle pots. I’ll stock up on some instant ramen pots from Super Asia in Galway, and then I’ll add some fresh kale or frozen peas, a dollop of White Mausu peanut rayu, and maybe even a Korean drunken egg if I have some marinating. You soft boil a couple eggs, carefully peel them, and then let them marinade in a jar of soy sauce, honey, water, sesame oil, garlic, chilli, and spring onions for up to four or five days in the fridge. Cut them in half just before serving.
What is one food or flavour you cannot stand?
I really don’t love anything overly-processed with too much sugar or salt, or anything that has been on an existential journey through time and space from source ingredients to finished products. There are of course exceptions to this rule; Tunnock’s Tea Cakes and Tayto crisps are obviously among the greatest inventions of all time.
Hangover cure?
I don’t drink alcohol because almost the minute I turned 30 I began to get cripplingly debilitating hangovers. This might make me seem like a total lightweight but I do sometimes now get sugar hangovers if I drink or eat anything with too much sugar – I get sugar withdrawal rage! The best thing for me then is to eat as much greens and protein as I can physically manage, and to drink loads of water, and lock up the sweets.
Sweet or savoury?
Savoury – although I do love when the two meet. Hot chilli honey on feta cheese is my jam, and I will always defend pineapple on pizza.
Fine dining or pub grub?
Keep it casual for me please.
Favourite restaurant in Ireland?
I am of course biased because I am part of their front of house team but I am absolutely smitten with Little Fish, a seafood restaurant which overlooks the pier in Cleggan at the edge of Connemara in Co Galway. It’s run by husband and wife team, Tom Mullan and Eva Caulwell, and they focus on celebrating the fresh seafood mostly caught by their local supplier, John Joe. Their lobster rolls are famous, and they do magical things with Killary mussels. The chips are all handcut and the batter of the fish and chips is delectably light. It’s family friendly, dog-friendly, and even vegan friendly. It’s such a privilege and a joy to serve up fantastic food to people, knowing they’re going to love it. It’s a seasonal restaurant, opened for Easter, and between June and September only.
Best coffee in Ireland?
I travel a lot working on events for Sing Along Social, and I will always take a detour for great coffee. My favourites around the country are Tree Bark Store in Moycullen, My Little Flower in Oughterard, Coyle’s in Clifden, Rift in Limerick, Ursa Minor Bakehouse in Ballycastle, Established Coffee in Belfast, Toonsbridge Dairy in Macroom, Arán Bakery in Kilkenny, This Must Be The Place in Westport, and O’Neill’s Coffee in Skibbereen.
What are your thoughts on the Irish foodie scene?
My main thought is how can consumers and government agencies support small food businesses and producers with running costs becoming so prohibitive. It is incredibly difficult to run a small business with integrity, and we should treasure the ones that are doing things right. Take all my money! We can only do so much as consumers, especially as our own cost of living has increased so much. I worry that without meaningful support from government bodies that we will see a decline in independent, small business, and an inevitable takeover of impersonal corporate food businesses. If we don’t support small businesses, they simply can not survive. Spending your money on the kind of businesses you want to see more of is a good start.
What’s your favourite thing about cooking?
Sharing what I make with the people I love.
What does food — sitting down to a meal with friends, mindfully preparing a meal, nourishment, etc — mean to you?
It means everything to me. It’s joy, connection, and those are the things that make life worth living.
Food for thought — What are some areas for improvement within the Irish food/restaurant/hospitality scene?
I would like to see more action from the government around supporting and promoting small food producers and small businesses, through grants and mentorship tailored specifically for smaller businesses. These do exist but often they’re aimed at scaling up, when actually some small businesses are meant to stay small. How can the government support small businesses to help them become sustainable?
Chef’s kiss — Tell us about one standout foodie experience you’ve had recently.
There is this incredible bakery in Oughterard called Sullivan’s Grocer. Last year, I was DJing with a big group of local school children on Clifden’s town square for Christmas in Clifden, a fantastic community initiative to invite people out to Clifden to do their Christmas shopping. I came off stage, tired and ravenous, and my girlfriend handed me a Christmas roast in a roll from Sullivan Grocer’s food truck, Sullivan’s on Wheels run by head baker Saináil Sullivan and Harry Peake. It was heavenly, exactly the right thing at the right time, and it was my culinary highlight of 2024.
Compliments to the chef — Now’s your chance to sing the praises of a talented chef, beloved restaurant or particularly talented foodie family member.
Anstice and I are budding cheesemakers, and we recently spent a weekend with Leitrim Hill Creamery. This smallholding and raw milk dairy is run by Lisa Gifford, her daughter Gypsy, and Gypsy’s wife Richelle. They make the most incredible raw goat milk cheese called Cnoc Liatroma, and the sweetest Sweet Leitrim ice cream made from cow and goat milk, which you can buy online, at farmers’ markets around Leitrim, or at their shop The Hidden Corner Cheeseshop in Carrick on Shannon.
Secret ingredient — What, in your estimation, makes the perfect dining experience?
The people you share it with.
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