Luke Bradley remembers family dinners with his late father.

When my Dad got early retirement from the bank in 2006, he took up cooking with a passion. He’d never really been huge into spending time in the kitchen before. As a 9-to-5 worker with three young kids, he and my Mam would be doing well just to get batch meals cooked and frozen on a Sunday night to feed me, my sister Katie, and my brother Conall throughout the week. But with more free time on his hands, he set about discovering the joy of everyday cooking and becoming king of the Bradley kitchen.

I’d come home from primary school to our Dublin suburban home every day at about 3pm. Within an hour the family would sit around the table with a freshly cooked dinner. Spaghetti bolognese, chilli con carne, beef stir fry: nothing too exotic, but lovely nonetheless, and a far cry from bangers and mash every day. My absolute favourite: his chicken curry. Be it Korma, Balti, Madras, it was always the highlight of my day. Not to mention his gorgeous desserts: Eton mess and lemon cheesecake especially were family favourites. 

As the years went on, my Dad got more inventive. Homemade puff pastry pizzas; honey and sesame chicken; ‘Sloppy Joes’ with mince, diced onions and beans, served with pitta bread and pink sauce. And the more inventive he got, the fussier I became. I vividly remember him trying out some sort of tomato and watercress soup for dinner that 12-year-old me was having absolutely none of. More and more, it was the case that I’d be saying no, or taking a smaller plate, or having a different dinner altogether. It was a reversal of the kind of diet trajectory you’d expect to be on in such a household. I was far from a ‘chicken nuggets and chips kid’, but I had grand expectations.

My Dad must’ve caught wind of this because one summer when I was 11 he signed me up for a cooking course in my local community centre. By the end of the week, I could cook chicken curry, stir fry, rice – the household favourites – all to mediocre effect. And to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it! Despite this, I’d say I cooked maybe three family dinners in total after that.

In my head, I think I felt that my dad was happy to just take full reins of the kitchen. He loved cooking and loved when we enjoyed him trying out something new. He hated people hovering around while he was cooking, yet he’d cheekily be a ‘backseat chef’ to my Mam no bother, before getting booted out to the living room. 

As secondary school rolled around for me, dinnertime got pushed back to 6pm. Like clockwork, I’d storm through the door after a foul day at school and the same environment would always await me. A vinyl blaring from the record room – David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Giant Sand – and my Dad working away in the kitchen prepping dinner. The only times he wouldn’t be doing that is if my Mam was in his place. As a moody teenager, I didn’t stop to think of the effort he put into every meal. You’re just used to it. I’d go upstairs, play Xbox, come down for dinner and eat half of it, quick “thank you”, and then go back upstairs. I certainly wasn’t doing any of the cleaning up, beyond doing the dishwasher. I remember the times when my Dad would fairly point out my lack of gratitude, and I’d agree and apologise. But it didn’t stop the cycle of complacency.

When my Dad passed away in 2018, the kitchen became a monument to his absence. My amazing Mam still cooked often, and we saw a historic influx in potato-based dishes for it. But the meals I’d taken for granted were gone. The fridge was less full than before. Half the kitchen utensils started gathering dust. The recycling bin grew full with takeaway boxes.

If ever there was a time to step up to the plate and start cooking for my family – or even for myself – it would’ve been then. But my final exams loomed, and my Mam looked after us to an awe-inspiring, superhuman degree. And by the time I got more free time, I’d grown more complacent than ever in letting other people cook for me.

So moving to London was a wake-up call. Cooking, and cooking for myself, proved a Herculean task at first. I’ve still only managed to cook three different recipes, which I batch cook for convenience: chicken pesto with pasta, tomato chicken with pasta, and Thai red chicken curry with chickpeas and rice.

Every day that I have to cook for myself, I still feel a pervading sense of annoyance. I view it as such a time-sink. But when I’m cooking my Thai chicken curry, I think back to the days of the almighty Bradley curry that my Dad would whip up for us. It’s not even the same recipe, but I take pride in knowing my Dad would enjoy eating it. It’s certainly a step up from the sauce-jar curries with watery rice that I left ‘kiddie cooking school’ armed with, thinking I was the next Marco Pierre White. And above all else, it’s given me an entirely new appreciation for the sheer amount of effort my Dad put into our dinners every day – and that my Mam continues to do.