"I just dream of the moment where I can play jazz, have a negroni and read my cookbooks in peace," jokes Irish telly presenter and food writer, Donal Skehan, adding wryly: "But we’re in this chapter of life…" Skehan and his wife, Sofie, "are smack-bang in the middle of parenthood" with "two crazy boys", Oliver, five, and Noah, seven.
The slow-baking and stew-braising days of his 20s are but a fuzzy memory, and now, aged 39, his weekends revolve around "ferrying children to different things and trying to keep up with the madness of life," rather than making decadent, time-intensive meals.
Which explains his new cookbook, Donal’s Real Time Recipes. "Parenthood knocks you for six, and you need every little bit of help you can get," he says, with a grin that tells you he absolutely loves being a dad.
"It’s amazing how your cooking changes so dramatically from pre-children to children. You put yourself last. This book is all about putting everyone first, to ensure that you get a table full of food that is nutritious, balanced and something you can look forward to."
Fundamentally, Skehan is not into having downtime in the kitchen. Aside from throwing dinner together at home, he makes lots of cookery shows, has written numerous cookbooks and the thing that really "bugs" him throughout is "stopping and waiting for things to go into the fridge, waiting for them to go into the oven".
So if you, too, hate the words "now leave to marinate for X hours", he feels your agony and frustration.
There’s none of that in Real Time. "I need straight-through cooking," says Skehan, which means no faffing, no waiting around, just dinner, cooked swiftly and without complications. "The aim is that when you sit down for dinner, you actually have something you’re very excited about," he buzzes.
The recipes in Donal’s Real Time Recipes are designed to take you 30 minutes or less, and it’s a gimmick Skehan acknowledges is a bit overdone, shall we say.
"We all know there has to be novelties like 30-minute meals and the like, but at the core of this book is really good, hearty, home-cooked food," he says seriously. "Ultimately, the takeaway is the process. If you really get into the bones of the recipes, you’ll see that has been thought through in every single recipe. And yes, there’s a time frame on it, but actually, if you look at how they flow in the kitchen, that’s what’s really clever about them."
His process, he says, is a blueprint for feeding yourself that’s ideal, whether you have kids or not.
"Life can get out of hand in lots of ways, and cooking is a fantastic anchor point," says Skehan, who is always hunting down new ways to enter a ‘flow state’ of total immersion in a task. "I’m really big into my pottery at the minute, that’s my current escape, where it used to be the kitchen," he says, noting how cooking and pottery are actually quite similar – there’s an oven (kiln) involved in both, and the pinch pots he creates remind him of "making pastry,".
Would he want to go on the celebrity version of The Great Pottery Throwdown? "God, if they’ll have me, I’d love that!"
YouTuber and podcaster Skehan grew up in Howth, Ireland, and after living in LA for several years, moved back to Ireland a couple of years ago. He first made a name for himself in a boyband called Streetwize, then began food blogging in 2007.
Both of his parents worked in the food industry. "My dad used to go to work at four in the morning and would be back around the time we were doing homework at the table," Skehan remembers. "My mum and dad made a big effort to make sure that we sat down at 5pm every day – you sat at your dinner table and you ate your food, and you were brought in to help as well if needed.
"It was a big tradition in my house," he says, when asked whether it makes him sad that cooking and eating are now so often rushed affairs. "I’m sad to see that it’s not as prevalent, and I think it’s something that we really do need to keep," he adds, but fully understands that, with kids especially, "it’s easier to stick on an episode of [kids’ show] Bluey and get them to eat and concentrate, than it is to push them to sit [at the table]."
He’s all about the small achievements, though, like growing food in a couple of veg boxes with his boys.
"Even if they never eat what comes out of it, they’ve seen the process of where it’s planted, how it grows," he says. "We picked cucumbers the other day, and they ate them literally from the box; for me, it was a real win. Most of the time, it might be hard to get them to eat a cucumber, but create a bit of excitement and novelty, and that’s where you can win."
Which is why they have taco and spaghetti nights too. "You can get them to do just about anything if you make a game out of it," he says with a laugh. "That’s my five and seven-year-old, anyway."
And for those who find cooking dinner an interminable chore, take inspiration from Skehan’s mum, who would always start by chopping an onion, then the rest would come… "By literally just getting over that first hurdle, you’re in the kitchen, you’re cooking," says Skehan happily, and from there, you’ll find your flow.
Donal’s Real Time Recipes by Donal Skehan is published in hardback by Yellow Kite (Hodder & Stoughton). Photography by Donal Skehan. Available October 9.
