Irish Stew

It's amazing how five ingredients can bring you back to a moment sitting in someone's kitchen. The comfort, warmth and love of a person distilled down to something so humble. An impossibility because she felt bigger than the world. Potato, onion, carrot, stock and a packet of mince beef. Alchemy, magic passed from hand to hand, generation to generation. A love spell in its purest form. A welcome home, a rainy day, an army to feed. When it arrived in a bowl, placed on a plastic table cloth, a big squirt of red sauce, if her love was in doubt, on first spoonful, you felt it in your soul.