Ireland’s first celebrity cook was Monica Sheridan, who had a lively cooking show on RTE in the early 60’s that everyone watched. The show didn’t last long. It was rumoured that the Irish Home Economics Teachers’ Association wrote to RTE to protest the way she licked her fingers.
Monica’s Kitchen is not so much a recipe book as an extended essay on food. The author’s script is delivered with her trademark humour and trenchant opinions.
This is pre-feminist sensibility: women are assumed to be the cooks. Their objective is to please their husbands and make other women jealous.
The book was published in 1963.