CLASSIC COOKING:Yellow Door deli owner and private caterer Simon Dougan is in the vanguard of culinary developments in Northern Ireland, writes FIONULA MEREDITH.
WHEN CHEF SIMON DOUGAN opened his first restaurant in Gilford, Co Armagh, back in 1992, Northern Ireland was – by and large – something of a culinary wasteland. Stodgy, unimaginative fare was the order of the day: a glass of orange juice or the ubiquitous egg mayonnaise for starters, followed by ho-hum meat and two veg, one of which was almost certain to be a dollop of greyish tinned peas. Prawn cocktail or corn-on-the-cob with melted butter were considered the height of sophistication.
These days, it’s a very different story. Farmers’ markets are packed with shoppers eager to stock up on flavourful local produce, from rare-breed pork sausages to squeaky-fresh organic cauliflowers, and where there used to be only a handful of restaurants offering innovative, delicious and well-sourced food, now diners are spoilt for choice.
He’s too modest to say so, but Simon Dougan, the man behind one of Northern Ireland’s best-known delis, the Yellow Door in Portadown, has played an integral part in this transformation. While there’s always been a strong baking tradition in Northern Ireland, with our wheaten breads, soda farls and moreishly malty veda loaves, Dougan introduced us to hand-baked ciabatta and seasalt-sprinkled focaccia, not to mention a whole host of other previously-exotic delights. (And the not-so-exotic ones too – the Yellow Door makes a mean sticky cocktail sausage.)
Once they saw the window of the little deli filled with tempting-looking loaves, the customers started flooding in. Dougan soon opened another shop on south Belfast’s Lisburn Road, and a successful outsidecatering operation followed, but the Portadown premises remains the mothershop.
“When I opened The Yellow Door Deli 15 years ago, the whole idea was to provide customers with the food I like to eat every day,” says Dougan. “Not stuffy, not overly lavish, just gutsy, flavoursome, honest food – proper pâtés, delicate desserts with buttery pastry and, of course, really good bread. This ethos has remained at the heart of The Yellow Door ever since.” Dougan’s upbringing in Killylea, Co Armagh, laid the groundwork for his love of no-frills, hearty food. His mother was a well-known baker, his father grew his own vegetables, and his grandmother gave demonstrations in butter-making.
There really isn't any sign of pretentious, stylised "cheffery" with Dougan. In fact, that instinct for simplicity, for the rustic rather than the rarefied, is probably the secret of his success. For instance, he soon realised that his fine dining restaurant's home-made goods — things such as ice-cream, jams and chutneys, salad with home-grown herbs – were a lot more popular than the swanky service and Villeroy and Boch plates: "I would get people coming up to me at the restaurant saying, 'I loved the bread, would you sell me a loaf?'." It's the same with Dougan's book, The Yellow Door: Our Story, Our Recipes, published last year by the Blackstaff Press: he started off with the intention of providing "quite impressive, high-end" recipes, but ended up with a down-to-earth, enthusiastic compendium of good old Yellow Door favourites, with an emphasis on freshness and seasonality.
The curious thing about Yellow Door food is that you bump into it all over the place. For instance, if you’re eating at a Belfast restaurant, you may well recognise the bread that comes with your soup, or the raspberry and almond square accompanying your cappuccino in a high-street café. It’s a familiar part of the culinary landscape now. So how did Dougan manage to transform the notoriously conservative Northern palate? “We started off serving free bites and tasters, little canapés, which meant you could serve people whatever you wanted. It gave you the freedom to let people try things, maybe a wee bit of rabbit, something like that, and if they didn’t like it, it didn’t matter.”
Dougan also encourages people to be a bit more adventurous in the cookery classes he holds in the Portadown deli, with squirrel featuring in a recent game-cooking workshop. Squirrel? “I suppose they’re really rats with good PR,” he concedes, “but they do taste good!”
“Being a chef is not just a job to me, it’s an all-consuming way of life,” says Dougan, who refers repeatedly to the adrenaline-fuelled buzz, sometimes fuelled by copious double espressos, that he gets from being the Yellow Door man. It’s fitting then, that he met his wife through the deli. “Jilly, from Moyallon Foods, who always had a twinkle in her eye when she delivered her excellent beef, pork and wild boar, was to be my soul-mate.” The couple, who live in the countryside near Portadown, are experimenting with growing their own fruit, vegetables and herbs on a larger scale – something that Dougan has been dabbling in since his earliest days, when he grew herbs in tin cans and old boxes on the roof his restaurant. “There’s nothing like a piece of mint that’s just been picked, the punch and the flavour of it,” enthuses Dougan. As usual, he wants to spread the passion. He and Jilly recently sponsored a primary school competition encouraging youngsters to have a go at organic gardening.
The Yellow Door offers real food for real people, and that’s why Northerners have taken it to their hearts — and bellies.
Yellow Door rich tomato and Parmesan soup (serves 8-10)
4 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, roughly chopped
2 sticks celery, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic
1 glass white wine
2 bay leaves
1 sprig rosemary, thyme and parsley stalks, tied together
500ml chicken or vegetable stock
4 tins chopped tomatoes
½tsp brown sugar
140g-170g piece of Parmesan crust (or 85g finely grated Parmesan)
salt and pepper to taste
large bunch of chopped basil leaves
juice of half a lemon
The whole art of making soup is to mix appropriate flavours together, skilfully eking out as much flavour as possible out of your ingredients to deliver a sublime bowl of really tasty soup.
I hate wasting ingredients that have some culinary merit. In this recipe I use the hard outer crust of the Parmesan you are left with after grating away the softer centre. The crust of the cheese softens while cooking and imparts a rich, creamy, slightly salty flavour, taking this soup to another level of satisfaction.
In a large pot, saute the onion, celery and garlic for two to three minutes in olive oil on a medium heat without allowing them to colour. Add the wine, stock, herbs (except the basil) and chopped tomatoes.
Bring the soup to a boil and reduce to a light simmer. Add the sugar and Parmesan end (if using grated Parmesan do not add at this stage).
Cover the soup with a lid and cook gently for one hour. Remove the bay leaves, tied herbs and Parmesan ends from the pot and liquidise the soup.
Finally add the basil leaves, lemon juice (and grated Parmesan, if using) and liquidise for a further 30 seconds.
Season to taste and serve with plain ciabatta.