Tastes Like Home 

Each week on ‘Tastes Like Home’ Catherine journeys to a different part of Ireland to meet people who now a family member or best friend living abroad.

All of these families want to share with their loved ones with the one thing they can’t get abroad “home cooking”. Each featured family has their a signature which “Tastes like Home” to their loved one and they have agreed to teach Catherine their recipe for this dish on the condition that Catherine makes sure to recreate it faithfully where they live and teach them how to make it so they may enjoy a little “Tastes Like Home” whenever the mood takes them.

Like all families, they all have their own eccentric ways of preparing things, we will be on hand to point out any of the non-traditional ways people cook, quizzing folks as we go and learning the secrets behind their way of cooking this dish. We see the finished product and have a taste. This then is the dish we will not only have to replicate, but master, enough to be able to teach it to a third party.

Following a short travel montage, we arrive on sunnier shores (hopefully) and equipped with the famous family recipe, we will cater for a special evening of home cooking. Not only that, but we will also give that person a one-on-one cookery lesson so they may have this particular Tastes Like Home whenever they want.

Catherine will also get a feel of the city or country this person has emigrated from Ireland to live in but tasting it’s food and seeing and seeing some of the local attractions so she can understand better the differences in the life they led now compared to the one they left behind plus she will also highlight any differences or compromises she may have had to make to her version of the dish, compared to the Irish equivalent,. Some of these changes may have been due to due to inability to obtain the ingredients, or a religious or cultural differences and she will outline outlining whether these changes will be crucial to the finished dish.

We will follow Catherine as she gets to soak up some of the sights and sounds of this new location, or discover and learn to cook dishes local to the area and showcase these for the irish television audience.

So following the family recipe to the letter catherine attempts to re-create the taste from home and as well as taking our host through the steps so they can recreate it fully in the future. Catherine will also have created a second dish which is inspired by the tastes and favours she has experienced in their new homeland which will also be served at the meal and hopefully she has managed to capture the essence of the that place in a dish that everyone will enjoy.. That evening our host and their family & friends sit down to a meal at which both these dishes are served.

We serve the food and wait in anticipation, the first taste will be crucial. Have we achieved the impossible – is it up to mammy’s standard`? Does it taste like home ? Emotions will run high at this point as the taste from home will be the most welcome surprise but also a reminder of what they are missing. We hear everyone’s comments and reactions to the dishes and we see if Catherine managed to capture the tastes of their new homeland as well as capture their authentic Tastes of Home. The programme ends with a montage of a

wonderful night.

The series is a 6 part TV show – airing on RTE 1 (Ireland’s national broadcaster) Autumn 2019