If you spend more than twenty years writing about food people in Ireland, you get used to talking about extraordinary people.You get accustomed to meeting people who do incredible things, people who would never waste your time talking about the work/life balance, or finding time for themselves.
These amazing people do what they do because they are artists: their work is how they express themselves. So, if they prove to be endlessly creative, show themselves to be endlessly surprising, then it isn't actually surprising. It's what they do. It's what Nora Egan does. When she had the idea a couple of years back to begin to create artisan black puddings, well she just when straight out and did it. Because that's what you do: you create.
Mrs Egan is probably best known as the creator of Inch House, a few miles outside of Thurles in County Tipperary, which the Egan family first opened as a B&B in 1990, and to which they added a restaurant in 1994. The tenure of Inch has always been characterised by Mrs Egan's outstanding baking, and the secret of her skilfulness lies not just with her own creative personality, but with the influence of her mother, Mary Ryan.
“She baked and cooked all her life for her 13 children and she has influenced my style and confidence over the years. It is my mother's recipe for the traditional black pudding. She is 91 years old”.
It is interesting that Nora Egan allies her “style” with her “confidence”, for she has both, and both are necessary if you are to be a creative artisan. Her confidence lets her get on with things quickly, to see the simple, direct route: let's bake; let's make a black pudding; let's open a restaurant. Sure, how difficult could it be?
It's very difficult, of course, but Nora Egan doesn't see it that way. How could she? She has the confidence: the job is going to get done. Apart from at her mother's side, she was educated in Thurles and Newport, County Tipperary, before studying nursing in Liverpool and midwifery in St. James Hospital, Dublin. She has never stopped birthing – children, of whom she has 8 – ideas, concepts, foods, projects, successes, ingenuity. She is deep-rooted, the ideas come from deep down.