Cookbook in memory of Nenagh-born chef shot dead in US

A COOKBOOK in memory of the Nenagh born chef Shaun Paul Brady, shot dead in Kansas City just over a year ago, is now on sale.

Titled, The Shaun & Séamus Brady Cookbook, this attractive publication is chock full of Shaun’s favourite recipes, the key to the culinary creations he served to his customers in the restaurant that he co-owned in his adopted Kansas.

Shaun Paul, a married father of two young children, was only 46 when he was fatally wounded in August last year when he intervened with a group of youths who were reportedly attempting to steal a vehicle close to Brady and Fox, the popular restaurant that he founded.

The book contains much more than recipes. It’s a truly glowing tribute to a short life well lived and is embellished with accounts of the love his family and wide circle of friends held  for Shaun and how he returned that love by the bucketful.

“To know Shaun was to be invited in - into a kitchen full of life, into stories half-told over a simmering pot, into a kind of family that asked for nothing but your presence,” recall the staff of his restaurant in an opening tribute.

“Shaun’s presence,” they say, “was sure to fill a room. He listened, laughed often, and made it his ongoing mission to see that no one left hungry - in body or spirit. He believed food carried history, that a recipe could share memories, and that the details always mattered.”

The book is interspersed with nostalgic photographs of Shaun’s life growing up in Nenagh and later as a top chef in the US where he was raising his own young daughter and son, Mary and Séamus, with his wife Kate in Kansas.

EARLY LIFE

We learn that he was named after the late Pope John Paul II because he was born in October 1979, just days after the pontiff’s historic visit to Ireland.

His mother Mary, who still lives in the 200-year-old house where Shaun Paul grew up beside the Military Barracks in Ormond Street, provides loving memories. “Shaun Paul was truly a good boy,” she remembers. “He was funny, gentle, kind, generous - and a loveable rogue, always up to some sort of mischief.”

His two older sisters, Vivian and  Sandra and his younger brother Damien contribute lovely pieces. Vivian’s chapter features his early career as a talented chef working in Dublin. She recalled dining  in Ouzos in Ranelagh where he was a young chef  in the early noughties. “That’s where I first tasted his prawn Caesar salad, which became my favourite dish, and to this day I’ve never had one that could come close to his,” write Vivian, who described Shaun Paul as the most generous person she ever knew.

Other insightful and nostalgic memories are provided by his wife Kate and his son Séamus, whose name is included in the title of the book. The volume also contains great memories from his friends from youth, Martin Ryan, a pal he met when he was just seven,  and Jackie Doyle who work with him during his first kitchen job as a teenager in Knox’s Pub in Nenagh in the mid-1990s.

These are just some of the great stories that feature about Shaun Paul’s eventful life. The book is a biography and a cookbook all rolled into one.

It will certainly appeal to those who love to create good food. There are recipes for Shaun’s Potted Shrimp and Crab; the scones he was first taught to bake as a child by his “Granny” Kathleen Fogarty; his Stake and Guinness Pie, Signature Scotch Eggs , Shepherd’s Pie and much more.

The book, produced by his wife and his friends Pat O’ Neill and Dan Regan, is currently on sale at the Nenagh Bookshop in Pearse Street. It retails at €30. The venture is non-profit and all proceeds will go the Shaun Paul's wife and children.

Meanwhile, a GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family expenses. The link for those who wish to donate is: https://gofund.me/2cab6e791