Chef extraordinaire: honey mustard chicken with creme fraiche mashed potatoes

I have always loved food, and often dreamt about being a chef when I was younger - I still think it is something I would love to do. I have always dreamt about staring a catering business from home, creating beautiful gourmet meals for dinner parties and cocktail parties - canapés are such a delight to cook but so time consuming that they can only be made very infrequently, for a very special occasion.

During my time at University, I worked for a staffing organisation, waitressing at high profile events and experiencing the catering styles of many different catering companies. My favourite was Rhubarb Food Design , who inspired me in my catering ambitions with their stunning creations, exquisitely presented as works of art (hence the "design" in the title). Rhubarb's food wasn't overly pretentious, unnecessarily pretentious or ridiculously miniscule. On the contrary, the portions they served were large, the food wholesome and delicious, and often some of the dishes they served were just old favourites, presented in an unusual way. One of their specialities which I was particularly fond of sneakily sampling was "bowl food": this came into play at a canapé party held on a weekday evening, when tiny canapes would not satisfy the hunger of the overworked executives attending. It involved reasonably sized bowls filled with a meal in miniature; shepherd's pie, bangers and mash, fish and chips, cauliflower cheese; exquisitely presented and cooked and a big hit with all the guests.

This gave Henry and I the idea of starting a "real food restaurant", a place which cooked traditional or original simple, tasty, hearty snacks, in reassuringly large portions, and cooked to absolute perfection. We had a few ideas for the menu:

• Corned beef hash
• Shepherd's pie
• Tuna pasta bake
• Steak and chips
• Risotto (of the day?)
• Irish stew
  

Any more ideas, anyone? Although this kind of thing can be found in most good British pubs, we wanted a gourmet restaurant to cook them beautifully, with as much care as they would take over any more pretensious dish.

To spur on our creativity, each week, it is either my turn or Henry's to come up with an original surprise meal. Henry's meal was grilled aubergine with feta cheese and grated carrot last week, which was superb, really delicious. I had problems being totally original with mine this week, but it was very tasty: here is the recipe! For two, you'll need:

• 2/3 carrots
• 1 courgette
• 2 chicken breasts
• Olive oil
  
• Two large teaspoons of wholegrain mustard
• A large dollop of clear honey (about as much honey as mustard)
• 6/7 potatoes (depending on how hungry you are!)
• 1 small pot creme fraiche

• Peel the potatoes, cut them into thin slices and set them to boil.
  
• Julienne the courgettes and carrots
• Heat up a generous amount of olive oil in a pan and chuck in the vegetables
• Fry these lightly
• Meanwhile, slice the chicken into strips
• Mix together the honey and mustard in a bowl and dunk the chicken in it; roll the chicken around in the mixture until thoroughly coated
• Heat up a little oil in a new pan and fry the chicken and all remaining sauce until fully cooked
• Drain and mash the potatoes with the créme fraiche and a little honey.
• Serve the mashed potato in a ring around the edge of the plate, with the chicken resting on the vegetables in the middle. Enjoy!
  

Snow

Berlin is covered with a thin sprinkling of snow, scattered over the compacted, frozen ground and crunchy, icy grass. I love the way the snow squeaks as you tread on it, I love the way it traces the outline of the trees, giving them a second silhouette, the purer negative of the dark branches, and I love the way it dissolves almost as soon as it is touched, like a butterfly caught in your hand. We have already witnessed many different types of snowfall - the flat, feathery flakes floating though the air, thick with the promise of settling and laced with an intricate network of ice; the tiny, powdery shiver of snow which looks like icing sugar pouring down through a sieve; the small flakes bashing against the window, propelled through the air by the wind so they look like a swarm of midges attacking; and the driving rain of snow which leaves you bitterly cold and drenched to the skin.

On Saturday we wandered through the Tiergarten, listening to the silence which comes when a blanket of snow muffles the earth. We threw snowballs at the frozen lake (and each other); we stomped around making big footprints and we watched the sun sink lower and lower in the sky and glow peacefully through the snowy trees. I was reminded of Gustav Fjaestad's calm, snowbound paintings, and also of my favourite poem ever: Snow by Louis MacNeice:

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's
hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

I think this is a most incredible poem - it conveys so much in such a short space. The silence and menacing beauty of a world covered in snow comes across in the first stanza, especially the way snow is always such a shock when you look out of the window. The colours of the pink roses and the white snow, followed in the second verse by the bright gold of the tangerine paints a vibrant picture, composed almost like an impressionist painting by someone like Cailbotte: bay window with snow and pink roses, tangerine, and then in the last verse, the roaring red gold of the fire.

I love the idea of the 'drunkenness of things being various' - we are constantly bombarded by our senses until we are brimful of powerful impressions, and this is exactly what MacNiece intends to convey. He gives us the silence of the snow and the bubbling of the fire, the sight of the snow and the roses, the taste and smell of the tangerine and the toasty warmth of the fire. He draws these together in a list at the end of the poem, drawing our attention to the richness of our senses. In addition, with the word 'spiteful', he sets us slightly on edge - is the snow beautiful or malicious as well? The bubbling fire sounds like an alchemist, intent at his evil work, but it is not only spiteful but also gay. Is this another occasion of the intoxicating variety of the world, like the threatening beauty of the snow or the sinister yet comforting warmth of the fire? I have never fully understood the last line (any ideas?) but I will say that the final image of snow and huge roses, separated from the viewer by glass, finally frames the central image of the poem like a picture and allows us to watch the snow (and the "huge" roses) from the inside. We are sheltered from the snow, but we are not protected from the spiteful, gay fire.

Gissing - a neglected genius

George Gissing: A man I had never heard of until I started my English degree. And now a man whose genius I will be announcing to anyone who will listen. Everyone has heard of Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy, but Gissing remains well known only to the elect few. In my opinion his novels are far more fascinating than those written by the "greats" of Victorian literature. Unlike many of the others, Gissing's novels have the ring of truth, and seem like voyeuristic glimpses into the painful, private lives of their characters.

Gissing had a fascinating life, and he clearly drew a lot of inspiration from reality. Born in 1857, his family were never rich but he received a good education, promptly interrupted when he was caught stealing money to give to a prostitute, Nell Harrison, with whom he had become totally infatuated. After a month's imprisonment, Gissing was exiled to America, and returned several years later, desperately poor and friendless. He married Nell Harrison, but it was not a happy union - Nell was a drunkard and often returned to prostitution. Gissing eventually paid her to live apart from him.

His first novel was a complete flop, although it was largely biographical, telling of his marital strife and discussing the lives of the most desperate levels of poverty in London's slums. Nell eventually died of poverty and venereal disease in 1888, and he married his second wife, Edith Underwood, not long after. This was even more disastrous than his first marriage - Edith became mentally unstable and violent, and had to be committed to an asylum (I always wonder, when biographies say something of this sort, whether the woman was really mad or just miserable, stunted and lonely, but time has erased these truths). Eventually he formed a union with Gabrielle Fleury, a young French translator, and he went to live with her and her mother in Paris, leaving his wife under the supervision of relatives. He eventually died of emphysema in 1903, aged only 46, having spent a vast part of his life in poverty and misery at home.

To me the genius of Gissing's writing is his ability to see inside the hearts of all his characters, high or low, rich or poor, he appears to have that incredible ability to empathise with everyone and anyone which is so rare for an author. The plot of his most widely read novel today, "New Grub Street", is in parts very similar to that of George Eliot's "Middlemarch" : poor husband, rich wife, wife inconsiderate and whinging, marriage fails. But the story of Amy and Reardon is far more beautifully rendered in "New Grub Street" than that of Rosamund and Lydgate in "Middlemarch", because Gissing understands the character of Amy to the extent where we understand her behaviour, and see the fragility of good intentions in a world of adversity. In short, Gissing's empathy enables us to sympathise with all his characters, and consequently makes us believe in his story to the point where it is hard to believe it is any longer a story. We have a sneaking suspicion that we may not have acted so very differently if the situation had been ours.

To give you a taste of this, I have copied a part of Chapter XXIV, Part IV of "New Grub Street", the most convincing part of the book in my opinion:

Both had come to this meeting prepared for a renewal of amity, but in these first few moments each was so disagreeably impressed by the look and language of the other that a revulsion of feeling undid all the more hopeful effects of their long severance. On entering, Amy had meant to offer her hand, but the unexpected meanness of Reardon's aspect shocked and restrained her. All but every woman would have experienced that shrinking from the livery of poverty. Amy had but to reflect, and she understood that her husband could in no wise help this shabbiness; when he parted from her his wardrobe was already in a long-suffering condition, and how was he to have purchased new garments since then? None the less such attire degraded him in her eyes; it symbolised the melancholy decline which he had suffered intellectually. On Reardon his wife's elegance had the same repellent effect, though this would not have been the case but for the expression of her countenance. Had it been possible for them to remain together during the first five minutes without exchange of words, sympathies might have prevailed on both sides; the first speech uttered would most likely have harmonised with their gentler thoughts. But the mischief was done so speedily. New Grub Street, Chapter XXIV, Part IV

Gissing's book the Odd Women, is also well worth a read - a strange but wonderful story about women's rights during the Victorian era, discussing the "Odd Women", that is, those who remained single and hence were not part of a pair.

Gissing is an inspiring, moving author and I'm not sure quite why he has been so neglected as an author in the past, Now, I believe, he is enjoying something of a revival, and his works are beginning to be reprinted. So check him out! You will be surprised.

Gustav Fjaestad - a surprising discovery

I came across Gustav Fjaestad in the Brohan Museum, Berlin, a museum of art deco and art nouveau. In one room, all the walls had works by him, including an immense and spectacular tapestry which seemed so real I could feel the ice on my fingertips. I was totally stunned by his work, which seemed so beautiful and real and yet somehow magical, as if it inhabited a world untouched by human hands. I stood and stared for a long time, and went back to those paintings after I'd seen everything else. As usual, there were no postcards of the best pictures....

When I got home, I googled Mr Fjaestad, to find this passage about him on the Art Fund website:

Gustav Fjaestad (1868-1948), made the frost- covered fields and snow-laden branches of the Swedish winter his hallmark. He too adopted country life, migrating to the densely forested province of Varmland in western Sweden, where he and his wife became the centre of a group of artists and craftsmen. But he was less interested in depicting country activities or wildlife than in exploiting the abstract pictorial qualities of the landscape. In his hands, the countryside in its winter guise became a vehicle for decorative surface patterns of dots and swirling Art Nouveau inspired arabesques. Yet they are never blandly pretty, and occasionally contain a hint of menace. The cold, unknown depths of the mysterious stretch of water contained within snowy river banks in Winter Evening by a River carry a sense of foreboding. Art Fund Magazine (author not credited)

To me there was no menace about the pictures - this was one of their key delights, that they felt entirely calm. (Perhaps this is one of the most interesting things about art, or the arts in general: the much room left for individual interpretation, the diversity of response and the unknown intentions of the creator.) To me the pictures spoke of perfect, untouched beauty. They reminded me of a visit to Esthwaite Water in the English Lake District, at twilight, when there was a light breeze rippling the lake like silk and the silver birches hung their heads ponderously over the water. The whole atmosphere was scented with the calm of evening, and I lay down on the quay to watch the fishing boats bob on the water and felt completely at peace. Probably if I did this on a day like the ones in Fjaestad's paintings, I'd freeze to the dock and would have to be cut out, planks still frozen to my back, but then nothing is quite how it looks in the picture...

Pictures from: www.mundofree.com, www.teosofiskakompaniet.net