Lessons in life from a Danish chef

(On food and desire)

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I wanted to become a really good cook. It would, I thought, be lovely to hand out plates of food that looked like mini art-works and hear my guests’ gasps of pleasure and surprise as they took their first bite.

I was, by the way, nowhere near a kitchen. I was lying on a bed in a hotel in the Alps, gazing at a giant TV. My partner and I were half-way through our two-day drive to Umbria. We were tired. We were cold. We were slightly disappointed by the hotel, which had looked charming in the photos, with its sunlit pool framed against the mountains, but less charming on a February night in minus two.

Our room, in a separate wing, felt more motel than chateau. There was a bed. There was a kettle. There was a glass wall between the bedroom and the bathroom, which is great for those who love to see their partner squatting on the loo – and less good for those who don’t. We had wolfed down steak and chips at a bistro in a retail park and decided to collapse with a film. A quick flick through Netflix offered us the perfect start-of-sort-of-holiday option: a Danish rom-com set in Tuscany called Toscana.

Was it good? Well, let’s just say that after a 12-hour journey, not much sleep and half a bottle of Picpoul, it hit the spot. For a greedy half-Swede born in Rome who had a tiny flat in Tuscany for fifteen years, a Tuscan-Scandi smorgasbord of food, romance and sun-drenched landscapes was always going to have a good chance.

The Danish chef at the heart of it is grumpy, overweight and foul-mouthed. He barks at his staff. He swears at his investors. He misleads the skinny beauty who has, for reasons not entirely clear to the viewer, decided she has crush on him. He’s irascible, irrational and apparently incorrigible. He is, in other words, extremely easy to relate to. Oh, and he has a Michelin star. His food is a poem on a plate.

That looks delicious, I thought, as I stared at a plate of berries, herbs and freshly foraged something or other, arranged to look like a still life. Count me in, I thought. Let me make poems on plates!

I can’t remember how long the fantasy lasted. Possibly a whole hour, possibly less. It struck me, when the credits had rolled, that learning to cook well is quite hard work. I’m not sure, these days, that I’m all that keen on hard work. Or perhaps I mean I’m not sure it would be worth the effort. I live with someone who – now, how do I put this? – has a tendency to eat rather quickly. On an average day, that would mean a lot of hard work for something that literally only exists for a few minutes.

Is that really what I want to do with big chunks of my one wild and precious life?

Well, when you put it that way, the answer is clear. Nope. No. Nej.

What about having friends for dinner? Those friends who would sigh at the beauty of my handiwork and gasp at the taste-bombs exploding on their tongues? The thing is, they’re already my friends. They’re happy to come round for bowls of crisps, my lemon chicken (which is actually my friend Lisa’s lemon chicken) and my trusty chocolate mousse. I could learn new dishes, but would it make them like me more? I am not auditioning to be their friend. I’m inviting them round for wine and food and company. If the wine is drinkable, the crisps are crispy and the human is in a reasonably good mood, the food will probably pass muster. Will it be a great culinary experience? No, it will not, but if my friends wanted great culinary experiences they would have found a different friend.

My partner gave me Ottolenghi’s Simple for my birthday. I love Ottolenghi. By which I mean I love eating Ottlolenghi. Several times, I have sat down and flicked through Simple and thought: I will learn to cook some simple and delicious dishes and my friends will sigh and gasp. And after a few minutes I have felt a torpor creeping over me, the kind of torpor I get when I have to do my VAT return. And then I realise: I will not.

It is, in the end, all about what we want. We do what we have to, and then we make choices about how we spend the precious time that’s left. I’d rather eat delicious food than non-delicious food, but not if I have to cook it. Luckily, I’m with someone who likes cooking more, or perhaps I should say dislikes it less, than me. He does most of it. Thank God he does most of it. I would happily live on bread and cheese and wine and crisps and coffee and cake, but if I have to have meals, I would like someone else to cook them.

In the past few years, and particularly since my brother died, I have given a great deal of thought to what I want. I know I need to write. I know I need, after ten years of freelancing, several lockdowns and a pandemic, to do more work with other people. I know I need to keep doing some journalism, for the buzz, the deadline and the hit. I know I need to keep learning new things. That’s why I’m now combining writing and journalism with coaching. It has been extremely liberating to work out what I want and to help other people do the same.

An awful lot of what we want isn’t within our power. I want Putin out of Ukraine. I want the UK back in the EU. I want Boris Johnson to be so utterly crushed by Rishi Sunak’s success with “the Windsor Framework” that he skulks off and out of politics and public life. I also want to eat and drink as much as I like and still lose half a stone. But politics is the art of the possible - and so is everything else.

What do you want?

At this point, in a cold, grey winter, I want sunshine, laughter and delicious food. I want beauty and truth. And one of the truths I should probably face up to is that I am never going to be an excellent cook.

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Paperback publication

One of the things I always wanted was to write the story of my family. That dream was finally fulfilled when Outside, the Sky is Blue was published last year. The paperback is out now. I would really, really like people to buy and read it. If you have ever enjoyed any of my writing or podcasts, I would be so grateful if you would buy a copy, perhaps as a gift for a friend. It has been described by the iPaper as “a hymn to optimism and a beacon of unflagging hope”. You can buy it here.

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Woman’s Hour!

One of the key themes in the book is my sister’s mental illness and the effect this had on our family. I was on Woman’s Hour on Wednesday (10am, Radio 4) talking about this. You can listen to it here. The interview starts at about 12 minutes 40 seconds in.

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Sunday Times magazine

I’ve also written a feature on this for the Sunday Times magazine, which will be published a week on Sunday (12^th March).

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Sky Papers

I’ll be back on Sky News reviewing the papers this Saturday (4^th March)  and on Saturday 18^th March.

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Book recommendation

I adore Elizabeth Strout and have just read her most recent novel, Lucy by the Sea. Every book she writes makes me think: this is what it’s like to be alive.