A few weeks ago I blogged about Andrea Levy’s Windrush novel Small Island and the use she makes of food to signal the discomfort and alienation the Jamaican immigrant Hortense feels in post-war London as she struggles to make a typical English dish – egg and chips.
Food plays a similarly important role in the immigration experience of the protagonist of Colm Toibin’s novel Brooklyn. Winner of the 2009 Costa novel award, Brooklyn tells of the young Eilis Lacey who leaves her small provincial town in 1950s Ireland, where work is scarce, to travel to Brooklyn in New York to make a new life.
Eilis’s journey is not her idea. The plan has been concocted by her elder sister Rose and facilitated by a priest, Father Flood, himself an Irish immigrant to New York.
When Father Flood visits the family for tea when he is back in Ireland, Eilis discovers that plans have been made for her future: ‘In the silence that had lingered, [Eilis] realized, it had somehow been tacitly arranged that Eilis would go to America. Father Flood, she believed, had been invited to the house because Rose knew that he could arrange it.’ Toibin’s use of the passive construction ‘it had …. been … arranged’ demonstrates Eilis’s lack of agency in the event. Her passivity – which is one of her key characteristics – is further shown through the plans made for Eilis’s departure: Rose organises all the paperwork for Eilis’s immigration; Father Flood provides a letter of sponsorship, finds Eilis accommodation and secures her a job at Bartocci’s, a large department store; and the cost of Eilis’s passage to New York is paid for by her two brothers who live in England.
After a difficult crossing of the Atlantic, Eilis arrives in New York, moves into a boarding house in Brooklyn owned by another Irish immigrant and begins work at Bartocci’s. Her discomfort at being in this new strange place far away from her family and all that is familiar to her manifests itself in her reactions to the basic foodstuffs she eats: ‘She made tea and toast. She still had not found bread anywhere that she liked and even the tea and the milk tasted strange. The butter had a flavour she did not like either, it tasted almost of grease.’
However, as time goes on, Eilis settles into New York and discovers another side to food as an immigrant: new foods that she hasn’t tasted before. Whereas the unfamiliarity of New York was initially distasteful to Eilis, as she embraces her new life the strangeness becomes one of its appealing characteristics.
The new foods that Eilis experiences are from another immigrant group, the Italians. A few months after arriving in New York Eilis meets Tony Fiorello, a young plumber living in Brooklyn with his family. They begin dating and after a few months Tony takes her home to meet his family, introducing her to the delights of Italian food at the same time.
The first course is spaghetti served with a sauce that was ‘red.. filled with flavours that she had never sampled before. It was, she thought, almost sweet. Every time she tasted it, she had to stop and hold it in her mouth, wondering what ingredients had gone into it’.
For the main course she is served ‘a flat piece of fried meat covered in a thin coating of batter. When Eilis tasted it, she found that there was cheese and then ham inside the butter. She could not identify the meat. And the batter itself was so crisp and full of flavour that, once more, each time she took a taste, she could not work out what had been used to make it.’
And finally for dessert there is ‘a sort of cake … filled with cream and then soaked in some sort of alcohol’.
Eilis’s reactions to this meal are in marked contrast to her reactions to the bread and butter of her early days in New York. Now she is entranced by the food. The detailed descriptions of the food highlight her fascination with, and curiosity about, it and her desire to try and find the words to convey the experiences of eating dishes she has never eaten before.
The spaghetti sounds to be accompanied by some kind of tomato sauce, and I would guess the dessert was tiramisu, but I wasn’t sure what the main course was. However, help was at hand from my trusty research assistants – otherwise known as my dad and brother – both of whom suggested it could be a version of cordon bleu. And when I investigated, I found they were indeed correct.
Cordon bleu is the name given to a dish in which meat is wrapped around cheese, then breaded and fried; a layer of ham is often inserted too. The phrase ‘cordon bleu’, which is French, means blue ribbon, and was originally a term used for the sash worn by the highest members of the French knighthood, L’Ordre des chevaliers du Saint-Esprit. The term was subsequently applied to food cooked to a very high standard, as seen in the cookery school network Le cordon bleu.
But back to our dish. Eilis doesn’t recognise the meat, which suggests it could be veal which is one of the standard meats in cordon bleu. But pork and chicken are also widely used, and I made my version with chicken. To give it an Italian ring I used prosciutto ham and also ciabatta breadcrumbs. This is one dish of loveliness: the fried crispy outside contrasts with the soft chicken breast and is complemented by the melted cheese oozing out.. Yum. No wonder Eilis enjoyed it so much.
ITALIAN CHICKEN CORDON BLEU
Ingredients (serves 4):
4 boneless chicken breasts
1 large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water
100g breadcrumbs (ideally from ciabatta)
30g grated parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 teaspoon paprika
Salt and pepper
4 slices prosciutto ham
4 slices gruyere cheese
2 tablespoons sunflower oil and 2 tablespoons butter for frying
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C, 160C Fan, Gas mark 4.
Mix together the breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, parsley, paprika and salt and pepper in a bowl and then pour onto a large plate.
Prepare the chicken breasts by placing between clingfilm or baking parchment and pounding with a rolling pin to flatten them out.
Place the chicken breasts on a flat surface and top each one with a slice of ham and a slice of cheese. 
Roll up the chicken breast and secure with two cocktail sticks or toothpicks.
Dip each breast in turn in the beaten egg mixture and then into the breadcrumb mixture, making sure it is completely covered.
Put the oil and butter in a large frying pan and place over a medium heat. When the butter has melted and the mixture begins bubbling, saute each chicken breast on all sides until brown.
Place the chicken breasts on a baking tray in the oven and bake for 20 minutes until cooked through.
Remove the toothpicks / cocktail sticks and serve.
