Many of us will be cooking one very big meal, perhaps for some of us our one and only big meal of the year, in a few weeks’ time. For others the next month or so will be veritably peppered with meals cooked for others. For some, this is nothing new. The thing that I find distinguishes this time of year from what comes before it is that some of these meals to be cooked with will be cooked in other people’s kitchens.
Having worked as a caterer for a long time at the beginning of my career, having set up kitchens in barns and fields and spaces seemingly unfit for cooking, and at the same time having spent plenty of time in other people’s kitchens, navigating other peoples decisions, I thought I would share my findings, impart some wisdom, and hopefully allow you to find a good space to cook in, be it in your home or in an unfamiliar kitchen elsewhere.
In last weekend’s FT Weekend House & Home section there was what could have been a very interesting, not to say useful, article entitled ‘Kitchen Confidential.’ It promised itself thus: ‘flummoxed by the plethora of possibilities for your kitchen…Chefs reveal what they wouldn’t be without in their own home kitchens.’ I was in. Soon enough though I was screaming at the paper, a futile exercise, sure, but a necessary release.
Anthony Demetre, is a wonderful chef, granted, and in offering himself up for the article he makes a few sage points about limiting the distance you need to travel between your fridge, cooker and preparation area, but by the time he is waxing lyrical about his £40k-plus stove and his £3k Linea coffee machine it’s starting to dawn on me, at least, that this man’s advice might not translate that well to a home cook with a more modest budget and a more diminutive kitchen floorplan. The article did get me thinking though.
I’ve inherited a kitchen in my current house built in the 80s by an artist. It is narrow and neat with limitations in terms of storage and layout, but the chap did make one very smart decision, a priority that the FT article barely touches upon. He prioritised the work surface, and I thank him every day for that.
Prior to this kitchen, I’ve had the good fortune to install two kitchens in previous homes and both times I opted for simple Ikea units with stainless steel fronts (which are simple and easy to clean, although do smear very easily if you’re an overexuberant cook as I can be.) Apart from a sink (always located towards an edge/wall with enough room left for a draining board to one side, but away from the main prep area - nothing is more annoying than loads of washing up whilst you’re trying to crack on with making a big lunch) and a four or six ring burner, the majority of any kitchen should be empty available counter space. This is for one crucial reason, this being that on that counter space you should have room for a very big chopping board.
I have a piece of old worktop that was sanded down and oiled. It’s a good inch or so thick, wooden, and has come with me from house to house. I like to also have a small board for prepping chicken or fish, but everything else happens on the one big wooden chopping board. Be it onion, garlic, chilli or any colour or creed of veg, it gets dealt with on top of that board. There is no finer material to cut on than wood, and with thorough scrubs between uses, no trace scent or flavour is left behind.
The number of expensive kitchens in poshy houses I’ve cooked in where, aside from the cluttered countertop, there is nothing more than a weird flimsy stained plastic chopping board boggles my mind. How can you chop a good amount of anything on a flimsy little board? You know the sort, often made by Joseph & Joseph, or a knockoff of them, sometimes bendy, always sliding about the worktop and painfully unfit for purpose. Sure, you can wet a bit of kitchen towel or cloth and sit this underneath, but ideally, you want a board that sits proudly on a good stretch of worktop, a board that has enough real estate to hold a few piles of prepped food, a pile of onions, a pile of garlic, maybe an area where you’ve run through some herbs. You should be able to have all of that in front of you and still have space for chopping something else. That is the chopping board ideal.
The thing this FT article kept coming back to was some mythical and mystical triangle that is key to unlocking the efficient cook in all of us. What is this triangle they talk about, I wonder as I considered my own space and the most pleasurable cooking spaces I’ve used over the years? I guess, perhaps I do have a triangle. If I stand prepping at my counter, the sink is to my left, the fridge stands over my left-hand shoulder, the cooker and the utensil pot and the salt bowl sit in very close proximity to one another over my right shoulder. A triangle, I suppose.
In my last kitchen, though, everything described above was in one long line, with plenty of worksurface between each thing, and that worked perfectly too. Some kitchens I’ve cooked in have a tight triangle of key workhorses, but don’t function nicely due to excess nonsense and gadgetry on the worktops; other kitchens have been disrupted by doorways and corridors and have been set up piecemeal and imperfectly but have functioned beautifully due to a lack of clutter and an abundance of prep space.
Considering all of this, I actually think my first tip for any cook planning to cook anywhere would be, no matter where you are cooking, wherever you are going, to bring one good sharp knife with you. Everything else you can work around, but trying to cook a proper spread without a sharp knife is almost impossible.
Last year we rented a house in Deal, Kent for Christmas. In the basement was a massive kitchen with a rather charming farmhouse table in the middle. Around the edges of the kitchens were work surfaces, under which all of the storage, fridges, cookers etc were housed. There should have been plenty of space. Instead of work surface, though, or vacant space on which to peel and prep veg, bake and serve, whisk and whip and carve and create, there was stuff, gadgetry, ephemera and admitedly vaguely useful things like sinks and gas rings - although in the context of this kitchen even those could have been removed. And the farmhouse table was too low to work at. Tables always are, in my opinion. With only one thing for it we rounded up everything that wasn't a chopping board or a pestle and mortar and removed it to the little utility room off the kitchen. Finally, some work surface. Cooking could begin.
As this has become a stan account for work surfaces, the final word to say is that whatever work surface you do have should be able to take a hot or wet pan sitting on it for a good long while without it burning or marking or melting or moaning.
The wooden worktop in my previous kitchen was not a good choice. Every time a wet metal pan sat on it for any length of time it left a black ring behind. The same would happen with a hot pot or tray. Having to reach for a trivet or a cloth or a board to place pots and pans on was a necessary nuisance, and it wound me up after a while, I stopped doing it, I left ring after black ring in my wake. I’ve done the same in other people’s posh kitchens, with less intent, admittedly, and I feel much worse about that, but then it is a work surface, in a working kitchen, and so my defence is that I was only working.
In our house now we have inherited a stretch of dark green Welsh slate and it can take everything we throw at it. Stainless steel would do the same. Some other stones would work equally well. Although specific marbles or granites or sandstones or the like that flinch and quibble at the sight of lemon juice or lime juice or anything of that ilk should be swerved. You’re going to splash lemony dressings and sauces and things with turmeric in them onto your worktop, that is a certainty, so make sure you have a surface that isn’t going to mark when you do. I recall as a schoolboy going to a friend’s house after school and his dad ordering an Indian takeaway, the opening gambit of which was a couple of prawn puree, packaged as is de rigeur in a silver container. I was tasked with halving them and dividing between four plates for my mate, his brother and their dad. I did my best, and proudly served the first two, only to return to the scene of my crime and see a pool of turmeric heavy oil seeping from the base of both containers. I tried to style it out, grab the nearest cloth and remove all evidence, only to cover their entire marble worktop and a premium tea towel with the ochre stain. The worktop had to be professionally buffed to remove the Kintsugi I had inadvertantly etched into their kitchen surface. Alternatively, of course, you can have a worktop that you don’t care about or one that is cheap to replace, but ideally, you’ll have one that can handle everything you might conceivably do to it. That’s surely best.
In an attempt to be less blinkered, but also in service of achieving the nirvana of plenty of available work surface, here’s some broader kitchen ‘design’ advice I’ve gleaned over the years.
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