Caroline Kent

CAROLINE INTRO

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Caroline’s life in the kitchen

We inherited the kitchen of the cottage when we moved in and havent really changed it much over the years. It has Shaker style wooden cabinets that we spruced up with some Little Greene paint - Light Peach Blossom, a very pleasing grey-pink colour, and Flint on the walls. It’s a relatively small space which connects through an open doorway to a Utility room where the butlers sink, dishwasher, washing machine etc live. We painted that Yellow-Pink which makes me happy every day, it’s such a joyful colour in a place where less than joyful things have to be done! We knocked down a kitchen island so the kitchen  now flows straight into the dining room / snug where we spend most of our time. One of my favourite things in the kitchen is the shaft of west light that comes in for a brief period every evening and turns everything rosy as the sun sets. 

I’m currently spending a lot of time thinking about what makes for a great kitchen in order to design one for our soon to be renovated house - turns out it’s more complicated than it seems and I’m pestering everyone I know for advice (that includes you, Jess and Phillippa, the apple green Elliots kitchen looks pretty perfect..!) 

I don’t actually much like to cook, but I love to bake and for me, that’s when I feel happiest in the kitchen.  My mum baked a birthday cake of my choosing every year - I think the Maypole with ribbons and Jellybaby dancers might have been my best - and I now do the same for my boys. This year was a hand-painted Bunny vs Monkey design for the 11 year old, and up next is a dinosaur cake for the toddler. I always use the same madeira sponge recipe in an ancient copy of the Good Housekeeping cookbook that Mum packed me off to Edinburgh University with. And for the grown ups, I defy you to find a more delicious cake than my friend Skye’s pistachio sponge with marzipan buttercream, works like a dream every time, and as I love marzipan above most other things, the icing is to me a stroke of  genius - I try to make it in a different colour every time. Cakes are the punctuation of my year, the birthdays of course, but also a Christmas cake every November (also from the GHK bible) and a Simnel at Easter from the queen of the kitchen, Nigella Lawson’s excellent Feast. 

1. Witch Elm Chopping Board.

My tiny flat at the top of a Victorian Edinburgh tenement was the first home I owned. When I moved in, the walls were papered with woodchip and painted the colour of an Irn Bru can, bright orange with blue cornices! I stripped it all back and a joiner friend built me a small but perfectly formed kitchen from sycamore, with a beautiful piece of Witch Elm for the worktop. A bit battered these days, this board is made from offcuts of the elm and has travelled with me ever since. 

2. Le Creuset Cooking Pot.

My first proper pot. A generous birthday present some years ago from Richard & Florence Ingleby, my old bosses at the gallery. They are extraordinary cooks, both, and almost every day there would be something delicious for lunch (at the time I worked there, the gallery was in their house, sandwiched between the kitchen in the basement and bedrooms & living room above). As aforementioned, I’m no chef, but it is a very satisfying thing to cobble a curry or stew together in this. As a maker of greetings cards, and a lifelong present drawer hoarder, I’ve always been interested in what makes a good gift and a quality pan, though perhaps not the obvious choice, will be something that reminds you of the person who gave it to you every day that you use it, and weaves them into the fabric of your life in a very nice way. (An aside - on the drying rack you’ll notice the Pallares knife I bought for my husband for Christmas from Elliots, another quotidian thing of beauty that gives us pleasure to use every day.)

3. Our Kitchen Table.

It’s an old French farmhouse table I found on Ebay for a song back in the glory days when you could find such treasures. It was with a dealer in Cornwall and at the time I was living in a tiny top floor flat on Edinburgh’s Montgomery Street. He arranged delivery for me, and one morning the biggest lorry I have ever seen turned up outside my door, taking up most of the street with it. A tiny man, as wide as he was tall, hopped down from the cab, strode round to the back of the lorry and threw open the doors. Inside, was a yawning cavern of space, a huge pile of turnips at the very far end, and floating like an island in the middle was my table. He picked it up as though it weighed nothing, dropped it on the pavement, placed a single turnip on top, jumped back into his cab and drove off. I then had to beg several neighbours and passersby to help me carry it up 4 flights of stairs! We eat breakfast and dinner at it every day, bake and do homework and draw on it, and every birthday, presents are piled high on it the night before - it’s a part of the family.

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