alt="image11"/> Family picnic amongst the ruins with my friends in Syria 1939
Post-war, when my mother was working at the French Consulate and was usually very tired, I would help her prepare the meal, clear away and wash up. She was an invalid for a while in England, following a back operation, and was unable to move around very much. So, from the age of eleven, I did the weekly family shopping regardless of whether we lived locally or across the Thames, in Barnes.
I learnt to negotiate with our grocer In Kings Road Chelsea to swap food coupons in our ration books – saving our soap stamps to buy precious eggs and negotiating with the grocer to procure other rare rations like butter. Mama was regularly getting Elle, one of the top French magazines, and I loved their food articles, collecting the recipes and recipe cards they published every week. Each card would give you their suggested three course daily menus, which I pored over and practised where possible. I had never previously researched cooking methodology other than learning to cook my mother’s specialities which all involved eggs – dishes that she would get our cook in Syria to prepare for the many menus she would organise for VIPs and their visitors: Cheese souffle, vanilla egg custard for Ile Flottante, fish and prawns with cream sauce, Quiche Lorraine, Mousse au Chocolat. The rest I learned by experience, by making use of whatever I had or whatever was available – by whatever came up; whatever presented itself.
When I was 15, I went to Hammersmith Art School in London, where it seemed natural for me to go to our local Shepherd’s Bush food market to get lunch for fellow students, then come back to put out a feast, at minimal cost, for 8-10 of us. I would also cook for my friends at home. My Austrian stepfather owned a factory making underwater swimming gear and I would organise working bees, where we put together underwater masks to earn much-needed pocket money. We would sit in my bedroom, working away, before I went down to cook a budget spaghetti or rice dish. It was always such a joy to sit and eat together.
Over these years, I adapted myself to whatever kitchen was at hand and I have had a series of kitchens in my life, none of them the ‘ideal, dream, functional, beautiful kitchen’ and definitely not the kitchens I have carefully designed for my various clients, after this became my design speciality. But every kitchen of my own has been much appreciated, even when it was not like our latest, super-efficient kitchen in the house at the back of the Hospital Café, where we are living in Bowral. But I would say that, whatever the kitchen you are faced with, you can learn to work with it.
Talk of kitchens makes me recall my first one as a young married woman in Shepherd’s Bush on three half-levels of a workman’s tiny terrace house. We had two bedrooms, one minute bathroom, one living room and a very basic kitchen. It had a small fridge and stove lined up along one wall, alongside a sink with no hot water; we carried it in from the bathroom next door. On the opposite wall to the sink, there was a small Victorian-era fireplace, with shelves either side. In between, there was just enough room for a small jewel of a round, antique, scrubbed-pine table with four chairs, given to us by Mimi, my husband’s mother. We would stretch the seating with stools and somehow managed to squeeze six to eight people around it.
In London, I was working for Josiah Wedgwood on their showroom and exhibition displays, enjoying their range of historic and contemporary dinnerware and visiting their ‘seconds’ factory for bargain buys. As I started styling for various home magazines, I found myself writing on cooking for Queen Magazine, and moved on to be the cookery writer for the newly launched Sunday Telegraph Colour Magazine, with the ‘test’ cooking taking place in the most humble of kitchens, ours!
In Sydney, after I emigrated here with my husband, Guy, and two-year-old daughter Stephanie in 1965, my ‘test’ kitchen became the small 1930s kitchen we had in a flat overlooking Mosman’s Sirius Cove. I recall waking up on our first day to the sound of fishermen, casting nets from their bright, Mediterranean blue and green painted boats – a dream come true. That small kitchen was soon put to work as I was appointed cookery editor for House and Garden. I did all the dishes for my cookery articles there, which were photographed as I cooked and styled in our home and garden.
Two years later, we bought our first home. It was in Hunters Hill and we moved in with our two young children, Stephanie and baby Sholto – Arabella was yet to come. It was a wonderful old sandstone house with a long, wide verandah at the back that everyone remembers for the memorable meals we shared there at our very long table, often seating 16.
We eventually put in a new kitchen, using pine for the joinery, which was set against old sandstone walls and complimented by a terracotta floor of round, inverted drain-pipe caps – the closest thing I could devise to my French Grandmother’s hexagonal tiles. Two ovens were a ‘must’, along with a wide gas cook-top, over which sat a magnificent copper hood, made by my friend, master-craftsman, Louis Berczi. A round antique Australian cedar table sat in the middle and was used for our family meals as well as doubling up as much-needed work space. With its stable door and graceful old windows – the original ceiling rafters overhead – this kitchen was a warm setting for many a photoshoot for several cook books over the next 16 years.
Then it was time to take a break from the magazine, design, book-writing world. Meditation, and a different pace of life saw me returning to England in 1984 for a few years before I found myself heading back to Mosman and living, once again, in an old stone house. I picked up where I had left off, writing, designing, exploring and enjoying the changing world of food and cooking, and appreciation of what Australia offered in design and architecture.
Twenty-five years later, I have moved on to another adventure with my youngest daughter, Arabella, who had always wanted to run a café and shop. In 2015, following a phone call from an old friend, Jasper Foggo, we came to a new life in Bowral, as owners of the Hospital Café. This latest adventure has been quite a learning curve and most of all we have enjoyed being part of the community and making many new friends. I have particularly appreciated our super-efficient, light-filled kitchen in the house that lies at the back of the café.
But location aside, some things remain central to me. I enjoy bringing people together; both old friends and new acquaintances. If I have any wish it is just to pass on the pleasure of sharing and seeing information passed on to others. It gives me great joy to see my daughters, Stephanie and Arabella, cooking, and also my granddaughter, Hanna, trying new recipes. For his part, my son Sholto is particularly good at cooking chops and steak. He has the perfect touch and knows how to seal in the juices and cook so it is as rare as we each individually like it. He also does magical things with the river
