Rose Prince
Food writer Rose Prince tells Holly Brooke-Smith how she renovated the kitchen in her rural Georgian house
Rose Prince began her career in food journalism in 1995 soon after she got a job running the test kitchen at the Books for Cooks shop in west London. The store manager at the time was Clarissa Dickson Wright. ‘Working with Clarissa was like being an undergraduate at the world’s finest university of food,’ says Rose, who wrote her first book, The New English Kitchen: Changing the Way You Shop, Cook and Eat, in 2005. She has written several more since. Rose and her husband, Dominic, have two grown-up children and live in Dorset.
Have you done much to your kitchen?
It was two rooms when we arrived here in 2014 – one side was a dining room. I don’t like dining rooms. The only good thing about them is that you can have a lot of people over on a Saturday night, then shut the door and leave it all until Monday! I prefer to cook and eat with people in the room. So we took out the central wall and put the table in here.
Did you inherit any of the furniture?
The big dresser was here, but otherwise the previous owners just had a few dated units, which we’ve replaced. However, we’re lucky that they never really changed anything about the house – the original features were all still here. We did have to replace the windows because they were very old. However, we had them done exactly as they were before.
How about the floor?
The flagstones are all original, which is wonderful. Often in these old houses, people glued linoleum to the flagstones in the Sixties and wrecked it. We just had to put in some stones to hide the gap where we removed the wall – which also gave me the perfect opportunity to put a double socket in the centre of the floor. I recommend these to everyone, they’re so useful! Although you have to be careful not to get them wet when you mop the floor.
Where did you get the work island?
It’s a baker’s table that came with us from London. I bought it from a friend 20 years ago and recently repainted it. We put the stainless-steel top on it. It’s the perfect arm’s-length width for rolling out dough all the way across the top.
What about the other work surfaces?
The materials are important. I like preparing food on cold surfaces, and would normally use steel, but I didn’t think it was suitable for this kitchen. And I don’t like granite – what I wanted was marble. I couldn’t get a contractor to fit unpolished marble though – they won’t sell it to you unless they polish it, because it stains. That shiny look would be completely wrong in here.
So where did you go?
I went to a reclamation yard and found unpolished marble. A local stonemason cut all the grooves into the section that’s now my draining board and agreed not to polish it – just hone it. It does stain a bit, although any marks come off with soap and water, and it’s such a lovely surface.
Was the sink already here?
No, that is a Villeroy & Boch double butler sink. We moved the original one to the utility room, because it’s a bit too chipped to use it as the kitchen sink. It’s nice to have two really good sinks.
What do you cook on?
We installed this oven by Falcon, an Aga company. I adored the catering oven we had in our old house, but I couldn’t bring it because it ran off mains gas. This one has an internal sheet that you slide down the middle, which means the oven only heats up on one side. You can also fit in turkey, potatoes and anything else at once when you want to.
Do you use this oven more than the Aga?
I do. I’m not actually a massive fan of cooking on an Aga. They’re great for letting things bubble away, but it’s an extremely expensive oven considering I only use it for meringues and toast! I like cooking over a fire. The gas Falcon oven is great too as the hob guards aren’t too heavy to lift.
How about gadgets?
I’ve had my Thermomix blender for about six years – they’re so powerful and simple to clean. Because it’s just a jug, there are no fiddly bits. The motor can crack 500g of nutmeg – it’s incredible. I chop in it, and make soup. I also have a KitchenAid. I used to have a small one and I upgraded to a big one. I think the paddle in my bigger one fits the bowl more neatly, so it picks up every last bit of mixture.
What about the table?
We measured the space and decided we could fit a 7ft by 5ft table – it’s perfect for this room. You can fit 14 people comfortably. I really like the shape, because then you don’t get someone sitting at the head on their own. And you can talk across it, but still get masses of food in the middle.
You can’t buy a table this size, and we were running out of money, so we copied what you see in lots of restaurants and just got a steel frame and laid over scaffolding planks, bought for £10 each. Then the children sanded and waxed it!
Are you a collector?
I collect junk shop white and off-white china – as long as it’s a nice shape, I buy it. The first row of cabbage plates on my dresser actually came from my grandma, who bought them in an Italian crockery shop. The china spaniel came from Brixton market in London – he was a present for Dominic. • For more information about Rose, including her cookery classes, visit roseprince.co.uk