Cinderella tales

This weekend, I’ve been cleaning copper and making a Puy lentil salad with goat’s cheese croûtons. I recommend both activities.

Pink walls, shiny copper, and the shell tiles, The brass rail above the stove is from Ikea, Hultarp, £6 for 60cm and I used two here. The brass hooks cost £5 for 5.

I’ve spent the past week washing things and putting things back. The kitchen is starting to feel more like mine again, more like itself again. What has become apparent to me as I work on this house is that, more than making it my own, I am returning it to itself.

When we first bought this house, one of my friends came to stay. She has wonderful taste and always makes beautiful houses. She said to me, “Start by painting everything white, then you’ll know where you are”. The thought horrified me. To get out the emulsion and obliterate all traces of the house’s past felt impertinent, not my place, even as I paid the notaire’s fees for making the house mine.

It is a terrible old cliché that you need to let a house reveal itself to you, but honestly you do. Or I do. We’ve lived here for two years with grubby walls and peeling paper and flaking plaster. The outside is now done – the roof, the façade, the ironwork, the windows – and the essential boringness of heating, air conditioning and rewiring is complete (Me, wailing, “When can I buy a fucking cushion?”). And now I can get to do what I like best, which is essentially to mess around with colour.

A strange thing happened, and I am putting this down to growth because you must take your wins where you can. Years ago, when we bought our house in Hackney, I remember driving Séan demented trying to choose the perfect shade of white for the hallway. I had about twenty-five patches painted all along the hall and up the stairs in the full rainbow of shades from alabaster, through snow, milk and chalk. Or for those of you joining us from The Farrow & Ball Appreciation Society, Wevet, Pointing, Dimity, Bone and Clunch. I decorated my first flat for less than I spent on sample pots. “For Christ’s sake, I’m on my knees, just pick one- any shade of white. I don’t care!” The most patient man on the planet was being driven to the edge of reason by Estate Emulsion.

But here I am, a couple of decades later, and I barely troubled Maison Gomez, Montpellier, for more than a couple of sample pots. I knew very quickly what I wanted because I’ve spent two years gently thinking about it. I didn’t even made a mood board. I class this as being in recovery.

The kitchen now has pink walls, pink woodwork, with lighter pink on the door panels, green on the shelves and mantel, and on the pegboard we put up to hold the saucepans (Setting Plaster, Pink Ground and Breakfast Room Green, for members of the F&BAS). The colours are drawn from the shell tiles around the old fireplace, but also found in the painted glass window on the staircase. The house knows what it wants. I’m just carrying out its wishes.

How to clean copper

Shamefully dirty copper.

I spent a few hours this weekend with a podcast and a bottle of ketchup cleaning up my copper pans. This is much cheaper than commercial copper cleaners and works very well. The acidity in the ketchup removes the tarnish, while the stickiness clings to the surface long enough for it to work. Brush it on, leave it for 20-30 minutes, wash it off in lots of soapy water then buff it dry with a soft cloth. You could also try the paste they’ve used at Leith’s Cookery School for years, which is made from equal quantities of table salt, malt vinegar, flour and egg white. The vinegar adds acidity, the salt abrasiveness, and the flour and egg white bind the mixture into a paste. Use a soft cloth to rub it in to the surface, getting into every nook and cranny, then wash in hot, soapy water and rinse well before buffing dry.

Pans on my pegboard wall, inspired by Julia Child’s kitchen. This new storage is tucked into a small staircase to the cellar, off the side of the kitchen.

Shiny copper pans, on top of a kitchen cabinet we bought off Facebook Marketplace.

Salade de lentilles aux herbes avec croûtons de chèvre

Herby lentil salad with goat’s cheese toasts

This is such a good and versatile salad. You can use different herbs if you want (chervil with tarragon is very good), or serve it warm with poached eggs in place of the goat’s cheese croûtons, or serve the dressed lentils on their own, without cheese or eggs, as a side dish to grilled meat or fish, or roasted vegetables.

Serves 4