The first kitchen I ever cooked in was the first house I ever lived in, Barr Hall Cottage, a tiny white weatherboarded cottage that originally had a thatched roof that had long since been replaced with something more sensible. My mother had heard that snakes liked to make their nests in thatched roofs, and so she had an irrational fear. Not of snakes, but curiously of the roofs themselves.
The house was old and rickety, with uneven walls and clumsily fitted 1960s storage heaters filled with some sort of illegal material (or so I was told). We did not dare switch these on. The only heat came from a coal fire in the living room, blankets, hot water bottles and of course, the cooker.
The kitchen was small, not much wider than a galley kitchen, the sink overlooking the garden and an old-fashioned cooker with a grill high above my head. Shelves lined with dusty jars filled with even dustier spices, gold labels beginning to fade, so that you had to squint to read what was in them. My mother used three spices in those days: curry powder, chili powder and oregano. Curry and chili powders are not strictly spices but a mixture thereof, however, these were her staples. And they were used cautiously, as back then, it seemed that people were more afraid of spices outside of their comfort zone.
Nowadays I use spices with a reckless, almost terrifying lack of care, choosing to ignore recipe recommendations.
Back to that little kitchen nestled deep in the Essex countryside, surrounded by old oak trees who had seen their fair share of agricultural developments over the centuries, but that little nook of the world remained comfortingly untouched by modernity.
I remember climbing on the wooden kitchen chair that was placed against the woodchipped wall, reaching up for those jars, trying not to knock others over (I was a clumsy child, and am a clumsier adult) inhaling their exotic but faded smell. I spent some time plucking up the courage to bite into a dried red chilli, it’s shiny red allure too much to resist, and I was rewarded with both a very hot surprise and a spank for being so silly. I still bite into chilis to this day to test them for heat though.
My mother trusted me implicitly in the kitchen from a really young age, and I can’t recall a time when I couldn’t chop onions (her eyes were too sensitive) or make a basic tomato sauce. I taught myself to bake, from a local dairy cookbook, baking oaty melting moments biscuits and carrot cakes.
My mother, no matter how hard she tried, and no matter how much she loved food, could not mold herself into that dutiful housewife, she was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. She really did hate cooking, and I feel that we would have eaten many takeaways had they been as prevalent then as they are now.
In many ways I’m thankful that she didn’t enjoy cooking because it meant that I had a clean slate to start with, but I also feel that I missed out on that cultural culinary grounding that so many people have. I taught myself to cook, almost from the ground up, but in a very non-linear way. I would skitter between overly ambitious things like duck confit but have no idea how to poach an egg. Typical me, always biting off literally more than I could chew.
But I will always remember that cosy feeling from the kitchen, even if we were just eating something simple like gravy and mashed potatoes or egg and chips. I’d stand at the cooker, my bare feet on the swirly red carpeted floor, stirring tomato sauce, or watching cheese melt slowly under the grill, on tiptoes, peering into the grill.
To me, food will always equate to comfort, but it will also remind me of the people I’ve lost and lovingly prepared meals for, and that young girl who stood barefoot, teaching herself to cook.