Kitchen Cupboards #8: Hannah Blake, Dining Room PR
The food PR and seasonality champion and her genius recipe for a simple 'Beans and Bits' Soup.
Welcome to Kitchen Cupboards, a monthly ingredient column where, rather than exploring some of my favourite ingredients, I’m taking a peek into some of my favourite food writer, creators and producers kitchen cupboards to talk about which ingredients shape their everyday cooking.
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If you are at all involved in the food scene here in Kent and East Sussex you know that two facts about Hannah Blake are true: if she starts doing the PR for a local restaurant you know everything you eat there will be exceptional so you must go book a table forthwith, and even if you’ve never been to her house for a meal, just from following her on Instagram you just know that she’s one of the best home cooks you know.
We’ve shared meals together across London, Kent and East Sussex, and fangirled over Diana Henry in the audience of a local literary festival, but last week for the first time I got to take a peek into the cupboards of her stunning new kitchen redesign (which I obsessively followed on Instagram, with increasing jealously when I saw her stunning new kitchen table reclaimed from the refurbishment at The Plough just outside Rye that was not working in the pub restaurant but just so happened to fit perfectly!) to see what ingredients she keeps on hand to transform the always stunning, always seasonal produce she prepares in such a way to always make me stop scrolling, and study for tips, ideas and new places to shop.
Also, at the bottom of this post for paid subscribers Hannah has kindly shared her frankly delicious recipe for a store cupboard ‘Beans and Bits’ Soup which she made for us while we chatted. Thank you Hannah!
Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
First, tell me about your stunning new kitchen design - yes it’s beautiful, but are there any little practical features you knew you wanted to include to make preparing everyday meals easier?
The most important thing was to create space, before the extension it was all very squashed in. The table, I could fit six around there but it stuck out into the kitchen and I had benches just because they were space saving. It was not massively comfortable and it was not conducive to sitting down after lunch or supper. So the whole kitchen resigns started with ‘how can I get the biggest possible table into the kitchen?’ I needed a space to cook and have people for dinner. It’s all I ever want to do, just cook for people.
Before I could cook blindfolded and I would know where everything was, and I could cook ergonomically so it was really important to think about flow and where everything was going to be, like where the cutlery drawer is and where the dishwasher goes next to the sink.
You’ve told me several times you don’t really ‘follow’ recipes, but I know you take plenty of inspiration from cookbooks - how does an idea for a meal start?
I’m really greedy, and I really like feeding people. I do read a lot, everything on my phone I consume is food related, and then there is my job. But then I think it helps that cooking is not my career when it comes coming up with meals, I’m a passenger. I write about food but I’m not actually cooking, and I can imagine being in a kitchen all day long cooking and churning out the same dish over and over again could grind you down and could zap your creativity. I have the luxury of being able to just mess around. And my family will eat everything. We’ve got no allergies, my son has been a joy to feed since the day dot, so I’m really lucky. And my husband is really happy to pretty much eat anything. The boys don’t even blink.
The other night we had some potatoes leftover and we had a very simple deconstructed tortilla. And for some reason one thing my son does not like is tortillas, but I think that is because when you make tortillas they’re quite hard not to make the eggs rubbery. You’ve got to really concentrate and you’ve got to use a tonne of olive oil. The amount of olive oil they use to make a tortilla is off the charts, and then they drain it all off ands use it elsewhere, but I just can’t be dealing with that so I simply made a kind of scrambled eggs fried potato thing, and I made a quick little beetroot tzatziki and we had some little baby gem lettuces. And that was supper. And then we had some strawberries afterwards. That was it.
I always come back to what is in season. That is the easiest way to do it.
How often do you shop for food?
I really enjoy going around different places and choosing my ingredients. If I was to be going and spending 2 hours at a supermarket the blood would drain from me, whereas I’ll very happily take my time. The ‘convenience’ in inverted commas of going to a supermarket and being able to get all your stuff, that doesn’t do it for me. I’m very happy to potter around. There will be a podcast on or I’ll have music on, I love driving and it’s so beautiful around here I’ll drive to places.
I think I get a lot of my feeling of self worth from the whole food experience.
I’m very lucky in that just down the road I have Groombridge Farm Shop which I go to practically every day. I also love Cherry Gardens Organics. It’s such an amazing place, I’m evangelical about it. The quality, so I’m very lucky that I’ve got the time and privilege to go and shop in those places. There is an element when things are probably more expensive than buying, you know, something from a supermarket but I try to only buy in season. I do buy lemons all year around, that’s probably the only thing. And that’s not to sound, I don’t know, superior or however it may come across, I just genuinely believe I don’t want to have strawberries in December. We haven’t got gooseberries yet over here and I know they’ve been over in East Kent, and I keep going ‘where are the gooseberries?!’
I think that my son who is ten next week, he’s growing up genuinely understanding about seasons and seasonality, and what food comes from where, so he’s asking when the gooseberries are coming because his favourite ice cream that I make is gooseberry and elderflower ice cream. It’s really good.
I just don’t want to eat out of season food. I don’t get excited. I get excited about when stuff comes in and when it ends. I like to know when things end, and then you move onto something else and then they’ll come back around next year.
As your food is hyper-seasonal, does that mean your store cupboard staples change with the seasons too, or do you just transform the same ingredients with the help of seasonal produce?
I’m a seasonal store cupboard cooker. During the summer everything is really going to be fresh. I use so many herbs, herbs go in everything, fresh herbs from pots in the garden. But then during the winter we have loads more pulses and lentils. I rely on the store cupboard more in winter than I do during the summer and because I can shop pretty much every day I can keep quite a lean supply. I’m not stockpiling stuff.
I love the journey. I love talking to producers and suppliers; they’re so passionate.
And finally, which store cupboard ingredients would you not be able to live without?
Fennel Seeds - I’ve got an over dependence on fennel seeds. Have had for years. I could have probably put fennel seeds in the soup we’re about to eat. It probably would have been really nice because it would have picked up the lemony notes of the preserved lemon. I genuinely think I put fennel seeds in 80% of all I cook, and that can be everything from pork to vegetables to ratatouille.
Fennel seeds in ratatouille, that sounds really good!
So I make ratatouille like no one else makes, I genuinely think it’s the best recipe. No one does this. I will cook, say a whole courgette, but I’ll only cut it into quarters or five pieces on the diagonal so it is really chunky, and grill or fry the shit out of it so it is really smokey, almost a bit charred, or barbecue it. I’ll make the tomato sauce with loads of garlic, loads of olive oil. I never put onion in my ratatouille. Then I add the fennel seeds if I’m in that sort of mood, and then once the tomato sauce is done I layer it up in a big pan with lots of basil and I don’t cook it anymore - I just leave it and put the lid on. And then I usually leave it to the next day.
Preserved Lemons - As well as fresh, I will always have preserved lemons. I do think they’re good at running through a bulgur wheat salad or something because they’re really subtle. Or into a marinade for barbecued lamb or chicken, they work really really well, and used in a brine as part of a marinade too.
Olive oil - Really good olive oil. I do like olive oil. At the moment I’m using that Citizens of Soil oil which comes in refillable pouches which I really like so you can buy the bottle if you want, but the pouches are so much cheaper. I also like Arbequina olive oil1, that’s one I do buy if I see it.
Olives - I always have olives. Always green olives, my absolute favourite. When I have a drink, my absolute thing is a bowl of green olives and a Campari soda. I do like Kalamata olives if I’m doing an Arrabiata-style pasta sauce, but usually it will always be green. I do like the Fragata ones, they’re good little cocktail olives. They’re like 99p these tins, and they last forever, and I always keep the brine as I like drinking it straight from the fridge. But really I love the Gordal or the Nocellara, those really buttery ones.
The restaurant olives? (Note: I challenge you to find an ingredient-focused restaurant in Britain who have a snacks section of their menu without Gordal or Nocellara olives on it at the moment!)
Yeah, posh restaurant ones are always going to work.
Jarred Beans - I love these beans, these Bold Bean Co. Beans. I think the key to using good beans is to use jars rather than cans. Just the texture difference is amazing, if I use a can of beans I always boil them first with bicarb, it just softens them. I think it’s an Ottolenghi trick when he makes hummus? It just softens the skins. But these, I can just eat these out of the jar. And they’ve got such a huge range too, they’re really good.
Aleppo Pepper Flakes - I love this stuff. I really hate the over-use, abuse of black pepper. How everyone always puts black pepper on stuff. I really hate it, it really winds me up. I just think that people automatically will go for black pepper, and will kill a dish. I actually can’t cook with black pepper, I sometimes think not cooking with black pepper is to somewhat rebel against it, but I also don’t massively like the flavour, I find it quite aggressive, there is no nuance in black pepper, probably because the stuff we get is probably terrible; I’m sure if I went to Sri Lanka or somewhere which grew proper pepper I’d change my mind. But I think there are so many other things that you can top your food with, so Aleppo pepper is great, urfa chilli is really good, or you know, a homemade dukkah or harissa, that kind of thing. But I love Aleppo pepper, it’s good on eggs, it’s good on everything really.
Store Cupboard Beans and Bits Soup
Serves: 2-3, Preparation time: 5 minutes, Cooking time: 15 minutes
This brilliant soup is what Hannah threw together for us to enjoy with a beautiful bunch of leafy spinach from Cherry Gardens Farm (which I’m so pleased she sent me to afterwards to stock up), a rich, unctuous chicken stock, and a few of her favourite hero ingredients. Zingy, refreshing and wholesome, and even enjoyable on a hot day as we had it if you’re into that whole hot liquid / hot weather vibe as a way of cooling down.