My Kitchen Essentials
a really good cafe and where to eat on Portobello Road.
Here’s a little bit of Sunday reading around all of my most-used items when I’m cooking at home. These are the things I reach for day to day that I genuinely couldn’t be without in my kitchen. I’ve tried to include a really honest range, from £5 through to £450, with something across all price points.
At the moment, I’m beginning to think about moving after being in a really lovely rental in London for the past eight years. It’s been such a nice opportunity to reflect on what I do and don’t use in my current kitchen, and what I’d actually want to take with me versus the things that might be better rehoused or taken to the charity shop. It’s safe to say that over the past eight years I’ve collected quite a lot of kitchenware. The cupboards are very close to bursting at this point, so I’m very excited for a big spring clean and a proper organise.
I’d love to know what your most-used kitchen utensil or gadget is, so please do share in the comments of this post.
Before I get into the list, I wanted to share a few places I’ve eaten recently that I’ve really loved. I’m starting in a corner of town I very rarely visit, but it reminded me how nice it is to go a little further afield and wander around a different part of London outside your usual neighbourhood.
A few Sundays ago I headed over to Portobello Road to visit Holy Carrot. It’s a plant-based restaurant making the absolute most of all the delicious vegetables we have to offer, with a philosophy centred on two key pillars: the transformative power of fire and fermentation.
We tried a whole range of dishes from the menu, but our favourites were the fire-grilled fermented koji flatbread with white bean purée, bhel puri, pickled raisins and curry leaf oil. There was also a smoky tofu dip on the specials which we had with the flatbread, and it was insanely good. If it’s on when you visit, it’s a must-try. From the mains, the artichoke schnitzel with pickles and curry sauce was a really clever bit of cooking and opened my mind to how inventive we can be with food without getting overly technical. But the real star of the show, which we couldn’t leave a morsel of even though we were completely full by this point, was the sweet potato “yaki-imo” with corn miso butter and sunflower seeds. Genuinely one of the most delicious, warming things I’ve eaten in a long time, and one of those dishes that would bring you back to a restaurant for that alone. The team told us it’s a staple on their menu, and I can absolutely see why. If you’re in the area, or fancy a Sunday stroll down Portobello Road followed by lunch, Holy Carrot is definitely the spot.
Popping over to the other side of town, another place I tried for the first time recently was The Electric Cafe. It’s a real institution, an old-school, untouched café that has stood the test of time for good reason. I grew up having a fry-up almost every weekend. We’d usually go to my grandma’s, where she would only buy sausages from the Irish butchers on our town market. I can still remember the taste of them to this day. Those mornings in her kitchen, with all the best smells, my dad and grandad watching sports highlights from the day before, and me tucked up in the warmth of her armchair with her word search book, are memories I look back on really fondly. That’s where my love of a full English breakfast began. On the odd occasions we didn’t go to hers, we’d pop to our local café instead.
The Electric Cafe has been going since the 1920s and has been run by the current family since the 70s. It’s such a great spot. I went with my girls recently and the five of us all ordered the set breakfast with chips. There’s something so good about homemade chips on a fry-up at a proper café. It really takes me back, and every element on the plate was perfectly done. The sausages in particular are not to be missed.
On to the list of my kitchen essentials…