Pantry pleasures

My new collection of mismatched vintage tins to hide away all those silly packets.

Favourite tin-Sir Winston, who harbours the rice.

We are lucky enough to have an old fashioned pantry with a cold slate, plenty of shelving and room for all those things you want out of your kitchen. In my view and if possible, a kitchen should be for preparation, cooking and have a large wooden table for the family to sit around, eat and converse.

The pantry is one of my favourite places in the house; it is the lifeblood of the home and a reflection of all the work my husband and I do to feed our family.

A traditional pantry should be kept spotlessly clean and scrubbed on a regular basis. It is, after all, an area where food is stored and sometimes prepared. Being north-facing and with its open, meshed window, it is the coldest place in the house throughout the year. In the winter the icy winds blow across the field, occasionally bringing sleet and snow through the shaded opening. The door is always kept closed and bolted, so in the summer flies cannot make their way in. Hot feet can be cooled on the quarry tile floor and milk will store for several days on the cold, slate worktop.

Our vintage mincer is used regularly to make homemade sausages, patties and meatloaf.

Many a wasted hour is spent perusing recipe books of old and new.



The baskets provide attractive, yet practical, storage for fruit and vegetables.



Up until our wedding last year, we lived without a refrigerator for five years. The pantry is cold enough to store almost everything. Cheese was kept in an antique cheese dish on the slate with the milk. Meat was kept frozen in the deep freezer in the barn until needed for cooking. Leftovers could be kept happily for several days under the window while the hungry hoards systematically helped themselves to the likes of cold rabbit pie and lasagne. Our good friends Howard and Dee presented us with a fridge last summer in anticipation of chilling many bottles of champagne for our wedding. I must admit since then, the joy of chilled white wine has made owning a small larder fridge very worthwhile! Once again though, we have enough room in the pantry for this so that it doesn't cause an eyesore in the kitchen.



Jars of dried beans and pulses are stored alongside crockery and plates.



This summer's jam efforts as well as our homemade pickles (including Old Dowerhouse chutney of a 2009 vintage). Essential items such as preserving pans and food mixers have a home in this space without being cursed for taking up room in a small kitchen cupboard.

As I have mentioned before, I am a dreadful procrastinator. It only takes a trip into the pantry, a leisurely survey of the shelves and a peek into the pages of a favourite recipe book and before you know it, I am baking bread, preserving some fruit or creating an impromptu snack for the children.

Today's pantry-filling mission was to Back To The Garden, a farm shop and delicatessen in Letheringsett. We have French visitors tomorrow for lunch and I am determined to demonstrate good food and cooking from North Norfolk. Homemade bread is a priority and I needed to stock up on some different bread flours. Normally I will buy the flour straight from the watermill up the road in Letheringsett but it is closed on a Sunday. Knowing I could get the same flour from Back To The Garden, we used it as an excuse to purchase a few of Norfolk's finest local cheeses. Throwing in an enormous locally grown cucumber and some English vine tomatoes, we left feeling considerably lighter in the pocket but virtuous in our patronage of local food producers.



Cheeses include Norfolk Dapple, Binham Blue, Norfolk Mardler and Norfolk Charm-a ewe's milk cheese. Flour includes Letheringsett stone ground wholemeal flour, Letheringsett white self-raising flour and Dove Farm spelt wholemeal flour.

 The pantry is a magical and sacred place in our home. It is where the turkey hangs from the ceiling and where the Christmas cake fruit steeps in brandy in the winter; it is where muslin bags containing fruit drip into pans for jellies and cucumbers for pickling shed their water in layers of salt in the summer; it is where sourdough grows and infuses overnight and it is where jars of damsons and sloes soak in gin; among many other qualities, it is where recipes in ancient books of years gone by beg to be re-created and brought to life. I love my pantry. It is a pleasure and a passion.