Kitchen & Garden

The Case for a Slower Kitchen

After a year of baking sourdough, growing herbs, and cooking without recipes, patience has become the most underrated ingredient in my kitchen.

I started baking bread because our cottage had a wood-fired oven and I didn't know what else to do with it. The first loaf was dense, barely risen, more brick than boule. But the smell of warm yeast drifting through open windows into the garden was enough to keep me going every Saturday morning since.

The Garden Teaches You to Wait

By March I had cleared a patch of earth behind the kitchen door. Rosemary went in first, then thyme, then a row of basil that the slugs devoured within a week. Growing your own herbs is an exercise in humility — and infinitely more satisfying than anything from a shop.

"There is a particular joy in cooking with something you planted yourself — a connection between soil and table that no recipe can replicate."