Carter’s Kitchen No. 10
Sarah Smuts-Kennedy, New Zealand
Sarah Smuts-Kennedy, Mahurangi, New Zealand
Sarah is a special friend I met while I ran my shop in Auckland. She was a regular customer and I always enjoyed our conversations. She is an artist and fabulous painter, and her garden is a sculpture. She lives in a beautiful part of New Zealand, not far from central Auckland. It’s in the countryside, on top of a hill overlooking the sea.
Where is your kitchen, and what does it look out onto?
It is in the heart of our house. It faces east, which means I get the morning sun. It's a relocation house, so I am lucky the orientation of the home sits so well in our landscape. It looks out onto the first kitchen garden we made, based on permaculture ideas of how often you visit a site determines how close or far away it should be from the house. In this garden I have the things I use often or need to keep an eye on. We have lots of wild birds who love to eat brassicas, which I have to keep netted. I also have my favourite herbs, chervil and garlic chives, in abundance here, which I use nearly every day, and my strawberries, which I grow for my grandson who visits from Italy in summer. It's not as pretty as it could be because I am busy making paintings these days. I am not as interested in everything being tidy at the expense of time in the studio.
What’s the first thing you do when you walk into it?
Turn the jug on. My husband Hamish can't start the day without tea, so the first thing I do every day is make him one. I am always arranging produce we grow, making sure things are ripening but not going rotten. I like placing things in the objects we have inherited to make them look pretty. I don't need to eat everything, but I like the produce to fill the house with colour.
What’s usually left out on the bench or always within reach?
Produce and tools. Our bench is never clear. We both work from home as well, so sometimes it becomes an office. We also have collectables, things with no use at all, just because we like them. We have an ancient set of scales which have never worked, but Hamish loves it, so it takes up space. He used to run an auction house, which means for about 12 years he would bring things home with no use at all, and we just have them about the place creating a sense of alive loveliness.
What do you make when you don’t feel like cooking at all?
I am lucky to have a neighbour who sells eggs, so every week I get a dozen. They become my go-to. I like them fried or as an omelette. I have lots of shallots I grow, so I like to cut some up and put them with olive oil and cider vinegar and put them on top, or slice cabbage with herbs and olive oil and vinegar and salt. At the moment I am replacing cider vinegar with lemonades. They are sweeter than a lemon and not like an orange. They make everything better.
What’s something you cook on repeat?
Chicken soup. I use carrots, celery, and shallots from the garden with garlic and ginger and cook them in olive oil. Then I add the chicken breast on top, with oregano and rosemary on top of that, then fill with water to cover everything and cook it until the chicken is tender and falls apart. I then take out the herbs and chicken, pull the chicken apart, blend the veggies, then put the torn chicken back in. It's just so good and provides at least two meals for two of us. I also might put a kumara in when I feel like it.
Who or what taught you how to cook?
I wasn't taught, as I grew up on a commune, and my stepmum didn't really teach me either. So when I left home I was a terrible cook. I didn't have any building blocks for cooking. I remember making a meal for a friend in my 20s and serving it, and we decided it wasn't edible, so we went out. These days people tell me I am a good cook, but I still have to work at it. I don't really follow recipes. I am more intuitive. This often works out but not always. I love your posts as they give me ideas, and I love learning from friends. My friends Franny and Martino are amazing with food, and many of the tips I use in my kitchen come from observing them when they have cooked for me. Franny learnt hers from her flatmate in her 20s who was a chef. I love this passing down of knowledge from and to each other, where we fill the gaps that might have been lost in childhood.
Describe a meal that felt really good recently.
Over Easter I organised a group of friends to go to a family bach at Lake Rotoiti for an adventure together. We all undertook to make a meal. I made the one on the first night, which was a chicken dish based on a Lebanese dish I had seen on Anthony Bourdain's episode on Lebanon. I am loving watching his series at the moment, where he goes to many places that have been demonised in the media and where human life is messed up with capitalist-driven wars. I am using recipes a lot at the moment from Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran as a way of feeling close to these cultures and recognising how ancient and civilised they are. Food is such an expression of our humanity. It was lovely to serve this dish over Easter and use it as a way to lean into the people it came from and feel for a moment, as a friendship group, the pain they are experiencing at the moment.
Who do you most like cooking for (or eating with)?
I love visitors. Hamish doesn't always want to eat my veggies — he has been heard to say, "not more steamed vegetables." So when I have visitors I love trying to use as much as possible from our garden, right down to blended herbal teas. Produce from the garden tastes totally different from those bought from a supermarket. I love sharing this taste with anyone who wants to come and eat with us.
What’s a small food ritual or habit you have?
I like to make a pot of herbal tea at the beginning of the day, often with lemon balm and/or kawakawa, fresh ginger, and a half lemon slightly squeezed with a liquorice tea bag. I let it sit for the whole day. I might drink from it during the day and even top it up, but by the end of the day it's cold, and in summer I might finish it off with an ice cube in a cup. While Hamish has a glass of wine, I enjoy this. It's such a complex blend of flavours and keeps my sugar intake down at a time of the night others are using sugar-based things to get themselves through.
What did you is something you love making?
I love making pesto from my herbs in my garden. All things green with garlic, olive oil, salt, and cider vinegar. Maybe honey, but often not. I feel like this makes all dishes better and ensures I am getting nutrients my body needs. My mortar and pestle is my most important tool, and I don't know how people live without one.
Where do you eat your meals most of the time?
If it's just Hamish and me, we move between the kitchen table and the benchtop. If it's guests, it's either outside or at our dining table beside the kitchen. I was given a beautiful crockery set collected by Hamish's mother and linen napkins by my stepmum, which I love to set the table with. I like food to look nice when it's served. We are very casual in life, and I do love being able to bring a little bit of order to our lives with these things that have been given to us. It reminds me of a time when our grandmothers made a big effort to make sharing a meal an important and formal occasion. I can't manage to replicate it — it's too stressful — but I do like to honour how it gave both Hamish and me a feeling of order and comfort in our lives as children when there was a lot of chaos. I know people love to arrive and see the effort has been made to welcome them. It's amazing how a little order and beauty can make people feel warm and grounded.
What do you like listening to in your kitchen?
The birds, Aldous Harding, and Voom. Also, Hamish is always researching something amazing for one of his books. While I cook, he is often regaling me with recent art history discoveries he has made or an art review he is writing, which I love.
What’s something slightly imperfect in your kitchen that you still use?
It is an inherited kitchen as part of the relocation we did over 16 years ago. I dream of renovating it, but it is not likely for a while. So I try as best I can to love it for what it is, even though it is falling apart. It is actually a great size and orientation, and I am super lucky to have it.
A meal or food moment that stays with you:
My grandma's Sunday night dinner, where we would eat in her proper dining room on her fancy table with all the beautiful things she had collected over the years. We would have to wait in the living room until she was ready to serve. We would have to eat with our knives and forks properly, sit with our backs straight, and were not allowed to start until everyone was served. We would be asked questions over the meal and everyone would listen. It was always a roast with potatoes and peas in a special dish and gravy in another, followed by pavlova after. It was stressful sometimes at the time, but it's an enduring memory for me that I reflect on whenever I am about to cook for loved ones. It created a structure around us made of love and caring, and the warmth with which it was created still lingers in me. It makes me want to create this for others, in particular my own grandson. Hamish, funnily enough, has the same memory but with his own grandmother. My love language for him is to recreate this meal for him, which I do sometimes on Sundays but without the
I love how Sarah fries her eggs with Kawakawa. Kawakawa is a native medicinal plant from New Zealand that is often used to make teas. You can also eat it and it has a bitter and peppery taste.
