Who: journalist Dinah Hall
Where: Hammersmith
What do you do in your kitchen and who with? I cook with Nigel Slater and feed his heterosexual look-alike, my husband, whose cooking skills sadly bear no resemblance whatsoever to my culinary hero. When our four children are at home they spend a lot of time looking optimistically in the fridge and willing delicious things to come out of it, despite having emptied it two hours previously. My kitchen is probably too accessible – its design, dominating the entire open plan living area, makes cooking in to a spectator sport.
How would you describe your style? In theory my style is minimal, in practice messy. Not a good combination. In order for it to work, you need a cleaner and an anal-retentive husband. Fortunately I have both. I think the ugliest six words in the English language are “tidy up as you go along”. My husband uses them a lot.
What is you favourite and most useful object? My favourite item is a bobbly glass jug. I vocally admired it when interviewing a shop owner years ago for a Christmas shopping piece, and she immediately handed it over. It took about two seconds for me to wrangle with my journalistic sword of truth and shield of honesty, before succumbing to base desire. I should be in prison. But in my defence, everyone who came to the house for dinner since – all four of them – went straight out and bought one. One friend gave it as a wedding present and was really pissed off when the bride – on getting divorced six months later – returned all the wedding presents bar that.
If I wanted to be really pretentious – which I do – I would say that the humble wooden spoon is my most useful item. How could you make scrambled eggs without one?