Easter Newsletter
- Johnny Grey
- 12 hours ago
- 5 min read
Easter is all about rebirth, lambs and blossom.
How about bringing that spirit to your kitchen, your table and your plans this spring? We have some suggestions!
A GOLDEN NOT-SO-OLDIE
We can offer an incredible opportunity to renew your kitchen with one of our classic pre-owned furniture ensembles. This could be a real windfall for someone. It’s a richly detailed collection of hand-built furniture previously belonging to the musician Howard Jones and his family. They moved out of their Victorian brick courtyard house near the Thames and the new owners had a different vision.
All the furniture was lovingly built by Nigel Brown, one of our legendary craftsman, who has made furniture for the Royal Family at Windsor Castle. This kitchen is all handmade and full of colour, beautiful shapes and, I have to say, joy. In it, Jan and Howard Jones were great entertainers, cooking feasts for all their friends and visiting musicians (including Peter Gabriel).
The freestanding furniture is highly adaptable. The longer pieces are made in sections that can be readily reconfigured to fit a different type of interior. The result will form a unique kitchen that will last for years. My team of designers are on hand to help this kitchen’s new owners with any planning and/or practical questions.
It's Back!
The South Downs Food Festival returns this year on 7 and 8 June at Stansted Park near Havant. Visitors can stroll through a vibrant grass street where farmers, foragers, fermenters and artisan food stalls makers showcase the best seasonal fruits, vegetables, and food and cooking-related handcrafts.
Indulge in charcuterie and cheeses, kombucha and kefir, burgers and beer—all while celebrating English sparkling wine, asparagus and wild venison. The Fire & Forage Stage will feature open-flame cooking - grilling, marinating, and slow-roasting over coals.
Meanwhile, the Cookery Demo Marquee hosts Michelin-starred chefs including Thomasina Miers (Wahaca) and Sam Clarke (Moro), revealing their expert techniques and signature recipes. Le Creuset and Thermomix are coming along to bring their pots and gadgets to life.
Alexandra Harris will talk about her book The Rising Downon the Saturday as part of a talks programme exploring the people and landscape of the South Downs and the growth of regional food. On the Sunday Johnny will be welcoming BedalesSchool to run discussion panels. Come and join us to share ideas about inspiring the next generation to cook and eat well. It all promises a fabulous couple of days – do come if you can. Read more here, and book tickets here.
AN EXPLOSION OF FLAVOURS
This is what we are now dealing with in our kitchens. So many spices, pastes, rubs and bottled and jarred sauces – a whole category of ingredient needs the right kind of storage. The jars and packets are small and you want to put your hands on them quickly while following a recipe. You need to keep them circulating and in-date or risk spoiling a special dish.
Gone are the days of our parents and grandparents when a limited spice rack contained a few small jars of dried herbs, ginger powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and curry powder. Now our recipes call for flavours from all over the world and the supermarkets mostly oblige. But how to store and, crucially, access them all? From multiple types of soy, Harissa paste, Sofrito, Yuso Kosho to Gochjang etc etc, they soon pile up. At JGS we have come up with a new piece of furniture: the Condiments Drum. Originally inspired by Indian street art made from old oil drums, we make these from recycled stainless steel. With perforated doors, the cupboard breathes in a suitable way for storing herbs and spices as well as bottles and jars. The Condiments Drum fits ina narrow space. One and a half metres tall and 680mm wide, it houses eight linear metres of shallow shelves for your culinary exotica. As part of our Unfitted Kitchen collection of furniture you can buy this piece on its own. It will enhance many styles of kitchen.
THE POLICING OF PLEASURE
Hot cross buns are of course everywhere at this time of year. The wholemeal ones from Eric’s in East Dulwich, £19.50 for six, are particularly fine but supermarkets also offer many varieties, some pretty good. In English Bread and Yeast Cookery Elizabeth David does say that the only way to discover how hot cross and other specialty buns should really taste is to make them at home: ‘how much lighter, [with] how much more character and individuality’ they then are.
In the sixteenth century these kind of ‘small, soft, plump, sweet, fermented’ delicacies were subject to a legal ban. Whether to protect the public from bakers’ profiteering or, more likely, to save people from decadent pleasures with a Catholic tinge (the cross symbol), the baking of spiced buns was strictly controlled in England. David writes that in 1592 Queen Elizabeth I issued an edict prohibiting bakers and everyone else to ‘make, utter, or sell by retail, within or without their houses, unto any of the Queen’s subjects any spice cakes, buns, biscuits, or other spice bread […] except be at burials, or on Friday before Easter, or at Christmas, upon pain of forfeiture of all such spiced bread to the poor’. Reading this makes me want to hurry to the toaster, splitting a hot cross bun into halves and lining up the butter…
If you do want to make your own, there are many recipes in books and on the internet. Elizabeth David offers a suggestion from her great friend artist Arthur Lett-Haines, who she praises for his imaginative ideas about food. Describing in this case Chelsea buns but equally hot cross buns as ‘rather large and bucolic’, he suggests making them very small (the size of petit fours) and fruity, then covering them with Royal icing, either lemon or Angostura flavoured, and rolling them in chopped pistachios or poppy seeds. Worth a try this Easter?
SMALL, ROUND AND PLEASING
I think of our Circular Wall Cupboard as a bit of decorative art to enhance the look of your kitchen. Or maybe something else rounded that we like: an LP, a dish, a button, a porthole, or maybe a bun – or is that all a bit whimsical? It is anyway a popular piece in the Unfitted collection due to its simple pleasing shape and modest size (diameter 650mm). Housing the smaller items in a kitchen and placed near the sink or hot water source, it’s perfect for storing tea and coffee and mugs or glasses. It’s available in any RAL colour from their chart.
We are making a batch and are offering them to customers at a 25% discount. Please let us know you location and we can quote an all-in price to get one delivered to your kitchen. An option is to add an LED lighting strip hidden in the back so that it glows on your wall.