How to downsize your kitchen

About a decade ago, I reached a turning point. I’d grown uncomfortable with the way I was striving to replicate the operations of large kitchens. For generations, I had aspired to home kitchens based either on a falsely remembered vision of one in a Victorian grand house, or the set-up of a professional restaurant, all chrome, stainless-steel and “professional-grade” kit ordered from specialist suppliers. I fed two or three of us every day, in a kitchen ready to handle a dinner for 12, or bake enough bread for a small village.

The kitchen felt surplus to requirements, performative, weirdly inauthentic. I wanted to move away from that to cook in a gentler, more domestic, more mindful way, so I started a process of constant reduction, rationalisation and right-sizing. My daughter, learning to cook with me, called it “smallening”. I don’t expect anyone to follow the bizarrely ascetic process of self-whittling I’ve gone through, but I hope you might find some of it worthy of thought. Here are the seven appliances, pans and utensils that have smallened my home kitchen.

Zeal Silicone Spatula Spoon

Zeal Silicone Spatula Spoon, £9.50, zealzeal.com

Of all the bonkers, misty-eyed romanticised nonsense in our kitchens, wooden spoons are the worst. Horrible, unhygienic relics. We confuse the way they wear out and degrade with some sort of spurious, spiritual wabi-sabi. Though I confess that I, too, was a devotee of the wooden spoon until a brilliant pastry chef gave me a Maurice.

In any bakery section, you can say, “Pass me a Maurice” and you’ll immediately be handed a silicone tool halfway between a spoon and a spatula. But if you ask where it got the name, no one can tell you. Maryse was the French trade name for some of the first flat spatulas made from heat-resistant silicone. These have evolved into something with a slight bowl at the end, moulded in a single piece around a buried core of nylon or stainless steel. It’s soft, so it doesn’t damage a delicate Teflon coating, seasoned cast-iron skillet or steel omelette pan. And because it’s such an efficient scraper, no scrap is left in the bottoms of jars or saucepans. I’ve become dangerously evangelical about Maurices. I carry spares in my bag so I can convert the unenlightened.

Sage Appliances The Control Freak cooking system

Sage Appliances The Control Freak cooking system, £999, sousvidetools.com

At my worst, I had a kitchen containing a Lacanche five-burner gas range and a gas-fuelled Aga, but moving to a new house presented the opportunity to design the kitchen from point zero. I went in hard and decided I could finally embrace induction. I went for a two-ring, half-size hob and left enough space to add a portable ring alongside if I ever needed it. It worked well, instantly. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to think like domestic cooks around the globe who feed their families from a single fire, brazier or other simple heat source.

Then I borrowed my first Control Freak, a large, freestanding induction ring with a contact thermometer in the centre of its plate, so you can dial in the temperature you need to the degree. When developing recipes, I’d been used to checking exact pan temperatures with a laser thermometer, and then translating them back into cool, medium or screaming hot for the published instructions, but within weeks I was running at a completely different level of accuracy: omelettes in the spun-iron pan at 108C. Caramelised onions in the stainless-steel sauteuse for 30 minutes at 96C, then four minutes at 165C. It was the start of something much bigger. I realised that smallness could also mean precision.

Sushi Sushi stainless-steel oven pan

Sushi Sushi stainless-steel oven pan, £16.99, sushisushi.co.uk

Early in my journey to smallness, I sat marvelling at a counter in a Japanese izakaya. My attention was caught by the small stainless-steel trays they used for raw ingredients, which also easily slid under a grill, each precisely sized for a maximum of two portions (200mm x 140mm. I checked). A European commercial kitchen works on the basic scale unit of the sheet pan (530mm x 325mm), on which maybe 24 portions can be cooked at the same time. How was that possibly an aspiration for domestic cooking?

I searched everywhere for the little trays with no success, then, finally, rooting in the dark back rooms of the internet I found a supplier of Chinese-made surgical supplies offering cheap equipment to veterinarians. Stainless-steel “instrument trays” were a longer, narrower rectangle than I was strictly looking for, but for several years they served me well. Today, Japanese service trays are imported by specialists such as Sushi Sushi, and I no longer need to find knock-off medical equipment.

Sage Appliances Combi Wave benchtop oven

Sage Appliances Combi Wave benchtop oven, £399.95, sageappliances.com

A Chinese friend pointed out that our desire for a built-in oven that can take five trays of cupcakes at once is weirdly culturally specific. Why, she asked, didn’t I try a benchtop electric oven, “like the rest of the world does”? It’s half the volume, so its fuel requirement is correspondingly lower, but can still take a whole chicken, as big a meat joint as you can afford, two cakes or two loaves of bread.

Benchtop ovens are little short of genius. They can have regular and fan settings but also ferocious salamander overhead grilling, toasting and defrosting settings. Mine, by Sage, can heat to 230C, the temperature for a decent pizza. I didn’t actually tear out the full-size oven. It’s still there, but I now have a useful storage cupboard with a hanging rail for tea towels.

Japanese Knife Company stainless-steel Yakumi pans

Japanese Knife Company stainless-steel Yakumi pans, from £8, japaneseknifecompany.com

Once you get into the rabbit hole of Japanese mise en place, the slope is slippery. It would be easy to clutter the bench with all manner of stainless-steel knick-knackery. I resisted until I saw a set of yakumi pans. This is much like an Indian dabba spice tin but rectangular: one larger tin with a lid is fitted with a set of rectangular inner boxes. You build up an array of little compartments for ingredients that can be put away under a single cover. Individual boxes have their own lids so, if required, they can go in the fridge. It’s similar to the system of Gastronorm pans in tessellating sizes, but on the scale of the sushi bar, the izakaya counter or, fortuitously, the small domestic kitchen.

Victorinox stainless-steel 11cm Swiss Classic Tomato and Table Knife

Victorinox stainless-steel 11cm Swiss Classic Tomato and Table Knife, £6.90, victorinox.com

One of the most humbling discoveries I’ve made while travelling is how odd it is to stand at a bench to prep food. Domestic cooks all over the world have traditionally done most prep work sitting down. You can’t use a 10in chef’s knife sitting down, nor a chopping board. Which is why every granny from Naples to Mumbai, from Lagos to Istanbul, uses a small, often serrated knife, with a plastic handle, cutting towards her thumb. What drives foodies bonkers is that they turn out some of the most superb food this way, and the knives aren’t even sharp.

I can’t be without my Victorinox – not only because it’s so damned useful, but as a reminder not to be a macho dickhead.

Triangle stainless-steel 20cm offset plating tweezers

Triangle stainless-steel 20cm offset plating tweezers, £12, boroughkitchen.com

In restaurant reviewing, “tweezering” is a pejorative term for a certain kind of self-indulgent chef faffery. I would die before I’d allow tweezers in my home kitchen. But after two decades of smallening, I reached a crisis point. Last month I realised that I was working so small, so neatly in the pan with concentration and mindfulness, rolling asparagus spears in clarified butter, that my reliable silicone-tipped tongs felt oversized and unfit for purpose. I needed something smaller and lighter and, dear reader, I am ashamed to admit, I put my tongs into storage and bought some tweezers. I am a changed man. I can go no smaller.