This week, we’ll be posting a few of Johnny’s favorite recipes from Elizabeth David’s Christmas in the spirit of the holidays. Send us your photos of Elizabeth’s dishes in your kitchen and we’ll post them on Grey Matters. Happy Cooking!

It is not generally known that pumpkin can make an excellent chutney, rich and dark. The recipe below produces a mixture with a taste which is spicy but not to sharp; the pumpkin slices retain something of their shape, and shine translucently through the glass jars.

Green grocers very often sell pumpkins by the piece; a whole one is, of course, cheaper, but remember that once it is cut it will not keep longer than about ten days.

Ingredients are a 2 ½ lb piece of pumpkin (gross weight), 1 lb of ripe tomatoes, ½ lb of onions, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 oz of sultanas, ¾ lbs each of soft dark brown sugar and white caster sugar, 2 tablespoons of salt, 2 scant teaspoons each of ground ginger, black peppercorns and allspice berries, 1 ¼ pints of wine vinegar or cider vinegar.

Peel the pumpkin, discard seed and cottony center. Slice, then cut into pieces roughly 2 inches wide and long and ½ inch thick. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes, skin and slice them. Peel and slice the onions and the garlic.

Put all solid ingredients, including spices (crush the peppercorns and allspice berries in a mortar) and sugar, in your preserving pan. (For chutneys, always use heavy aluminum, never untinned copper jam pans.) Add vinegar. Bring gently to the boil, and then cook steadily, but not at a gallop, until the mixture is jammy. Skim from time to time, and toward the end of the cooking, which will take altogether about 50 minutes, stir very frequently. Chutney can be a disastrous sticker if you don’t give it your full attention during the final stages.

This is a long-keeping chutney, but, like most chutneys, it is best if cooked to a moderate set only; in other words it should still be a little bit runny; if too solid it will quickly dry up.

Ladle into pots, which should be filled right to the brim. When cold cover with rounds of waxed paper, and then with a double layer of thick greaseproof paper. (Or use jars with plastic-lined lids that will not be corroded by vinegar. JN) Transparent covers that let in the light are not suitable for chutney.

The yield from these quantities will be approximately 3 ½ lb; and although it may be a little more extravagant as regards fuel and materials, I find chutney cooked in small batches more satisfactory than when produced on a large scale.

It is worth noting that should it be more convenient, all ingredients for the chutney can be prepared, mixed with sugar and vinegar, and left for several hours or over night (but not longer than 12 hours) in a covered bowl before cooking.

*Recipe from Elizabeth David’s Christmas, David R. Godine: Boston, 2008. US Edition, p 138-139.

Australia is having a world first with a programme for creating kitchens – with veggie gardens - for 191 primary schools with the goal of teaching kids how to cook. The adults are teachers (a few of whom are experts), but chefs are nowhere to be seen. The kids grow the food, choose the menu and serve the meals in imagined restaurants from ethnic cuisines or what inspires them.

Whilst on holiday in Australia last month, I visited the Stephanie Alexander Foundation to see a school kitchen in action. One of the most inspiring developments is that the teachers and kids are using food as a key source of inspiration throughout the curriculum. Need a history lesson? Then what about using a fruit, say an aubergine, or something like pasta and tracking down its story?

I have been helping Lucy Turner, my sister-in-law, create a pioneering kitchen design for Berrima school in NSW. She is applying for a grant to the foundation. We will keep you posted about how it goes. The foundation has received AU$ 12 million to partly fund the programme. Parents and school have to find 50% of the financing, so it becomes a real community effort. Mums and dads are called on to provide practical assistance. I will providing design services free for the first school. Johnny Grey Studios will be examining the difference between a home kitchen and one for kids in large groups. Stay tuned.

One of the core tenets of our design philosophy at JG Studios is that a happy kitchen is the central ingredient in the recipe for a happy home. And to create a happy kitchen, you need to cater to the youngest members of the family by creating a safe, warm space where they can learn the joys of preparing food – not to mention the fun of making a mess that mom gets to clean up afterwards! (Can you say “Food fight!”?)

We’ve recently been in touch with chef Dorette Snover, founder and owner of C’est Si Bon cooking school based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She and her husband opened the doors to C’est si Bon after Hurricane Fran destroyed their old kitchen in 1997. When the family completed rebuilding the kitchen the next summer, they invited some of their son’s friends for a week of cooking.

“We combed the nearby woods for blackberries for luscious pies, and took [the kids] on adventures to goat-cheese farms…The last night we invited their parents to come to dinner and enjoy a meal cooked from scratch,” Dorette explains.

That experience led her to a new career in cooking with kids. “Eleven years later, we teach over 160 young people in the Kid-Chef day camps and over 50 in the Teen-Chef tours,” Dorette says.

In addition to residential and day camps in North Carolina, C’est si Bon offers three culinary tours for teens in Provence, the Loire Valley and Paris. Students attend cooking classes with local chefs, shop for ingredients at open-air markets and visit local cheese artisans and beekeepers.

Dorette’s approach to food is reminiscent of our approach to kitchen design, and both of us incorporate philosophies such as the slow food movement into our work. For example, provenance, which is so important to food, applies equally to physical things. Knowing where your furniture is made, being able to see it constructed, using eco-sourced materials, good craftspeople and in preferably smaller, well-managed workshops, applies the Slow Food principles to the making of things. (For more on this subject, see Johnny’s post on “Slow Kitchens”).

We’re putting together some tips on cooking with kids – and how to create kitchens for kids! As one of our clients, Tiffany Wood, told the Financial Times in a recent piece on curvy kitchens (get the whole scoop here), the extra large work spaces we installed in her kitchen lend themselves to family bonding over food: “I have three children and they have countless cousins, and they all love to cook. They come and make pancakes crowded round the great big worktops - I can squeeze in 12 children round those curves.”

Stay tuned for more on how to squeeze more children ’round your own cooking spaces.