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At home with our food editor in her historic Devon hall house
‘I'd describe my style of cooking as simple. Less is more, really focusing on the characteristics and flavours of the ingredients,’ says House & Garden’s food editor Blanche Vaughan, a chef by training who, before she became a food writer, worked in the kitchens of the Michelin-starred River Cafe, Moro, St John and Chez Panisse. As a cookbook author and editor she has developed her own style of English cuisine, merging the elegant informality of Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson with the earthy luxury of the pioneers of the farm-to-table movement like Margaret Costa, Rose Grey, Alice Waters and David Tanis. Her latest project, House & Garden’s new cookbook ‘A Year in the Kitchen’ is a compilation of recipes that have appeared in the magazine during her tenure, some written by her and some by the writers she has commissioned – a starry roster that includes Rowley Leigh and Sally Clarke. The book is divided seasonally, ‘which to me just seems the most natural way’, and is a guide to using ingredients when they are at their best.
‘It's almost a diary of all the stuff that I make at home for my friends or my family. It's very authentic. The most pleasurable aspect of cooking for me is just going out into the garden, seeing what's growing and coming up with an idea of how to prepare it,’ she says. ‘When I cook I’m trying to improve the ingredients, rather than turn them into something entirely different.’
The approach is not dissimilar to the one she has adopted at the home she shares with her husband, the art dealer, Hugo De Ferranti, and their seven-year-old daughter Alba. The house (featured in House & Garden in 2007) was Hugo’s home first. A hall house in Devon with spectacular views over Dartmoor, it is mentioned in the Domesday book, with walls of cob (an ancient West Country building material made of clay mixed with straw) and a thatched roof. The earliest records of a dwelling on the land date back to the 15th century. A large extension was added later in the 20th century, which now houses the living room and above, Blanche and Hugo’s bedroom.
The house had been a labour of love for Hugo, carried out over two decades. Two big name decorators had already had a hand in its design before Blanche moved in. The late Robert Kime, a friend, assisted with the layout, furniture and lighting. Robert sourced the bed in the main bedroom, a copy of a Lutyens design, and the Moroccan lantern that hangs in the lightwell of the staircase. In the sitting room the sofa, ottoman and fabrics are all recognisably his.
Next came Camilla Guinness, who ‘cosied the place up,’ repainting the sitting room, adding bookcases, rehanging pictures and adding a new layer of fabrics, rugs and comfortable places to sit. The keystone of the house of course is Hugo’s rotating gallery of artworks. ‘Things come and go,’ laughs Blanche, indicating the framed flag over the fireplace, plugging the gap left by a painting recently sold. In the living room alone hangs a Grayson Perry, a Lucian Freud, a Peter Blake, and two botanical pictures by Endellion Lycett Green.
Blanche has gently added her own taste to the mix, papering the snug in a green grasscloth by the designer Totty Lowther, and turning the veranda into a conservatory with a table for informal dining. Blanche’s kitchen is warm and unfussy. She isn’t the kind of cook who goes in for gadgets, her only concession being the KitchenAid and her bean-to-cup coffee machine. The most important part of the room is her larder; ‘I like food stored at larder rather than fridge temperature and space to put the juices, jams and preserves that we make from the garden.’ There is also honey produced by the couple’s bees, with leftover wax being turned into handmade candles (‘Unbelievably time consuming to make, but they smell absolutely delicious’). But her most impactful changes have been in the garden, now lined with borders newly replanted by the garden designer Catherine Fitzgerald, with an extensive vegetable garden, greenhouses and an orangery currently under construction. The views from the house over Dartmoor are staggering, the lawn rolling straight on to a panorama of moorland and sky and no other buildings as far as the eye can see.
'I first visited with a friend of mine after an agricultural show that goes on a couple of fields away every August. I met Hugo for the first time and he invited us for tea here afterwards. It wasn’t his good looks or humour I fell for. It was the fact he knew how to decorate a house! I immediately loved this area, how rural it still is. But apart from the farming there's an artisan side. Lots of local people are making delicious food, growing or crafting wonderful things. There is a great sense of creative energy here as well as beauty.'