Notes on a woodburning stove
They look idyllic, they smell amazing, they are eco friendly if you use your own wood and they are mutli- functional. You can heat your home, cook on it and boil water. If you put bay leaves in the water, you can perfume your kitchen with astringent spicyness and afterwards use the water as an eco friendly floor cleaner.
There is nothing cuter than a line of childrens socks drying on its rail after they have come in from a day in the snow, sparkle eyed and glowing, but damp footed and with freezing fingertips. The stove makes the kitchen into a cosy welcoming space almost instantly., chairs and stools pulled up close to it and little feet pressed against its warm sides.
In a lot of the Italian based recipes on this blog, I talk about cooking on my wood burning stove, with which I had a passionate love affair. Though talking about it with a degree of practicality and experience, I must confess to thinking about it more as one might an unsuitable lover. Its so attractive and generates such warmth that we forgive the fact that its unreliable, sometimes dirty and occasionally dangerous.
For me, nothing will bet the cheeriness of a newly set fire, crackling its way through the pine cones you gathered for kindling in the autumn. Hearing my children tell me they loved coming in from the cold to the kitchen ‘more than anything’, firmly placed my wbs at the centre of my heart and the kitchen was the heart of our home. But lets remind ourself of its foibles….
Very good at slow roasts, sometimes good at tarts and pies, you can throw in pasta al forno and roast potatoes too. But lets not discuss cakes, pastries or bread. Maybe it was just ours, but breads, cakes and pastries would only rise on one side and forever be signifcantly darker on that side. My arms bare many scars, still, of catching my wrists on the doors whilst trying to ram in a log that was just a tiny bit too big. Soot was a significant factor in our lives. When we ventured into a more elegant way of life by visiting nearby Mondovi or Alba, chic and beautiful little destinations, we always smelt faintly of woodsmoke, and once to my horror, I realised my shirt cuffs were grimy with ash.
Still, I wouldn’t have changed it. Like the unsuitable lover, i kept stoking the fire and it was the first thing I turned to everytime we returned to Costabella after a long absence.
