When you’ve lived in as many houses as Donal Skehan has, you learn to shed some possessions along the way. But the food writer and television presenter is unrepentant about one of his collecting habits. When he last counted his cook books around seven years ago, he had more than 500. And he has accumulated many more since then.
They are currently in his office, as there’s no room for them in the bijou cottage in Sutton that he shares with his wife Sofie Larsson and their two young sons. They bought the house in 2023 and did a small renovation, with a plan to extend at a later stage. Naturally, their first focus was the kitchen.
“It’s small, it’s tight and as someone who works in the kitchen all the time, I needed it to be functional,” he says. “I knew that you could get a lot out of a small space because my mum still has a tiny kitchen – a galley kitchen. All our family Christmas dinners would have been cooked from there.”
They went to the kitchen designer with their list of must-haves, and he says the design team made the most of every corner of the room, with concealed bins, back-lit cupboards and adjustable shelves in the pantry cupboard.
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“Every little detail was really considered and thought through,” he says. “The original countertop that looked out the window had a sink in the middle of it, and I hate sinks in the middle of my workspace so we moved that to the side. We moved the hob to the other side, and now we have this beautiful countertop that lets you look out the window while you’re chopping vegetables.”
In keeping with the country cottage aesthetic, they chose cactus eggshell paint for the cabinetry.
One thing you wouldn’t have found in this cottage when it was built more than a century ago is the hot water tap, but he says it has been a revelation. “My dad drinks tea all the time, and after they spent a weekend in the cottage they went and put one into their house,” he says. “I use it for steaming vegetables. I’ll put a packet of tenderstem broccoli into a bowl, pour hot water over it and then pan fry with a bit of garlic and butter.”
Buying their own home meant they could also finally give their kitchen table its rightful resting place. He bought it at an auction about 20 years ago and, “it’s been in every single house we’ve had to date. Now the boys are doing their homework on it and eating their dinner at it, which is a lovely full-circle moment.”
He admits to being a bit of a hoarder and says he had to stop himself collecting more vintage kitchen utensils. “With a small space you have to strip it right back. Don’t go over the top with kitchen appliances. I’ve whittled it down to a food blender/smoothie maker, a stand mixer and a rice cooker.” And he is a convert to his Ninja air-fryer, after years of resistance. “For the stage of life we’re in, it’s an indispensable tool. I’m like a broken record on this – they are marketed completely incorrectly. They are not air-frying anything. They are a convection oven that sits on your countertop and if you use it as such you can make a small space work really well.”
Air-fryers feature in his latest cookbook, his 13th – Donal’s Real Time Recipes – which promises to get dinner on the table in 30 minutes or less. He is conscious that people aren’t cooking as much as they were when he first wrote a cookbook. “When they do cook, they want really great results. So I was looking at how we would pull together a collection of 90 recipes that people would really use. The worst thing in my world is if it sits on a coffee table and never gets used. I want it to be slapped with grease stains and dog-eared. That for me is the sign of a good cookbook. There’s air fryers in there, there’s frying pans, but there’s no pre-heating of ovens. There’s no marinating. It’s straight through cooking.”
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Speedy recipes are a necessity for him too, thanks to his busy schedule. As well as the new cookbook, television work at home and abroad and promotional commitments, he has set up Wind Shore Goods, which offers a collection of pantry essentials and artisan homewares. It includes Highbank Orchard cider vinegar, extra virgin olive oil from Spain and Atlantic sea salt from west of Dingle. “I’ve started to make my own ceramics as well, so that might feed into it in the long run.”
He might soon have space to display his handiwork. Since they moved into the house, they’ve been talking about doing a big renovation project, and “if all goes well it will hopefully be soon”.
The kitchen cabinets are individual pieces of furniture, so they will be repurposed in the new design. “We spent a lot of time putting in things that we love, so if it’s going to see its next iteration that will make me very happy.”
Having designed many kitchens for his television shows, he says having a clear counter space is a priority. “And don’t put your sink in the island because that means the wash-up is fully on show.”
Topping the must-have list for the new kitchen is a pantry with a sink. “And if it’s a dream kitchen then it’s probably going to have the ability to store a lot of my vintage kitchenalia that is sitting in storage.”
Open shelves are on the list, and he’d like to borrow an idea from Julia Child’s kitchen which he saw in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. “One of the wonderful things she has is this peg wall where you can see all your kitchen utensils. So your sieve goes back to the one place, your knife goes back to the one place. That is the dream, for everything to have a place and be in its place.”
Despite having worked with some of the finest kitchen equipment, he says he’s not fussy about appliances. “The gadgets come and go, but I think the best food that you cook is brought back to the simple things like a Le Creuset pot, a knife and a chopping board,” he says.
One of his favourite things is a sky-blue Le Creuset pot that’s more than 20 years old. “It has all the scrapes, scratches and probably residues of some of the finest stews and soups and all sorts of things. And I have a fabulous Fingal Ferguson knife which takes pride of place in my kitchen. I think there are waiting lists upon waiting lists to get his knives.”
He also treasures a set of Fermoyle Pottery dinner plates made by husband-and-wife ceramicists Stephen O’Connell and Alexis Bowman in Ballinskelligs. “Having something handmade is something lovely. And Rosemarie Durr’s beautiful cups are a regular feature in our house.”
His grandparents were sculptors who specialised in religious work and his kitchen table is surrounded with beautiful old pieces that they left behind.
“For me, that’s kind of what makes our house feel like a home. I love the things that have a story attached to them. My mum has a marble rolling pin that I’m gagging to get when she’s ready to hand it over to me.”
After living in so many different houses, he says he and Sofie feel very lucky to have their own home at last. Being close to his family home in Howth is the icing on the cake. “The kids are absolutely thriving back home close to Granny and Grandad, and having all the fun that Ireland has to offer,” he says. “A new chapter is evolving and it’s lovely.”
* Donal’s Real Time Recipes by Donal Skehan, published by Yellow Kite, is out now. Donal’s Real Time Recipes airs on Wednesdays at 8.30pm on RTÉ One
