Anissa Helou moved into her Shoreditch apartment, with large loft room, at the close of the 20th century, "having decided to change my life". She'd worked in art (as Sotheby's representative in the Middle East and adviser to Kuwaiti royalty) and had amassed a large collection of kitchenware. "Every space in my terraced house in Clapham had 18th- and 19th-century cutlery boxes, bowls, trenchers, spice boxes, mortars, tea caddies, gourds." But Helou sold the bulk of the collection, and the house, to reinvent herself as "a food writer, living, cooking and writing in my dream loft".
This ex-foundry's mighty room provided enough open space for Helou's office corner, large modern book units (with 10-step ladder) housing her cookbook collection, a dining area for 10, and a sizeable minimalist Swiss kitchen. A five-metre wide frosted glass wall-cupboard barely manages to hold Helou's jars of ingredients acquired across the Middle East, north Africa and beyond: " this is green wheat from my mum in Beirut, za'atar from Syria, oregano from Pantelleria, grades of Aleppo pepper from Turkey, tins of beautiful saffron bunches."
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