You can learn a lot about a person by snooping inside their kitchen cupboards. Japanese knives and a well-labelled spice rack scream confident home cook. Empty drawers and left-over takeaway cutlery? Less so. In her new book, Wild Kitchen: Nature-Loving Chefs at Home, Claire Bingham embarks on the ultimate nose around some of our favourite chefs’ kitchens, from Skye Gyngell, Anna Barnett, Seppe Nobels and Jasmine Hemsley, to discover how cooking at home can be an act of connecting with nature and living sustainably.

Across five chapters, Bingham casts her net wide, from the west of Ireland to Byron Bay in Australia, and via London, Paris and Tuscany, to meet 20 chefs who not only cook good, healthy food, but appreciate good design at home. Each chef provides personal tips on everything from cooking outdoors (consider a permanent prep-station in the garden, for starters) to how to create a beautiful, well-functioning kitchen (invest in the hardware, says Barnett). 

Whether cooking in the countryside, growing food where they live, or making the most of fresh ingredients in the city, those profiled show how using seasonal ingredients is a fulfilling, nourishing way of preparing food and living in harmony with the natural world.

Here, we’re sharing a recipe from the book by Paris-based food critic and author Patricia Wells, whose Left Bank apartment’s uplifting yellow colour scheme brilliantly matches the primary ingredient of this citrusy summer sorbet. 

Lemon, verbena sorbet by Patricia Wells in Paris

Serves 12
100g unrefined cane sugar
500ml whole milk
250ml double or heavy cream
2 tbsp inverted sugar syrup or light corn syrup
25g fresh or dried lemon verbena leaves (or about 100 leaves)

To make the inverted sugar syrup, combine 450g granulated sugar with two tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice and 250ml water in a pan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for approximately eight to 10 minutes. Allow to cool.

In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, milk, cream, inverted sugar syrup and lemon verbena leaves. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Heat over a moderate heat, stirring from time to time, until tiny bubbles form around the edges of the pan. 

Remove from the heat and let the mixture steep, covered, at room temperature, for at least an hour or overnight. Keep covered and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Strain the mixture, discarding the verbena leaves. Transfer it to an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Wild Kitchen (Thames & Hudson) by Claire Bingham