The recipe for a happy home
Tana Ramsay talks to Jo Cantello about Real Family Food, battling for kitchen space with Gordon and why she loves living in Wandsworth
Above: Tana Ramsay, photographed by Deirdre Rooney
Arriving at the grand old gated house nestled in the leafy heart of Wandsworth Common, I can’t help but feel a bit nervous. Gordon Ramsay’s no-nonsense reputation precedes him and I imagine wife Tana would need to be made of similarly strong stuff. Particularly now she’s forging a culinary career of her own.
Thankfully, Tana, 32, greets me warmly as we sit down at the breakfast bar of her pristine kitchen. It’s a calm space, with light streaming in through large windows overlooking a back garden boasting enormous football nets. Looking tanned and relaxed in casual clothes, she stresses the make-up she’s wearing is due to an earlier appearance on This Morning. “It is so nice to have your make-up done for you,” she laughs, patting her cheeks and clearly still enjoying the novelty of it all.
It’s been a busy year for the former Montessori teacher and mother of Megan, nine, seven-year-old twins Holly and Jack, and Tilly, aged five. Alongside her two recipe books, she’s also enjoying a presenting role on UKTV Food’s Market Kitchen. As the wife of a multi-Michelin-starred chef, she does seem incredibly grounded about the experience of stepping into the spotlight. “It’s been a massive, massive learning curve and I’ve still a long way to go, but it’s great experience. Cooking on television is terrifying,” she admits. “But I’m really enjoying it.”
Whilst Gordon gets hot under the collar when faced with anything less than gastronomic perfection, Tana seems far more relaxed about it. “Of course you have disasters sometimes, but that’s how you learn, by trial and error. At the end of the day, I’m not trained as a cook. I’m a domestic cook. I cook for my children.”
As with her first book Tana Ramsay’s Family Kitchen, in Tana Ramsay’s Real Family Food there’s an emphasis on simple, home cooking with beautifully illustrated recipes that can be easily adapted to both children and adult tastes. “To me the biggest compliment is when mums come up to me at school and say I made one of your recipes last night. The kids loved it, then I just did a few twists to it and made dinner for my husband.”
“With home cooking, you’re wanting to utilise what’s in your fridge. You can buy everything locally, so you’re not spending the whole day hunting down ingredients,” she says. To back this up, most of her own food shopping is also done close to home. “I tend to shop in the Waitrose at Wandsworth and I go to the market on Northcote Road. Randalls Butchers on Wandsworth Bridge Road is fantastic, as is Moxon’s Fishmongers on Clapham Common. As much as possible, I’d rather go to the independent shops.”
The family have lived in south west London for several years, initially in Battersea, but with four children soon outgrew the property. Tana has a strong affection for their current Wandsworth home, although she needed to use her imagination at first. “When we found it, it had been turned into four flats and had no staircase. It had a caravan stuck on the back as a kind of extension and it stank of damp,” she laughs. Instructing an architect to take care of the structural elements, the couple preferred to experiment with the interior design themselves. “We didn’t want anything really designery. We just wanted a real home, where the kids could go in any area and you wouldn’t be going ‘don’t touch that’.”
The infamous state-of-the-art kitchen is clearly the focal point of the house. As we chat, I can’t help but eye up the shiny, freestanding Rorgue cooker – all £67,000 of it. Doing a few calculations in my head, I estimate it’s about the size of my flat’s pokey galley kitchen. In the acknowledgements section of her latest book, Tana thanks Gordon for letting her use it. This, she says, is a long-standing joke between the two of them. “Everyone makes a big thing about the two kitchens, but this is the family kitchen,” she smiles. “The other’s just a small one in the basement and it’s for when Gordon’s filming up here. I can’t expect the kids to wait for supper until 8 o’clock at night, so it literally is an overflow kitchen.” Regardless of who gets priority, when it comes to cooking duties around the home, Tana is the real head chef. “I like to have dinner prepared, so Gordon comes back to a nice home with food on the table,” she says. “He might lend a hand. If I’m doing the salad, he might fry the steaks or something, but it’s very simple food at home.” When I ask if Gordon likes to offer her advice when it comes to her recipe books, her response is friendly, but firm. “I want to keep it as domestic as possible, so I don’t really ask. I tend to go to my mum for inspiration and help.”
Although she grew up on a farm in Kent, it was only once Tana became a mother herself that she grew to appreciate her mother Greta’s talents. “It was her passion to cook for all four of us every day and that’s what I want to recreate for my children,” she says. The shared experience of family meal times is a strong theme throughout Tana’s books and she was eager for her family and friends to be involved in the recipe testing. “That’s what keeps it real,” she says emphatically. “The moment you start asking a home economist to do this and that, it loses its intimate touch.”
Now that her career is taking off, Tana’s determined to protect her family time, whether it’s cycling around Richmond Park or eating out locally. “After Jack’s football training we sometimes walk over to Dexter’s on Bellevue Road with the bikes. Annabel Karmel does their kids menu, which is really nice food. Gourmet Burger on Northcote Road is very good as well.” But when it comes to a quiet dinner for two, there’s one clear favourite. “Chez Bruce is so romantic. I love going there for a nice dinner, just the two of us, or taking a couple of friends,” she says. It’s at home, however, where Tana feels most relaxed. “Having friends round for lunch and just sitting in the garden, watching the kids play and eating really nice food is my idea of heaven.” Uniquely, the family also have access to a ‘secret garden’ at the end of their own property, which is five acres of land they share privately with the surrounding neighbours. “It’s absolutely amazing,’ she enthuses. “Real rough and tumble fun… trees to climb and cycle tracks. Another reason why I wouldn’t move from Wandsworth!”
Having found her perfect home, Tana’s relaxed about her future plans. “Market Kitchen is happening through until March. I’m just really enjoying that, slowly working on a third book, but also giving the kids a bit more time. It’s a real juggling act,” she smiles, “but it’s exciting.”
Tana Ramsay’s Real Family Food is published by Harper Collins, priced £20