Inside design: Curtis Stone

S@H: For Take Home Chef, you traded in your industrial restaurant kitchen surroundings for domestic digs. Was it a difficult transition?

CS: The major difference is that in a professional kitchen, I can be really messy! I’ll spill something, or drop it on the floor, and it’s no big deal because someone’s going to pass by with a mop and broom in the next couple of minutes. You can be rougher in professional kitchens -- you’ve got stainless steel on

all the walls instead of plaster, so you can throw things around a bit more. I also wasn’t prepared for the distractions -- the pressures of putting on a dinner with kids and pets running about!

S@H: You’ve lived and cooked all around the world – the Savoy in Australia, Michelin-star restaurants in London, and the U.S., where you now live in L.A. Who has the best kitchens?

CS: It’s hard to beat North Americans’ kitchens, because you spend so much more money on your homes than people do in the rest of the world. However, I’ve seen amazing kitchens that tend to be more basic by our standards, but are just as impressive in other ways. In Thailand, a family may only have one wok to cook with, but they have a pretty extensive list of ingredients. In Brazil, a modest kitchen will be outfitted with big skewers for churrasco-style cooking over coals, and six different salt rubs for specific types of meat. These kitchens aren’t packed with a lot of stuff, but what they do have is quite specialized.