How Do You Brew? with Chef & Author Annie Smithers

Market Lane Coffee: How do you start your morning?  
 

Annie Smithers: Well, I shouldn't really tell you, but I always have tea in bed. It’s a ritual we have that I think is very special. On a day off, the routine is a little bit of a sleep-in, which means not getting out of bed until about eight o'clock. And then I'll mosey around with all the animals, and I'll kick the coffee machine into life and make myself a little oat latte.

Do you enjoy the ritual of making coffee?

I love it. Making a coffee is a bit like a forbidden thing from my youth. It always reminds me of the process of rolling a cigarette. It's a hands thing – it's as much about the process as the end result. It's something to do with your hands that you just take a minute and you take the time to do it nicely. And in this very busy world, just having that moment with your morning coffee, where you take the time to do it slowly and precisely, is very special. 
 

What's your favourite spot in the world or in your home to enjoy a delicious coffee?

It depends entirely on the season. In winter, it's in the lounge room because the fire's going in there and it's about the only warm room in the house. And often the animals are in there, too. In summer, it's probably out the back looking at the domestic garden. 

Susan: You can tell where she's been because that's where the cup will be left in the garden. I've often thought I should have a special Instagram account just for Annie's cups. She leaves them in these random places, everywhere. It could be upside down on a fence post. It could be with the chooks, with the chook food. 

Annie: It could be when I went to drive somewhere, I left it on a plant by the car. It could be in the shed. It could be in the glasshouse. The cups tend to be a signifier of where I've been and what I've done that morning. When it's warmer, coffee tends to travel.

Can you describe your perfect day off?

My perfect day off is that Susan gets up and makes the tea and I get tea brought to me in bed. And there's at least two cats on the bed. I get to just sort of sit in a warm toasty bed for a couple of hours after I've woken up. And then I get up to make coffee.

It's that perfect cup of coffee, that is. It just kickstarts the day. And if it's a day that there aren’t any pressing work commitments on, I take it out to enjoy the world that we build here. I might come and see the goats or I might come and see the sheep.  I might go out to the garden or sit by the pond. There's all sorts of things to do with coffee on a day off. I take it on tour.

What do you love most about your work?

I just love cooking. As someone who's struggled with their mental health, I learned a long time ago that I leave that at the door and I embrace the fact that my kitchen is an incredibly safe place for me to be. So, it's this thing that I just get in and I fall into the rhythm of it. And everything is pacified. The torments of life are pacified because I love what I do.

What inspires you or what feeds your creativity?

Annie: Oh, that would have to be my beautiful wife.  She refused to be part of this photo shoot. I asked her, she said no.

Susan: I don't drink coffee!

Annie: Haha that’s true. Okay, so what else inspires me? I think actually the vegetables that we grow inspire me enormously. The first of July is the beginning of the sowing year, and we start ordering seeds and getting out seeds we've saved, and plotting and planning the year ahead. And so, we’ll often spend six months from the time we start considering a plant to the time that we pull it out of the ground. 

It's a very beautiful connection to the food process. In the same way that you guys at Market Lane are incredibly connected to your coffee growers and you visit them and you do all of that stuff because you know the path that your beans have taken, I know the path that all of my vegetables have taken. And because we’re such a microbusiness, we know it down to all of the weather patterns that they've experienced. So, you have a sense of wonder and also a sense of fragility. The food system is an incredibly fragile thing. And it can be thrown off track so easily, particularly these days, so to actually grow something lovingly from seed to fruition is one of the most inspiring things in the world.

This is the other thing that inspires me: I don't want to blow my customers hair back – that's not who I am – I just want them, while they're in my hands for three or four hours, to feel loved and nurtured. Because everything that we put into their bodies we know is good. And I think that's an inspiration to keep going with. Because the world's not a kind place and if you can just find love and nurture for four hours, it's something, isn't it? 

When did you start cooking? 

I started my apprenticeship when I was 17 years old, so this is my 40th year at the stove. We had a family joke that my sister’s got much longer legs than I do – I've got really stumpy little legs – and I think somehow I was actually just built for a kitchen, to stand in a kitchen for relentless hours. Before anything else, who I am is a cook. And cooking's been my whole adult life.

You write about this in your wonderful new book. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Yes, Kitchen Sentimental. ‘A journey to self-discovery, one recipe at a time.’ The working title for the book was actually ‘A Love Letter to My Kitchens’ because this is a book about how, despite some of the torments that came along the way, my love for food and cooking grows every day. There are a lot of beautiful things in what I do. And there are some beautiful parts that are about not only my love of cooking and making people feel nurtured, but about finding my own way.

Someone recently asked me, ‘If you were to write a letter to your 17 year-old self, what would you say?’ I thought about it and I realised, I don’t think I’d write the letter. The beauty is that I’ve become who I’ve become by taking every step along the way and working it all out as I went along, which is all we really get. If I’d known the answers at the beginning, I wouldn’t have become the person I am. So, the book is about that, too. All the steps I’ve taken, which I’ve retraced in the book, have ended up creating the person that I am. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.