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."

Helou pours a glass of Chateau Musar from Lebanon, where she was born, and places it down on a pop-arty coaster of Omar Sharif. All her utensils, gadgets, baking trays, bowl of vibrant sumac et al are meticulously arranged. "I've allowed my desk over there to get messy but I'm terribly anal in the kitchen. I do have a problem with people who don't clear up as they cook."

There is slick precision here and much good taste and displays of dark humour – cocktail sticks fashioned like carpenter's nails; a figure of a Parisian artist's model, smoking with breasts exposed; and her magnetic "American Psycho" knife rack. A sharp Turkish meat cleaver is displayed close to the ebony dining table.

"I've lived here for over 13 years. But I've now decided to get a smaller London flat while building my dream house, on a plot I've bought in Sicily with a sea view and hopefully designed by [my friend] Zaha Hadid."