The last couple of months I’ve been working on the dessert menu for a restaurant, La Coccinella within the VW complex Autostadt in Germany. The concept of the restaurant is in house made fresh pasta with delicious cakes baked fresh every day. It’s been a change from the Christmas pâtisserie concept I’ve worked on for the last four years (although that’s coming up very soon).
Homemade special brew - Ask first © 2010 R Khooks. Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.
Once upon a time there were two Brit girls who met in Paris over muffin making at an adorable cookbook store. They soon found out that they had many things in common: a pâtisserie diplome from Le Cordon Bleu, the love for food and lots of fun.
They had many adventures in Paris and beyond. But the day came when Frankie departed to a far away land called Australia. Rachel was very sad that her fun loving foodie partner in crime was leaving but was determined that no matter how many thousands of miles away Frankie was, she would make sure they would continue to have more edible adventures.
So Frankie left for the land of Oz in September. On a cold wet Autumn night in Paris Rachel discovered her golden ticket (in form of a special Malaysian Airline deal) away from the greyness of Paris. Very excited about going to the land of kangaroos and barbecues she sent Frankie an electronic mail and that’s how they both decided to tell an edible immigration tale in Sydney.
Many Australian history and culinary books, skype calls, emails and photos later Rachel arrived in Sydney. And this is the tale they told:
Edible immigration menu
1. Shaken and shipped to shore
Hibiscus and ginger Bundaberg rum cocktail.
2. First encounter with native grub
Goat’s curd and macadamia nut grubs on dehydrated date leaves.
3. A fling with fish before flame
Kingfish tartare served with finger limes.
4. Desperately seeking sea cucumber, serving sotong satay instead
Coconut and lemongrass rice and spicy Asian peanut caramel cake with baby octopus satay and cucumber.
5. Cuppa tea with dundee
Homemade special brew served with marinated crocodile sticks.
6. Bushbride’s ration pudding with Granny Smith’s pickle
Duck pudding with granny smith puree and pickles accompanied with damper bread.
7. Easy as peasy pie
Downunder puff pastry base with slow cooked vegemite lamb, pea purée, mushroom caramel and warrigal greens.
8. Fosters-free lager and lemon sorbet
9. The great dessert debate
Pavlova with fresh cream, strawberry jelly , lemon curd and passionfruit.
10. Freshly spun edible wool
Coffee candy floss.
Each of the dishes were based on facts that they had discovered while doing research. Here are some:
1. Rum was the number one drink with the 1st settlers and convicts. It was even used as a currency.
2. Similar in taste to almonds, the witchetty grub was originally eaten either raw or cooked in hot ashes by aboriginies.
3. Despite being one of the richest fishing grounds in the world, meat was still favoured by the first European settlers due to it’s association with the high life back home.
4. As early as the 16th century indigenous North Western Australians traded sea cucumber with Chinese traders making it Australia’s first export item.
5. The first settlers clung to their British roots becoming the world’s heaviest tea drinkers.
6.1. One of the world’s most successful apple varieties was thanks to Granny Smith who arrived in New South Wales in 1838. She tipped some rotten crab apples into her orchard and from there the variety we know today blossomed.
6.2. Not until the Second World War or perhaps a little earlier was the pie mentioned as a national dish. Vegemite, another national favourite, was first advertised as nourishing for the whole family. Except for one irony, the spread that epitomised `family goodness`was made from brewery waste.
7. In 1864 the cookery book “Australian Aristologist” quotes a medical opinion on the “Danger of the meat pie”. Not leaving a hole in the crust traps the poisonous gases.
8. It was Baron Liebig in 1842 who discovered that Bavarian brewed beers did not turn sour on contact with air like other Australian beers. The German name was “Lager -bier” (the German word lager means to store) hence the name of Australia’s most popular alcoholic drink.
9. The pavlova is said to have been invented in Perth’s Esplanade Hotel in 1935 after the famous Russian ballet dancer. However the New Zealanders claim that a chef in a hotel in Wellington, created the dish when Pavlova visited there in 1926 on her world tour
10. With 1 million sheep recorded in 1830 (jumped from 100,000 in 1820) the wool industry was Australia’s biggest export, worth roughly 2 million dollars.
Special thank you to Howard Trang from eatshowandtell for the photos.
Check out a great write up on SBS.com and here.
Tags: downunder, eatshowandtell.com, Edible Immigration tales, Francesca Unsworth, Howard Trang, pop up dinners, Sydney, trend, underground dining
There were no sausages on this menu which explored the East/West divide in Germany. Fellow foodie Caroline Hobkinson and I got cooking in her amazing Berlin kitchen. Dishing up two different menus (one East, one West). Each representing their relevant culinary history. Guests on arrival were assigned their sides for the nights. They bartered, they smuggled and some sneekily stole from the opposite side to get a taster of the forbidden food.
Tags: berlin, food design, the wall, underground
500 biscuits to make for The School of life Sunday sermon on Good Design held by Alice Rawsthorn, Design critic for the International Herald Tribune . They weren’t just any old biscuits which had everyone at the Conway Hall, London on the 28th June 2009 munching.
Specially designed “digestives” or better “designtives” were mixed, kneaded, rolled out and baked by hand. Yes, all 500 of them.
Digestive biscuits were invented in 1892 by McVities and in the UK we now consume 52 chocolate digestives per second. They originally claimed to “aide” digestion but this has been proven untrue. In the States it’s still illegal to sell the biscuits under the name. Rachel Khoo has improved on the design of the digestive but giving it added “digestion” properties.
Read more here on how they were ‘designed’ and the recipe.
If you are on a picture and you want it to be removed, please send me an email.
Photos from event taken by Bronia Stewart.
My whole flat has become a test kitchen. I practically live in the kitchen with cake tins, ingredients, pots and pans spilling over into the living area (the only cooking free area is the bathroom). I’m gearing up for two big events in London next week . One of them being my Mash up dinner. The other an event for the School of life Sunday sermon on Good Design held by Alice Rawsthorn, Design critic for the International Herald Tribune. I’ve been busy making or better said ‘designing’ THE biscuit. It took a lot of testing to get to the final product, at least a dozen tries.
The brief was to make a biscuit or cake that was delicious, traditional but not flamboyant. My initial research led me to Britain’s most popular biscuit, the chocolate digestive. 52 are consumed per second in Uk. That’s a lot of biscuits!
When McVitie’s first made the digestive in 1892, they claimed it aided your digestion, hence the name. This has since been scientifically proven to be untrue and that is when a light bulb lit up in my head.
Good design is not only about aethetics but function and now a days it’s great if it’s eco-friendly aswell. So why not make a digestive which actually incorporates ingredients that stimulate your digestion?
I first started looking into spices: aniseed, fennel and cumin, using them in a classic digestive recipe. But the taste was just too different. I then stumbled on linseed and oats which seemed perfect as they added a great nutty taste. However when I added them whole the biscuit was way too rustic. The ground version worked much better, mix in a little malt barley syrup for some malty taste and a couple of chunks of chocolate. And hey presto, I had a chocolate digestive with ‘digestive aiding’ ingredients.
After carefully balancing and mixing together the ingredients to create a delicious (of course it has to taste good, too!) biscuit. I had to work on the shape and name. Keeping it to the classic round shape I just added a little slit, so you can clip it onto your cup of tea. I tried to be as eco-friendly as possible using organic, local/national or fairtrade produced ingredients where possible. And being a true Brit the biscuit stands up to multiple tea dunking ! And that folks is how the Designtive was born.
If you fancy tasting them for yourself, come to the Good design sermon next Sunday the 28th. Hope to see you there!
Designtives
© 2009 Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.
Makes 25
170g wholemeal flour (+ handful extra)
50g ground linseed
50g ground oats
85g golden caster sugar
50g barley malt syrup
115g salted butter, cubed
13 squares of chocolate, cute in half
1 egg
Mix together the flour, linseed, oats and sugar followed by the cubed butter. Create a crumbly/sandy mixture by rubbing the ingredients with your fingers and thumb. Once achieved, add the rest of the ingredients, mix together and form a ball. Flatten, put into a plastic freezer bag and refridgerate for at least 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 180°c. Dust your work surface with a little flour and roll out the dough to about 5mm thickness. Cut out the biscuits, press half a square of chocolate into the biscuit and place onto a tray with parchment paper. Reform, roll out the leftover dough and cut out more biscuits until you have used the dough up. Refridgerate the biscuits for 30mins before baking them at 180°c for 15-20mins or until golden around the edges and bottom.
Tags: Alice Rawsthorn, food design, International Herald Tribune, the school of life
