Breakfast at K.L. airport: Soft boiled eggs, Kaya toast and Tee tarik

Sky chefs loading food onto Malaysian airlines plane

The journey began with a Eurostar train from Paris to London followed by a 12 hour flight from Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur where I had to strip off all my winter layers (tights, jumpers, jacket, scarf, gloves, woolly socks…) as Malaysian heat is like being in an enormous Sauna. Enough time in Kuala Lumpur to enjoy some Won Ton Mee, one of my favourite dishes. Quick breakfast of soft boiled eggs, Kaya (coconut jam) toast and teh tarik before boarding another 8 hour flight to Sydney. Food on the flights consisted of a curry option for dinner, lunch and breakfast. That’s Malaysian airlines for you.

8 hours later touchdown in Sydney where it was pleasantly hot but thankfully without the stickiness. It was straight in a cab to Edible Immigration Tales Headquarters. No time for jetlag as there was plenty to discuss, prepare and organise. My fellow foodie partner in crime, Frankie and I had been working on this project since November when I had booked my flight. Menu ideas, press and marketing campaign, bookings and other bits ‘n bops had been  done via emails, skype calls, photos and waving things at our tiny web cams. So it was good to be able to sit down and discuss things face to face

The following 5 days were a mad rush of running around, cooking, shopping, organising, sticking…. basically turning an apartment into a restaurant. I got stuck into writing all the menus, tea labels and edible immigration facts by hand with a pot of ink and quill which took me a good half a day to do. Needless to say by the end of it I had hand cramps and my fingers were stained black from the ink.  I did manage to get out and visit Sam the butcher, the local organic shop and the supermarket.

Wrapping up the damper bread - Ask first © 2010 R khooks. Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.

Last minute testing/cooking would kick off once Frankie had come back from her day job (still don’t know how she managed to do both). We then roped in the whole family with Frankie’s parents picking up various groceries, chairs and running other errands. Frankie’s sister helping out on the night and Frankie’s boyfriend putting up with having a restaurant in his home three nights running. BIG thank you!

On the day of the first event it was an early start as Frankie and I were pretty excited about checking out the Sydney Morning Herald to see what they had written about us. We were relieved to see that it wasn’t an exposé about the “illegal” underground dining scene

Things started to come together when I saw the table set up. We had collected plenty of jars, tins and bottles for the table setting. Naturally they were all scrubbed meticulously before hand. I nipped to the beach to pick up some sand and shells to make little glass candle lanterns.

Handwritten menu with a list of things to do - Photo: Howard Trang eatshowandtell.com

My attempt of sketching out the dishes - Photo: Howard Trang eatshowandtell.com

A wall with sketches of all dishes/courses, guestlist and rundown for the night were hungup in the kitchen. Followed by more cooking. Cutlery and glasses polished. Nice soap and candles in the bathroom. Quick tidy in the kitchen. Then a last minute shower and some warpaint (make up). A last run through of the menu. The aprons were tied on, candles lit and Australian music mix put on and a BIG deep breath before we opened the door to the first guests…to be continued

Tags: behind the scenes, cultural eating, food design, pop up, sydney happenings, trends, underground dining

I finally bit the bullet and decided to try and photograph a soufflé. Already not an easy thing to make, let alone simple to photograph. Basically it involves setting everything up perfectly ( I did a few shots before hand with a dummy soufflé), making more than one example and shooting SUPER quick.

Making a soufflé and seeing it deflate feels pretty similar to doing an event. You spend ages doing the preparation but once it comes out of the oven, the result is a bit short lived. Still worth it. The cloud like texture with the rich chocolate taste is quite divine.

A few tips:

•    Make sure to butter and dust with sugar or cocoa your ramekins well. Don’t forget to clean the edges. Badly buttered and cleaned ramekins may result in the mixture sticking and not being able to rise properly.
•    Don’t forget to preheat your oven to the right temperature. Too hot and the soufflés will crack at the top, burn on the outside and be raw inside. Too cold the soufflés won’t rise properly.
•    Instead of using sugar to dust the ramekins you can also try cocoa powder, cocoa mixed with ground cinammon or other spices. Or mix the sugar with the cocoa powder to keep that crunch.

Chocolate & banana soufflé

5                     egg whites
1.5oz/40g                sugar
2                     pinches of salt
—-
2                          egg yolks
2 tbsp                 sugar
2 ripe bananas

—
3.5oz/100g                chocolate
1.5oz/50g                butter
—
Soft butter and sugar to dust your ramekins.

8 ramekins

Preheat your oven to 350°F/175°c. Butter the ramekins with a pastry brush and dust with sugar (use granulated or raw cane sugar). Make sure to tap all excess sugar off. Clean the edges of the ramekin.
Place the chocolate, butter and water in a metal or glass bowl. Place a pot of water on a low heat and put the bowl with chocolate on top of the pot. The bowl should not be in contact with the water.
In blender whizz together the egg yolks, bananas and 2 tbsp of sugar until you have a smooth mixture. In another bowl whisk the egg whites with the sugar and salt until you have medium stiff peaks or can make a wobbly bird beak with the eggwhites.
Once the chocolate mixture is melted. Beat in the egg yolks. Loosen up the mixture by adding some of the beaten eggwhites. Mix together. Using a spatula fold in the chocolate mixture into the eggwhites. Work quickly. Pour the mixture into the ramekins and bake for 15-20 minutes. Serve immediately.

Tags: soufflé, technique, the school of life

Off with the chef whites, on with the fake eye lashes, kitten heels and my 1950s outfit. Chef Khoo no longer it was Miss Khoo who took over the Chacha in Paris for the tastiest event in town.

Monday, the 13th July 2009 I created a 3 course dinner and a Kennedy cocktail to tantalize the Parisian tastebuds. Topped off with a cupcake pimping session and some swinging sixties & fifties sounds spun by DJ Sylvania.

If you are on a picture and you want it to be removed, please send me an email.

Photography: Juan Diosdado.

Tags: 1950s, chacha, cupcake, Kennedy

On Wednesday 24th June 2009 I took over the Loft for another mouth-watering mash up. For the 5 course dinner I concocted a menu inspired by all things delicious in the garden.

T. Baas created a luscious table with his green garden illustrations and Jay-P accompanied the dinner with some toothsome tunes.

If you are on a picture and you want it to be removed, please send me an email.

Pictures are taken by Kang Leong from Londoneater.com.

Tags: jay-p, the Loft, thomas baas, underground

Where have I disappeared to? Well this kept me busy, then was the opening of this (where I’m now putting my culinary expertise to good use), I now also teach French pâtisserie classes regularly here too, plus testing loads of bagel and doughnut (spot the dougnuts in the photos I’ve been testing them out on people at every opportunity possible) recipes for a book and then the weather was briefly very summery in Paris so I fled from my computer to the park and soaked up some sunshine. Anyway I thought I’ld show some life signs (if you want to be kept up to date to the events I do join my facebook page or follow me on twitter).

One of the benefits of being a cook or as I class myself a Food creative is that you get invited to all the best parties. Plus as a girl you always get a load of marriage proposals (women+culinary skills = the magic formula for offers from the boys and the girls too!).  But as they say TANSTAAFL. Want your name to be on the guestlist? As a foodie that usually means delivering some delicious goods. So Tuesday night I began prepping some mini desserts  for 70 people that then carried on until 6pm the following day. Luckily I had the help of a lovely assistant in the afternoon. Don’t think I would have managed it all otherwise.  On the menu was:

Poached rhubarb with a rosemary panna cotta and mini candied strips of rhubarb

Mini cinammon spiced doughnuts

über chocolate cupcakies

and finally

Rose ricotta clouds with strawberries

One of my friends mentioned that the “mousse”  was like eating a cloud. I rather liked the description and have stuck with the name ever since.

When I start working on a menu I try to see whether there’s any possibility of making something which has a connection to the event. Last night so happened to be an underground take away concert (click on the link for info about the concept) by Beirut. I kind of took a quite literal sense with their name ‘Beirut’. Beirut being the capital of Lebanon. I started researching into Lebanese food. They use a lot of rosewater in their dishes, so I thought it would be great to incorporate it somehow into a dessert. French strawberries are in season so what a perfect combo. Rosewater and strawberries. I just needed something extra. I first thought of the classic whipped cream with a hint of rosewater but then ricotta came to mind. It would add that slightly “acidic/mild cream cheese” flavour giving the “cloud” just a little more depth in flavour. And that folks, is how I came up with the dessert.

All that hard work was worth the effort as I got to enjoy the once in a life time experience of seeing a band in such an intimate and unique venue.

Rose ricotta clouds with strawberries
serves 6

250g ricotta
200ml whipping cream
100g sugar
100ml rosewater

350g strawberries, chopped
20g sugar or to taste

Mix the strawberries with the sugar. Whip the cream and sugar to a stiff peak. Beat the ricotta with the rosewater and fold into the cream. Divide the strawberries into the serving glasses and spoon on the mousse. Chill for at least one hour before serving.

Über chocolate cupcakies

People kept on saying how much they loved the cupcakes at the party and I kept on saying they’re not cupcakes but brownies. By the end of the party I had given up on trying to “educate” the masses. So here are my brownie/cupcake hybrid.

I use my favourite brownie recipe minus the dlc cheesecake and then just spread a dark chocolate ganache on.

250g dark chocolate
250ml double cream

Chop up the chocolate finely. Bring the cream to a boil and then pour half over the chocolate. Let the mixture sit for one minute before stirring. Stir until well mixed together. Pour the rest of the cream over and repeat the same procedure. Leave to cool for 30minutes before icing the cakes. Sprinkles optional.

Tags: beirut, blogotheque, clouds, concert emporter, lebanese, take away concert