After ‘khooking’ up a storm for the past several years in Paris I went back to my London roots with a mouth-watering “mash up” meal on

The unique dinner showcased a range of tasty ideas using food, music and the arts as forms of expression. For this scrumptious supper, I combined far Eastern flavours from PikPikZoo, Hong Kong based illustrators with a hint of more local flavour in the form of a musical mash up by Joseph Seresin.

Of course, I added my own creative touch to the 6-course dinner (paired with wine). Click here for menu.

The festive feast took place at the private dinner club The Loft.

The Loft is a private supper club and personal test kitchen of Nuno Mendes, one of London’s innovative & revolutionary chefs (El Bulli trained & previous head chef of Bacchus, London). He will be opening his next restaurant, Viajante at the Bethnal Green Town Hall in 2010.

Joseph Seresin runs by day a bespoke creative studio whose ethos is to provide a tailored solution to your project with a range of creative services encompassing anything from brand identity through to one-off illustrated pieces. At night however he is known to put his creative talents to spinning tasty tunes in hip places from London to Ibiza.

PikPik Zoo are Hong Kong based design duo Zoe Lydia and Miss Kate. Touring the world (New York, London, Paris, Stockholm & Hong Kong) with their PikPik Panda character they’ve been spreading their philosophy of we care, we share.

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.

Tags: food design, Joseph Seresin, mash up, PikPikZoo, secret, the Loft, underground

Recently my place has been turned into a test kitchen for all things mooncake related in preparation for my class this Wednesday. I had made them a while ago but I’m now trying to perfect my snowskin recipe, mooncake technique and find some flavoursome fillings. If you’ve never heard of snowskin mooncakes. Here’s a quick lowdown: Chinese pâtisserie made for the mid-autumn festival which is a festival celebrating the moon. Traditionally they are a baked cake with a thin pastry and very dense filling (lotus paste is a classic) but in the 80s a ‘non’ bake version emerged. The baking part is omitted with the use of Kao fen, a fried glutinous rice flour. I tried a dryer more crumbly filling with coconut and confit cherries (see picture below).

I personally prefer a more creamier filling almost truffle like which I also tried out. If you’re in Paris this Wednesday why not join in the fun and have a go yourself. There are still a few places left. Click here to reserve.

Chocolate & sesame snowskin mooncakes

Ingredients for snowskin (the outside bit of the cake):
(I reduced the sugar since my last recipe)

120 g Kao fen – fried glutinous rice flour
80 g icing sugar
150 g coconut milk
50 g shortening, cold and cubed

Mix all the dried ingredients together. Add the shortening and rub into flour mixture until you have a “crumble/sand” like texture. Pour in the coconut milk and form into a dough. Wrap and chill for 10 minutes.

Ingredients for custard filling:
Recipe adapted from here. You will probably not need all the custard filling.

1 egg yolk
100g caster sugar
20g superfine flour
20g cornflour
15g custard powder
125ml coconut milk

Mix all the ingredients together and then place in a small heat proof bowl and steam for about 30 minutes or until it begins to set. Leave to cool and then refridgerate.

Ingredients for chocolate centre:

25g icing sugar
25g cacao powder
10g sesame seeds (a couple of tablespoons for garnish)
15g butter, unsalted and cubed

Mix all the dry ingredients together and then add the butter. Mix with a spoon and then use your hands to bring it together (it’s a bit like making crumble but you don’t stop at crumble stage).

You then need to make small balls out of the chocolate filling. Take a look here for a visual idea of what you need to do. The size will depend on your mould. Mine were about 5g. I then took the custard filling (about 8g) and flattened it out into a round and placed a chocolate centre into the middle. Repeat the same with the snowskin dough. Press into a mould. If you have enough moulds I suggest chilling it before unmolding as you’re less likely to damage the mooncake when you unmould it. Another tip: try and not handle the snowskin dough too much as it becomes too soft and makes it harder to unmould.

Chill at least 30 minutes before serving. Garnish with a sprinkle of sesame seeds (or sugar/chocolate sprinkles).

Tags: atelier de cuisine à Paris, food trend, not cupcakes, snowskin mooncake

General feeling at the moment is “all talk no action” with the amount of meetings I seem to be going to. So it was with relief I got back in the kitchen on Thursday to bake a few cakes for a photoshoot the following day with Bread & shutter (London based photographer). London is just a hop away on the Eurostar so it’s quite easy to set up a shoot in London from Paris. Although it was a bit of a struggle travelling with all my food styling kit (minus knives, no matter how much I explained that I’m a food stylist and not some mass murderer they wouldn’t let me take them on board).

Tasty cakes were on the menu for this Friday. I’ld been browsing my regular blogs when I came across this. I found the combination very interesting so I thought I’ld give it a go by infusing a crème anglaise or custard with rosemary. Definetly a great combo and I’ll be no doubt be making these again.

Plum & rosemary tartelettes

500g ready made (yes! shock horror I do use the stuff puff pastry
300ml single cream
1 tbsp vanilla essence
100g sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
2 egg yolks
Several sprigs of rosemary
6 plums
soft butter for cupcake tin

Bring cream to a boil. In another bowl mix together egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch and vanilla essence. When the cream has boiled pour slowly on to the egg yolk mixture while whisking hard. Pour the mixture back into the pot, add a sprig of rosemary and bring to the boil. Make sure to stir constantly as the mixture at the bottom has the tendency of burning. Once the custard has come to a boil, pour into a large shallow dish and leave to cool.
Preheat the oven 170°c. Butter the cupcake tin (12 holes). Roll out the puff pastry to 1/2 cm thickness and cut out 10cm rounds. Place one round into each cupcake hole. Spoon in a generous helping of the rosemary custard (maximum 2/3 full) and bake for 20 minutes. Cut plums into fine semi circle slices and decorate tartelettes. Garnish with a rosemary sprig (don’t each it though). Serve warm or cold.

Tags: bread & shutter, delicious, food shoot, food styling, herbs, london, rosemary, tartelette

Reading this month’s Martha I came across a recipe for Pistachio cupcakes with raspberries which is kind of the inspiration for this recipe. Now Martha and I have a love-hate relationship. I like the styling, tips and “idea” of her recipes but her actual recipes can sometimes ‘lack’ some vital ingredients. Cupcakes with no baking powder? How’s that supposed to work? Not great coming from the biggest domestic Goddess. I thought she would have enough assistants to proof read the recipes. Anyhow I took the recipe added stuff, took stuff out, mixed around and basically came up with my own recipe. That’s how recipe writing works. Take an exisitng recipe and add your own flavour.

I was at OFF this Monday, a big food festival in Normandy checking out the new generation chefs and some heavyweights too. Take a look at Khookie for the whole story.

Raspberry & pistachio mignardise

250g ground almonds
3 eggs
120g butter, melted
120g flour
2 tsp baking powder
180g sugar
100g pistachio, chopped plus 25g for decoration
150g fresh raspberries (save a few for the decoration)
Vanilla ice cream
Raspberry coulis or 300g fresh raspberries (heat with a little water, add sugar to taste and pass through sieve).

Preheat oven to 180°c. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar and ground almonds. Beat in the eggs and melted butter. Add the pistachios and mix. Carefully fold in the raspberries. Bake for 20 minutes.
Leave cakes to cool slightly before serving (you can serve them cold too). Top with ice cream, hot raspberry coulis, fresh raspberries and chopped pistachios.

Tags: hot love, martha stewart, mignardise, OFF, Recipe writing

Gung Hai Fat Choy! The year of the Ox kicks off today which means it’s going to be more of a conservative year: sure and steady. Apparently those who have sown seeds will see the benefits this year as long as they look after their business. This recipe was inspired by the tradition of making sticky glutinous cakes for Chinese New Year. Apparently offering sticky glutinous cakes to family signifies cohesiveness (represented by the gluton). These sweet treats are also offered to the kitchen god who resides in Buddhist chinese families in the hope that bringing sweet offerings the kitchen God will only have sweet things to give in the coming year.

I really went overboard with the red colouring as red symbolises good fortune in Chinese culture. Reduce the amount if you want something a little less in your face.

Chinese New Year delights

500ml water
450g caster sugar
100g icing sugar
1 tbsp red food colouring
150g cornflour
4 tbsp rose water
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp powdered agar agar*

Dusting mixture
2 tbsp cornflour
5 tbsp icing sugar
1/2 tsp ground mixed spice

Pour half of the water into a heavy based saucepan and add the sugars. Heat until the sugar has dissolved and then bring to the boil.

Reduce the heat and simmer until the mixture reaches 115°c on a sugar thermometer (soft ball stage). Remove from the heat.

In a separate saucepan, mix the cornflour and agar agar with the remaining water until the mixture is smooth. Cook over a medium heat until the mixture thickens.

Gradually pour the hot sugar syrup into the cornflour paste, stirring continuously. Make sure to stir well, so none of the mixture sticks to the bottom of the pot and burns. Return the mixture to the heat and simmer for about one hour, until the mixture is pale and feels stringy when a little of the cold mixture is pulled between the fingers. Stir in the rose water, mixed spice and red colouring.

Pour the mixture into the prepared baking tin and leave to set overnight.

Cut into squares. Mix the cornflour, mixed spice and icing sugar together and toss the delights in it. Store in an airtight container, between layers of greaseproof paper.

*Note: I found that the agar agar helps set the mixture as without it tends to stay gooey.

Check out Jugabandi Photography’s food blog event: Click for more red inspired food.

Tags: Chinese new year, click, turkish delight, Year of the ox