Filming ‘The little Paris kitchen’ bbc 2 on the roof of the Grand Palais.

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).

I arrived two weeks ago with my Pâtisserie kit and my chef whites packed. The only thing we were going to produce was going to be dust cake as everything was still a building site. It was an around the clock work job with everyone on board to get everything working. A couple of days practice and the restaurant was open to the public. The cuisine team churn out tonnes of delicious fresh pasta everyday while in the pâtisserie sweet treats are made daily to tastilize everyones tastebuds. The pasta menu changes daily. And a new dessert menu will be helping you pile on the pounds every month

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Photo: Caitlin M. Kelly

On Friday the 22nd October I got to show the a few select Parisians how to make some delicious teatime treats at the hippest store in town, Colette. Recipes from my second book ‘Je fais mes pâtes à tartiner’ were made into delicious delicacies (petits fours, mini triffles and little dainty sandwiches).

Photos by Colette.

Creative culinary creations were asked for the Paille & Klein Glow vernissage at the Slott gallery in Paris. I was fortunate to have a great team of culinary assistants (thanks Thomasine, Charlie and Lauren!) who helped me make the food for the vernissage. The brief was to create food which had a rapport with both artists who were exhibiting.

One of the Artists, Andrea Knecht was working with straw and latex for her piece ‘Paille’. Those materials were the inspiration for my fresh cheese canapés. Milk was infused with mountain hay, straw and herbs and then turned into fresh cheese. Lauren did the brilliant job of making little poppy and sesame seed crackers. They all had little holes at the top which enabled them to be tied to the fabric bundles of fresh cheese. The cheese was then strung from the roof for visitors to pluck down.

Artists, Claassen & Partner and their ‘Klein Glow’ creation of black leather balls and bright pink paint got turned into  black sesame seed dumplings which were made and then steamed live during the exhibition. Visitors dipped them using  little skewers which Charlie had spent half the day making into a fresh raspberry sauce (see the picture of Thomasine with the very bloody red hands making it).

Main photo and last four © Marc-Antoine Bulot / Exquise Design. Rest of photos © Rachel Khoo.

Frankie making saffran pasta.

So on the first night Frankie was still frantically rolling out the pasta when the first guests arrived. There was a hectic 5 minutes with me being my usual bossy self and getting one of our lovely helpers to deal with  the guests. Another to do a speedy clean up.

Tanqueray 10 Gin Elderflower cocktail.

The cocktails were shaken stirrred and served with the feta filled white macarons to the guests who were starting to arrive. They were allowed to mingle and enjoy the lovely tapestries in the Gallery space while Frankie and I made sure everything was spot on in the dining area (or the main workshop space).

Outside the Australian Tapestry workshop.

Twenty minutes later both Frankie and I were ready to go. Frankie at this point  (I don’t know how she did) had also managed to change, put on her make up and dust off the flour from her face.

The candles were lit, our ‘tapestry’ playlist was on and the wines had been given their Mollydooker shake and time to breathe. We were really fortunate to have the owner of Mollydooker wines (who were our wine sponsors), Sarah Marquis with us on the first night. She was great at explaining to the guests all the delicious wines we served throughout the meal.

Our lovely waitresses Sarah and Briar doing the Mollydooker shake.

Deep breath and we went to introduce ourselves and lead the guests to their seats. We disappeared very quickly into the kitchen after our introduction and got started with plating the next course.

Incan ceviche with vegetal threads served with Mollydooker Verdelho.
Edible Tapestry Tale: In Ancient Peru, tapestry was used similarly to bury the dead, often using alpaca or llama wool.

This was a fairly simple one to plate. The trick was to twist the vegetal threads around the fork and spin it so it looked like the yarn reels found around the tapestry workshop.

Remember the saffron pasta Frankie had so frantically been rolling before hand? Well actually cooking it for 24 was pretty tough too, especially when you only have two gas rings and two pots. The difficult part was getting it dressed, plated for 24 people and out before it got cold.

This was definetly one my favourites to eat though. The saffron pasta was coated in a spiced butter and tossed with cauliflower crumbs, pine nuts, soaked raisins and capers. Just thinking about it, makes my mouth water!

At the same time the next course had to go in the oven. This was the one course which really gave me the most grief. The bowls had to be filled with the scarlet dashi, duck and toulouse sausage boulettes and cannellini beans before being covered with filo pastry. One of the problems was that the filo pastry tore super easily, so in the end I had to cover the soup bowls with four layers to ensure that it wouldn’t crack before it got to the table.

Fitting 24 bowls into the one oven at one time was not possible. So finding a way of keeping the first batch warm while the second bath crisped up took some figuring out. But we found a solution in the end

Breaking through the clothed Scarlet dashi with Gobelins boulettes.

Clothed Scarlet dashi with Gobelins boulettes served with Mollydooker Maitre d’ Cabernet Sauvignon.

Edible Tapestry tales:
1. The word tapestry is derived from from tapisser meaning “to cover with heavy fabric”.
2. Paris’ Gobelin Factory was founded in the 15th century as a dye works and later developed the Gobelin weaving technique which is used at the Australian Tapestry Workshop.

Plating main course.

Flanders beef cheeks with pumpkin gauffres with Mollydooker Blue Eyed Boy.

Edible Tapestry Tale: By 1500, Flanders, especially Brussels and Bruges, had become the chief places of tapestry production.

Next up was the main course. We had especially bought a waffle machine as I had been obsessed with serving savoury pumpkin gauffre with the slow cooked beef cheeks (see the tale for the reason why). We served the main course with some beautifully coloured (and of course tasting) roasted vegetables and a little zingy pickle.

Cheese course: woven fruit leathers with Holy Goat cheese and e.t.t. oatcakes served with Mollydooker Velvet Glove.
Edible Tapestry Tale: Weaving is the art of forming a fabric by interlacing at right angles two or more sets of yarn or other material.

Second to last and on to the cheese course. We had sourced a goat’s cheese, Holy Goat from the Yarra valley which was a perfect match for our woven fruit leathers and E.T.T. oatcakes. Just a note: making and weaving fruit leathers is one of the most time consuming jobs ever.

A lot of components in our dessert with a puff pastry millefeuille punch card, olive oil sablé, poached spiced kumquats and spiced pastry cream, accompanied with a slightly acidic yoghurt mousse (to balance out the sweetness of the millefeuille) and cashew nut praline dust.

And so we came to the end of the Edible Tapestry Tale which we managed to pull off without any major problems (apart from the electricity blowing on the first night, half way through service). By the third night Frankie and I were pretty at ease and even managed to serve a staff meal during service

I must say we would definetly not have managed it without all the support from our friends who hosted us and preparation work, the staff at the Australian Tapestry Workshop, the State of Design volunteers, Placesettings for helping us with the crockery and kitchen equipment and our lovely waitresses of course!

Photos all by Leo Farrell who did an absolutely fabulous job at photographing the whole event.

Some insprirations: weaving yarns dyed in house at the Australian Tapestry workshop

After a stopovers in Dubai, Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Singapore it was finally touchdown in Melbourne on Saturday 17th July. The cold came as bit of shock with having gotten used to the humid heat in Singapore and Summer having kicked off in Paris , but there was no time to warm myself up by a cosy fire. It was all go go go from the start with my partner in crime, Frankie having flown in on the same day from Sydney. We hadn’t seen each other since the Edible Immigration Tales in March and even though we had been skyping and emailing regularly our ideas, cooking experiments and designs. It’s still not quite the same as having a face to face conversation.

Australian Tapestry Workshop in the 'normal state'

A week before the 3 nights, 7 courses, 24 people a night Edible Tapestry Tales kicked off we had the longest an never ending list of things to do. The first couple of days involved finalising the menu, going to lots of random places in Melbourne (at one point we had to cross a motorway by foot to get to a supplier) and buying all the equipment we were missing.

Work in progress

Unlike the Edible Immigration Tales this event required a whole different level of organisation.   The event was part of the State of Design festival aswell as taking place at the Australian Tapestry workshop. We had to hire a kitchen (no oven or hob at the Australian Tapestry workshop but they did have a dishwasher ) , crockery, find the waiting staff, deal with the bookings…plus so many other little administrative things that it’s impossible to list them all. And all this from not actually being in Melbourne. We were fortunate enough to have found a wine sponsor, Mollydooker who provided us with some delicious wines and Tanqueray 10 providing the gin for the cocktail. Plus we were hosted by some great friends who helped in every way possible (i.e. being mad enough to let me drive their car around Melbourne ).

Australian Tapestry Workshop's kitchen before we took it over.

By mid week the hardcore food prepping kicked off with an enormous order from the butcher (free range/local beef cheeks for 75, smoked  bacon, duck breast and toulouse sausages), several visits to South Melbourne market which was also in handy walking distance from the workshops and also had a lovely coffee shop where they serve the perfect remedy i.e. coffee for late nights/early mornings and some super yummy muffins.

At the same time we had all the little objects and accessories to make for the table (mini cardboard looms, hand stitching serviettes and facts, making recycled candleholders and placemats).

Handmade tealight holders made out of recycled jars and leftover weaving yarn.

On the day of the first night we literally took over the workshop. All the weavers had to stop their work as the large looms had to be pushed to the sides to make space for the tables. Everything in the kitchen was cleared away (so no coffee machine and microwave for the staff) aswell as their coffee table area too. Luckily the people at the tapestry workshop were more than accomodating. Once everything was set up. It was last minute or last hours rush to get all the prep done.

Dessert inspiration: punchcard for Jacquard loom

We had worked hard to develop a menu which could handle only one oven and 2 gas rings which meant a lot of switching things around, making sure that one dish didn’t need an oven at 80°c and the one immediately after didn’t need to be in the oven for 5 hours before the event. So the menu not only had to be delicious, tell the tapestry tales and something Frankie and I could produce but also deal with the limitations in the kitchen.

Making feta macaron to go with Elderflower cocktail.

We were lucky to have two lovely waitresses plus some brilliant volunteers from the State of Design festival who came in early and helped us out otherwise we would have never finished. Fifteen minutes before the start Frankie was madly rolling out the fresh saffron pasta and absolutely covered in flour….

Frankie making saffron pasta

….Edible Tapestry Tale to be continued.

‘Finger food’ : deconstructed eclairs – raspberry and vanilla pastry cream with eclair choux pastry fingers which had to be worn in order to be dipped into the cream, created for the vernissage of an exhibition at the Slott gallery in June this year.

The menu kicked off with a Tom Cruise inspired shaken cocktails (red berries, limonchello and gin) which fit perfectly with the summer evening and was accompanied by some 80s coloured savoury macaron (cream cheese & wasabi and green olive tapenade – Pierre Hermé started his macaron experimenting in the 80s).
First course was edible pacman with pâté powerballs and confit cherries. I had wasted considerable amount of time playing pacman in the name of research. Second course was twisted bacon and a two toned tartiflette, a kind of deconstructed version with the use of sweet potatoes and some peppery roquette to balance the Reblochon. Tartiflette was created in the 80s by the Reblochon producers to promote their cheese.

Homage to 80s power dressing and those big shoulder pads: main course of Power puff pastry shoulder pad with a boeuf printanier (slow cooked spring beef stew).
A cold war soup: communism watermelon gazpacho and cucumber capitalism sorbet was served as a palate cleanser. And to finish off a 80s Paris Brest (the 8 was filled with a praline pastry cream and the 0 with a salted butter caramel cream).
The first 4 dishes were accompanied by red wines recommended by my great local caviste who matches all my wines for me as I’m hopeless. He also recommended a lovely caramel/light Irish whisky to go with the dessert.

Special thanks to myprivatedinner for providing the apartment, Jay-P for an awesome 80s music mix, my lovely culinary assistant Bernadette, Sten Pittet for taking some pictures for me and my lovely guests for coming!

Ask first © 2010 R Khooks, Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.

Last week I started to dabble in with sourdough. I got a crash course in sourdough bread baking but was still a little dubious as my track record with looking after living things isn’t that great.  Maintaining a starter felt all too much like having to take care of a plant or a beer smelling tamagotchi. My last attempt of growing rosemary and thyme ended up in the bin. Luckily Clotilde from Chocolat & Zucchini has been doing a great job writing about sourdough with plenty of recipes.

Ask first © 2010 R Khooks, Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.

Sourdough or a natural starter is a combination of fermented flour, water, wild yeasts and friendly bacteria which is used to leaven bread. It’s a tradition to name your starter, so I decided to baptise mine “Lucca” as I’m testing and researching sourdough bread recipes for some culinary workshops I’ll be doing in Tuscany near the town of Lucca.

I went about feeding my starter every day (organic white flour and filtered water). I accidently put it in the fridge and it froze but I managed to bring it back to life. It’s quite warm in Paris (Spring has finally kicked off) which is just the kind of temperature Lucca likes. A week of feeding and I thought it was about time to put Lucca to a test. I used the 1 2 3 sourdough recipe which is pretty fool proof. I went for a mix of wholewheat and white flour with a sprinkling of seeds. I made my sponge early in the morning, gave it 6 hours and then made the dough in the afternoon and left it to rise for a further 6 hours and by 10pm I had a fresh loaf. I must say I’m very impressed with the crust which is made by putting the dough in a oven proof dish with a lid to bake. The water evaporating from the bread creates steam and makes a very crunchy crust. Another plus with sourdough is the bread keeps really well. Even a week later toasted it still tastes great. More beer smelling tamagotchi tales to follow…

Ask first © 2010 R Khooks, Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.

Check out Clotilde’s well documented basic sourdough recipe for further information.