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

Boucart (a sort of of French brioche toast filled with almond cream) with cinammon crème anglaise and vanilla ice cream at Philou, 75010 Paris.

Beet, carrot, apple and ginger juice at bob’s juice bar 15 rue lucien sampaix 75010.

Juicy beef burger (meat is a special blend by Le Parisian butcher, Yves-Marie le Bourdonnec) in a super soft brioche-esque bun served with home fries and a bottle of Pimento.

Blend 44 rue d’argout 75002 Paris

P.S. Get there early. It’s tiny.

Delicious delights at Sebastian Gaudard’s pâtisserie 22 rue Martyrs 75009

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

VW Kraftwerk

For the past three years instead of migrating somewhere warm for Winter I head off to cold (the second year temperatures dropped to -20) and snowy Wolfsburg a.k.a.  VW ville (as I call it). VW has it’s headquarters, factory and Autostadt (= car city) in the town of Wolfsburg which is situated an hour train ride from Berlin or half an hour from Hannover.

Wintermarket

For the month of December Autostadt (imagine an amusement park but VW themed with rides, restaurants and other automobile fun) puts on a Winter market. You can find Christmas markets in pretty much every German town (also in Austria and Switzerland) which usually consists of huts selling Glühwein (warm mulled wine), sausages, sweets and other Christmas goodies. Autostadt’s Wintermarkt picks out a country/theme for each year. In my first year it was American, last year Scottish and this year 1001 nights. Hence my research trip to Marrakech. They also have an ice rink and an ice skating show (Wizard of Oz the first year, Canterbury tales last year and this year four different 1001 night tales).

Working on this project already starts in May with researching ideas, testing recipes (I had a little practice in Milan) and then doing a formal presentation in October. A whole behind the scenes team works on the logistics of getting all the equipment and ingredients set up as the Pâtisserie is only set up for Christmas. I rock up a week before the market kicks off and get baking with my assistant. It’s no longer baking one cake now we’re talking double or even triple digits a day. When we make cheesecake we don’t make one cheesecake we make 120 in one go. We then bake continously every day for the next five weeks.

Lizzi Habibi - The Christmas pâtisserie

I have a lovely team of sales assistants who despite the -10 temperatures still manage to sell the cakes with a smile.  Last year we had -20. The cheesecake was warmer in the fridge. All the ones on display were frozen. Luckily this year we’ve got heated cake plates, so no frozen cakes this year

On the menu are more of less the same cakes as I tested in Milan:

1. Cornes de gazelle

2. Mint & coconut cakes

3. Walnut baklava

4. Cardamom, pistachio and semolina cakes

5. Rosewater and lemon yoghurt cakes

6. Morrocan strudel

7. Chocolate and moroccan orange cakes

8. Cinammon raisin and walnut rolled biscuits

9. Black & white pinwheels

10. Rosewater cheesecake

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.