First day filming The little Paris kitchen for BBC 2.

On Saturday 26th September 2009 it was off to the School of life in London where I conducted some taste experiments and cocktail & a canapé workshop as part of the Voyage of Epicuriosity holiday.

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Many thanks to the school of life for the photos.

Tags: the school of life

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

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.

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Photos from event taken by Bronia Stewart.

Tags: Alice Rawsthorn, sunday sermon, the school of life

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.

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Pictures are taken by Kang Leong from Londoneater.com.

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