Tearing down the wall in Berlin

rkhooks — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:33:37 +0000

There were no sausages on this menu which explored the East/West divide in Germany. Fellow foodie Caroline Hobkinson and I got cooking in her amazing Berlin kitchen. Dishing up two different menus (one East, one West). Each representing their relevant culinary history. Guests on arrival were assigned their sides for the nights. They bartered, they smuggled and some sneekily stole from the opposite side to get a taster of the forbidden food.

Pie Party at La Cocotte

rkhooks — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:06:38 +0000

On the 6th October 2009 a Pie Party was circled on my social calender. I headed down to La Cocotte to show everyone how to make them. Lemon meringue, Banoffee, Apple & Cheddar and Pumpkin pie, plus a delicious pie crust were head lining the event. Recipes were all easy as pie

Special thanks to Djoukaze for the photos.

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A voyage of epicuriosity at the school of life

rkhooks — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:53:26 +0000

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.

Rising to the occasion: chocolate & banana soufflé

rkhooks — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:57:57 +0000

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.

Spiced Pumpkin Potato Pie

rkhooks — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:01:03 +0000

After doing what the French do so well and taking a long holiday (well a long blog holiday). It’s the back to school/work or as the French call it the ‘rentrée‘ (transl. return) which means I’ve been doing some serious cookstorming, testing out recipes for new classes, dinners and culinary events.

After doing some pie research yesterday (thanks for the tweets) I decided to get down to some pie action. A while ago I had read an uk food trend report that said pies are hot stuff with brands like Pieminster and Delisanté making stylish hip pies for Selfridges, Waitrose and other big retailers. Pies have always been a staple dish in the English diet and even more so in the American’s with songs, films and places like this. The French are yet to catch on (they prefer their tartes) although I know one place in Paris which makes a mean fruit pie (I sometimes make some there too)

I hit the market in the morning. My favourite fruit & veg guy (he’s got great produce and is also cute) was back from holiday which I was super happy about. He had a lovely pumpkin which I just had to have a piece of, along with some super sweet tiny mirabelle plums which by the time I got home had all somehow disappeared. Way too easy to pop into your mouth!

After baking 4 different cakes for my birthday on Friday I definetly needed to balance things out with something savoury. So a sweet pumpkin pie (if you’ve got a good recipe, send it my way!) was not gonna happen. Plus I’m not a big fan of sweet pumpkin pie.

I like roasting pumpkin and eating hot with olive oil or cold tossed with some baby spinach, pine nuts and a tahini dressing or in a curry. So I decided to roast some potatoes and pumpkin with some curry spices and popping that into a pie. It reminded me a little of the curry puffs my mum used to make. MMMMMmmmmmmm yum!

Spiced Pumpkin Potato Pie

4 small pies

700g diced pumpkin
300g diced potatoes
4 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tbsp ground paprika
2 tbsp ground curry powder (I used a rendang spice mix which has ground lemongrass)
3 pinches of salt
Sesame seeds for garnish
1 egg for eggwash

Preheat the oven 180°c/350°f. Mix together the spices, salt and oil with the potatoes and pumpkin. Put into a roasting tray. Roast for 30-40minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Leave to cool slightly.

Shortcrust pastry

170g flour
100g butter (very cold, cut into cubes)
1 tsp salt
1 egg

For the shortcrust pastry:
1. Sablage
Mix flour and salt add cubed butters. Rub flour mixture and butter together to create a breadcrumb texture. Make sure to work quickly. Add egg. Mix slightly.

2. Frasage
Turn out mixture onto clean surface (preferably a cool marble surface). Using the palm of your hand. Push a small amount of the mixture about 20cm along the surface of the table. Do this with all the dough. Repeat once or twice until the mixture has come together.

Chill dough for 30mins. Preheat oven 180°c/350°f.

Roll out to knife edge thickness and line already greased and floured tins. Use a round cookie cutter to cut out the dough for the tins. Prick the base and then fill with potato and pumpkin. Eggwash the edge of the pastry and cut a second (smaller round) for the top. Make sure to make a small hole in the top for the steam. Eggwash the top and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for 30 minutes or until the top and bottom of pie is golden brown. Eat warm or cold.

Le dernier diner de Kennedy at le Chacha, Paris

rkhooks — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:55:56 +0000

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.

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Photography: Juan Diosdado.

3T Tarte

rkhooks — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:08:30 +0000

No, I’m not referring to the band 3T from the nineties, although it would be quite fitting with the whole MJ saga going on. More to do with the fact the number 3 has been cropping up quite a lot recently.

I’m on the last leg of big events before the summer break with my debut on the Paris scene this Monday at the Chacha. After getting back from London with a great mash up dinner behind me and the 500 biscuits for the school of life event aswell. I was ready for a break, not a third event. Unfortunately that was not going to be an option. Recipes had to be tested and tasted for the dinner. A dj, photographer and assistants had to be found. PR and marketing malarky to do. Plus I’ve been running around all the vintage stores and markets looking for the perfect Jackie outfits for the three Kennedy hostesses.

———————–

Dust off your blonde wig, your Jackie 0 sunglasses or your ‘too cool for school’ J.F.K. sixties suit. Miss Khoo is taking over the Chacha for the tastiest event in town.
For Monday 13th July Rachel Khoo has created a 3 course dinner and a Kennedy cocktail to tantalize your tastebuds. Top that all off with a cupcake pimping session and some swinging sixties & fifties sounds spun by DJ Sylvania. The whole of Paris will be there and who knows maybe the Kennedy’s might pop by.

40€ Cocktail + 3 course dinner (starter + main + dessert/cupcake session)

RSVP chacha@chachaclub.fr

———————-

Enlevez vos lunettes de soleil Jackie O et vos costumes JFK années 60. Rachel Khoo va envahir le ChaCha pour la soirée le plus KHOOl de Paris.

Lundi 13 juillet, Mademoiselle Khoo va nous partager ses recettes chic et délicieuses lors d’un dîner – entrée, plat, dessert – et un “Kennedy cocktail” pour réveiller vos papilles. Tout ça avant un “cupcake pimping session” ou vous pouvez décorez vos propres cupcakes, le tout accompagné des sons des années 50 et 60 par DJ Sylvania.

Le tout Paris sera là, et, qui sait, même les Kennedys eux-même vont peut-être y faire un petit tour nous joindre.

40€ Cocktail + dîner [entrée, plat, dessert/ cupcakes]

RSVP chacha@chachaclub.fr – réservation obligatoire

————————-

Tuesday night I invited the lovely ladies who will be assisting me on Monday night for a dress rehearsal. I found myself styling clothes, hats and hair instead of food. For dinner I rustled up this tart which just involved me seeing what I had in my fridge. I was loosely inspired by what I had read in the Guardian at the weekend. And it so happened that the filling used three types of vegetables: carrots, beetroots and red onions. I managed to get these amazing red onions which were a cross between a large spring onion and a red one which were perfect for this tart.

I will let those of you who are coming this Monday be the judge whether I should stick to my day job up or whether I might have a new career as a fashion stylist

3T Tarte (three tones tarte)

10 carrots, peeled and roughly sliced into sticks
3 beetroots (raw not the cooked ones), peeled and chopped roughly
3 red onions, peeled and roughly chopped into wedges or 6 red onions type spring onion
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
Olive oil
salt & pepper
Handful of fresh parsley

1 packet of good quality puff pastry (yes, I do cheat. Can’t be a slave to your kitchen all the time)

Preheat the oven to 180°c. Mix together all the vegetables and garlic in a roasting tray. Season and drizzle generously with olive oil. Roast until tender (about 40minutes). Roll out the puff pastry and line the tart. Tip all the vegetables into the tart and bake for a further 30 minutes or until the puff pastry is puffed up. To serve drizzle with a little more olive oil and garnish with parsley. You could also crumble some feta or goat’s cheese on top to.

Good design at the School of Life

rkhooks — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:42:20 +0000

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.

Mash up II at the Loft

rkhooks — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:34:42 +0000

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.

Designtive

rkhooks — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:54:38 +0000

My whole flat has become a test kitchen. I practically live in the kitchen with cake tins, ingredients, pots and pans spilling over into the living area (the only cooking free area is the bathroom). I’m gearing up for two big events in London next week . One of them being my Mash up dinner. The other an event for the School of life Sunday sermon on Good Design held by Alice Rawsthorn, Design critic for the International Herald Tribune. I’ve been busy making or better said ‘designing’ THE biscuit. It took a lot of testing to get to the final product, at least a dozen tries.

The brief was to make a biscuit or cake that was delicious, traditional but not flamboyant. My initial research led me to Britain’s most popular biscuit, the chocolate digestive. 52 are consumed per second in Uk. That’s a lot of biscuits!

When McVitie’s first made the digestive in 1892, they claimed it aided your digestion, hence the name. This has since been scientifically proven to be untrue and that is when a light bulb lit up in my head.

Good design is not only about aethetics but function and now a days it’s great if it’s eco-friendly aswell. So why not make a digestive which actually incorporates ingredients that stimulate your digestion?

I first started looking into spices: aniseed, fennel and cumin, using them in a classic digestive recipe. But the taste was just too different. I then stumbled on linseed and oats which seemed perfect as they added a great nutty taste. However when I added them whole the biscuit was way too rustic. The ground version worked much better, mix in a little malt barley syrup for some malty taste and a couple of chunks of chocolate. And hey presto, I had a chocolate digestive with ‘digestive aiding’ ingredients.

After carefully balancing and mixing together the ingredients to create a delicious (of course it has to taste good, too!) biscuit. I had to work on the shape and name. Keeping it to the classic round shape I just added a little slit, so you can clip it onto your cup of tea. I tried to be as eco-friendly as possible using organic, local/national or fairtrade produced ingredients where possible. And being a true Brit the biscuit stands up to multiple tea dunking ! And that folks is how the Designtive was born.

If you fancy tasting them for yourself, come to the Good design sermon next Sunday the 28th. Hope to see you there!

170g wholemeal flour (+ handful extra)
50g ground linseed
50g ground oats
85g golden caster sugar
50g barley malt syrup
115g salted butter, cubed
13 squares of chocolate, cute in half
1 egg

Mix together the flour, linseed, oats and sugar followed by the cubed butter. Create a crumbly/sandy mixture by rubbing the ingredients with your fingers and thumb. Once achieved, add the rest of the ingredients, mix together and form a ball. Flatten, put into a plastic freezer bag and refridgerate for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°c. Dust your work surface with a little flour and roll out the dough to about 5mm thickness. Cut out the biscuits, press half a square of chocolate into the biscuit and place onto a tray with parchment paper. Reform, roll out the leftover dough and cut out more biscuits until you have used the dough up. Refridgerate the biscuits for 30mins before baking them at 180°c for 15-20mins or until golden around the edges and bottom.