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.
If you are on a picture and you want it to be removed, please send me an email.
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
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2 egg yolks
2 tbsp sugar
2 ripe bananas
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3.5oz/100g chocolate
1.5oz/50g butter
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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.
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.
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!
Designtives
© 2009 Rachel Khoo. All rights reserved.
Makes 25
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.
Tags: Alice Rawsthorn, food design, International Herald Tribune, the school of life
