I have a slight obsession with chef autobiographies, and chefs in general. To me they are the most attuned of creatives - taking what is a necessity and transforming it into something that is widely pleasurable. There is something fascinating about going beyond the realm of beautifully prepared food into the thinking and the people behind them.
I was first introduced into this ‘world’ by none other than Tony Tan. He is an incredibly passionate and motivated chef, and on many occasions I have witnessed his vast knowledge about food and culture, particularly Malaysian food, come into play. When it comes to food, he is obsessive. All chefs are obsessive, I think, because you have to be perfectionists as well to have the consistency and dedication to be at the top of your game.
The most interesting autobiography I’ve read recently is one by Marco Pierre White called The Devil in the Kitchen. He is touted as the original rock star chef - dating supermodels, hounded by the British tabloid, famous for his flamboyant outbursts and throwing customers out of his restaurants - “If you are not extreme, then people will take short cuts because they don’t fear you.” he writes. Though there is not a whole lot of talk about his food, but the snippets of his life that he shares in the book are interesting enough to warrant a read - there is a lot to be said about a chef who had never been to France at the time he was awarded 3 Michelin stars, works 100-hour weeks and whose kitchen produced the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal.
Last weekend I went to see another master chef René Redzepi of Noma, San Pellegrino’s Restaurant of the Year, at the Sydney Opera House. He was in town for the Sydney International Food Festival. There was no food being served, no demonstrations, just an hour and a half of Rene on stage talking about how he began his journey defining Nordic cuisine. Rene defines cuisine as “a palatable experience of your culture”.
His food philosophy was simple: take seasonally and regionally sourced sustainable ingredients and present it with an innovative take on traditional cooking methods. He says that at Noma, they have a pact with nature, and that the food they serve have to possess a certain purity and simplicity in line with the Scandinavian ethos.
He talks about asparagus and pine existing next to each other in the wild, the idea behind one of his dishes - Roast asparagus, fresh pine and green asparagus sauce with pine oil. And how he serves ‘vintage’ 2 year old carrots, because it was too cold to harvest them one season and they found a way to cook them spectacularly when you and I would probably throw them away. And how important getting to know your local farmers are - “Conversations with farmers shape the way we cook.”
The slides he presented, mostly of him foraging around and seeking out lesser-known ingredients from the Nordic terroir, and some examples of the dishes he serves at Noma, really drives the philosophy home.
I quite enjoyed myself that night. He was funny and entertaining to listen to. This was my favourite quote from him - “A recipe is only a guide, there are no absolutes.”
I smiled when he said that because when it comes to cooking in my family it has always been ‘a little bit of this and a little bit of that’. If I ever question the amount of something needed, my grandma will always say ‘taste it and see’. Cooking can be a science, but mostly cooking is about instinct.
Baking however, is an exact science. I attempted making macarons on Sunday with my usual ‘wing it’ approach.. and this is the rather dismal-looking result:
What an adventure! I did my research long before, just to understand how macarons work. Three important things - 1. Ingredients MUST be very fine and sieved; 2. age egg whites for about 2-3 days so they rise better; 3. Leave batter out to dry slightly after piping so a skin forms and you get macaron ‘feet’ (seriously who decided to call it ‘feet’? The association is disgusting).
It was a last minute decision to make them, so unfortunately no aged egg whites meant they would be a little flat. I only used 1 drop of green food colouring and apparently I needed more. The shells tasted great though! Crunchy on the outside, nice and chewy on the inside.
A super easy base recipe:
75gm almond meal
45gm ground pistachio
190gm icing sugar
3 egg whites (aged 3 days covered in fridge)
30gm caster sugar
Whisk egg whites, add caster sugar, whisk until stiff peaks form. Mix the other ingredients into a bowl after sifting, and slowly add this to your egg white mixture. You should have batter with consistency like magma. Pipe and rest 30 minutes before putting them into the oven.. which should be around 150 c for 10-15 minutes (takes some experimenting since all ovens are different).
However while making the filling, things went a little South. I didn’t have a recipe, exactly. I had it in my head that I would make Pierre Herme’s pistachio paste and incorporate this into his recipe for vanilla buttercream. Things were going great. I made an awesome batch of paste (but damn, pistachios are a pain to shell) and it was a lovely deep green colour.
Where I messed up was not reading the instructions properly while melting the sugar. I read ‘bring to boil’ but totally missed the temperature reading after those words, so my sugar wasn’t hot enough to coagulate the egg proteins it was going into. I googled that today. Also, Herme’s recipe in his book called for large quantities, so I winged my portions.. apparently you can’t do that with baking.
The result was a really runny goop - adding the pistachio paste didn’t help much. Soooo.. with not much experience in baking, I wasn’t sure how to save it - so I decided to add the only thing I could think of - a tablespoon of iota which was a really bad idea as it then separated the fat content of the butter (though, it did thicken the mixture). Haha. Fail! But it tasted OK, so I did use some of it but just enough to hold the two macaron shells together.
Going to make another batch next weekend.. this time I will hopefully learn from my mistakes! And age some egg whites during the week.. wish me luck!

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
They look OK, but your right about the aged egg whites would probably give it more height and puff! Good luck with your next batch!
Annette, Sydney
I def need more puff :) Cheers