It started with me reading a post on the FB page from Culy.nl and there it was: Sign up and tell us why you want to meet up with Rachel Khoo and maybe you and a friend will be one of the lucky few to meet her. I was thinking YESS I want! She is such a nice bubbly personality, getting you all enthusiastic with her little french adventures. Be it from her little kitchen in Paris cooking, to giving a little bit insight in who she is by answering some personal questions. I love it, also because she is half Chinese and half Austrian, a nice melting pot, just like me.

So I signed up and on Valentines day you would get a message if you were one of the lucky few and yes I was. I could just not believe it, little dances, jumping for joy..Meeting Rachel Khoo and better yet cooking with her too. My Valentines day just got a lot better. Great gift and I was allowed to make a friend happy too! Thank you Culy and Kosmos! Ok, so it had to be someone who was just as crazy about food as I was. My sweet friend P and I went together. We had a blast, we’ve been friends for over 10 years now and it was fun to do something like this together.

We arrived at the location and there she was, just as pretty and bubbly as seen on TV. When we finished our tea, Rachel called us to the cooking table, where she was waiting for us to come and join her. She started with her little welcome and soon she was chatting away, telling us about the start of her book, the journey, the adventures and that persistence is of high importance in life, as failure is not an option. If you really want to get some where in life, no matter what, you need to be the one who is in the driver seat. No one is going to drive you to your desired destination.

As she was telling all of this, she was also teaching us some of her recipes from her newest book here in the Netherlands “Mijn Franse Keuken”. First statement: I only use butter, REAL butter that is. Margarine is a forbidden word. We made some snacks, inspired from her adventures to the French Basque areas. They were pretty easy and better yet, we could eat them within the 2 hours of the workshop. It smelled so nice, it looked great, so we couldn’t wait to dig in.

Have a look yourself, doesn’t it look like a little party all together?

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Thank you Rachel, it was a lovely day! One to remember. I hope you enjoyed it just as much as we did. Until we meet again…

So, of course I will share with you one of my favorites we made that day..

Sablés aux fromage et tomates – Cheese and Tomato Buttery Biscuits

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Ingredients
75 gr of plain white flower
65 gr of butter, room temperature, cubed
65 gr of cheese, a strongly flavored hard cheese (think Tomme de vache, Old Amsterdam, Parmesan)
100 gr cherry tomatoes halved
1 TBsp of fresh oregano

Method
Start with grating your cheese.
When your done, in a mixing bowl, combine flower, cheese and butter and massage with your hands until you get a sandy texture.
Now start pounding and squashing your dough firmly and roll it into a sausage (diameter about 3 cm).
Wrap your dough in cling film and refrigerate for about 3o minutes.
In the meantime, preheat your oven to 180ºC.
Take your baking tray and line with some baking paper.
If you remove the dough and you can’t cut it easily just pop it back in to the fridge for another 5 minutes.
When the 30 minutes have passed, get your dough out of the fridge and start cutting it into coins, about 3 mm in thickness.
I made a dimple in the centre of each coin to fit my cherry tomato perfectly and finished off with a pinch of oregano.
Place the coins on the baking tray and bake for about 10 minutes or until golden brown on the bottom.

They were absolutely delish! I was thinking about making other combinations, like Parmesan, Rosemary and pine nuts or even a sweet variation with lemon. Hmmm..I will be back with my new twists soon.

You can buy Rachels new cook book “Mijn Franse Keuken” (My little French Kitchen) on Bol.com and they have a special discount too at the moment, so don’t wait to long.

Rachel has a blog too: http://www.rachelkhoo.com, and Instagram: @rachelkhooks.

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