celebrity chef
Darren’s sweet success
TOO SWEET TO EAT Chef Darren Purchese has a knack for recreating childhood scenes and figures, including a full edible garden on display at his flagship shop.
Pastry Chef Darren Purchese has a flair for pairing unique flavours and turning them into masterpieces. He shares his favourite coffee treats and why he thinks Melbourne is on the world culinary map.
I
n 1971, the film adaptation to Roald Dahl’s novel Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory had audiences intrigued by The Chocolate Room – a fantasy world in which everything was edible, including the pavement, the trees and the chocolate river. On Melbourne’s Chapel Street in South Yarra, a version of The Chocolate Room has become a reality. “Everything you see you can eat,” says Chef Darren Purchese, in reference to his edible chocolate garden on display at his acclaimed Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio. Everything – from the finely grounded dirt, flower petals, caterpillars, butterflies, mushrooms and weltered leaves – is 100 per cent chocolate. “It’s a wonderful expansion of my love for chocolate mixed with childhood nostalgia and fantasy,” he says. Over the past 10 years, Darren has developed a reputation for creating desserts and sweets with a complex array of flavours and textures using scientific applications. “I like to experiment. For instance, I’ve just filmed an episode of [TV show] Masterchef where I used freeze-dried coffee to make a banana and coffee parfait,” he says. “I find coffee and banana go really well [together]. A little bit of coffee helps to balance the sweetness of the banana and levels the bitterness.” Darren says that despite negative perceptions of freeze-dried coffee, it’s the magic ingredient to many of his coffee desserts. “Instant coffee tends to get a bad wrap at times, but as a chef I think coffee is more than just a delicious drink, it’s a fantastic versatile product to cook with. The options for pairing coffee in desserts are endless,” he says. Of note is Darren’s coffee crunch ice cream. This involves a cold infusion of coffee beans for 36 hours, which are then added to an ice cream base. Freeze-dried coffee is then added to milk chocolate and moulded into little coffee bean shapes and
28
beanscenemag.com.au
by Sarah Baker scattered throughout the ice cream. But there’s more. Darren’s coffee pièce de résistance is his own version of a coffee éclair, something he used to make hundreds of at the Savoy Hotel in London for afternoon tea. “My interpretation is an eight-layered cake that consists of smoked white chocolate ganache with coffee sponge, coffee cream, almond meringue, and coffee, cardamom and lemon cheesecake,” he says. “One thing that’s always guaranteed to be on our menu is a coffee dessert. I know our Melbourne customers love their coffee, but coffee is also a familiar favour to people. If you walk into most established pastry shops
would have little espresso shots while I was working in the bakery.” Fuelling his new coffee addiction, each morning on his way to work at the Savoy Hotel, Darren would stop at a small espresso shop at Waterloo station. “In hindsight the coffee wasn’t that good, but it was a step up from instant back then. At the time I didn’t know about the versatility of coffee. I didn’t know where coffee came from, or that you could get different favours and different beans. I only knew that it kept me awake,” he says. “I’m no coffee snob, but now I have a greater appreciation for the finer details of what’s involved in the production of coffee.”
“I like to experiment. For instance, I’ve just filmed an episode of [TV show] Masterchef where I used freezedried coffee to make a banana and coffee parfait.” in Europe you’ll find coffee desserts are a classic menu item, like Opéra gateau or a coffee éclair.” Thankfully, Darren is a coffee lover, but it wasn’t always the case. “Growing up in Guildford in the South East of England, my first impression of coffee was a tin of [instant] Nescafé. I remember thinking, ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ To me it tasted horrible,” Darren recalls. “It wasn’t until I moved to London in 1998 to work as a chef at the Savoy Hotel that I realised people’s obsession with coffee. All of sudden the staff started making cups of coffee to get through their shifts. I used to drink copious amounts of terrible coffee when I was a young apprentice chef working long hours, training hard, going out, and not getting much sleep. Coffee kept me going. I
Darren says he frequented the Waterloo espresso shop until an Australian taught him how to make “proper coffee”. Ever since, he’s succumb to two long macchiatos each day for the past 14 years. “When I go back to my mum and dad’s [in Guildford] they ask me if I want a coffee and I say ‘sure’. But I forget where I am and the sort of coffee they’re going to serve is out of a tin. Now I say, ‘actually I’ll just have a cup of tea.’” Darren says Australians are leading the revitalisation of the London coffee culture. However, on his last visit back in 2012, he says he saw evidence that there is still a long way to go. “I remember going to a show and getting a drink at the interval. I asked the waitress if I could have a long macchiato. She said ‘No, do you want your coffee milk or black?’ I saw this ugly percolator-thing
beanscenemag.com.au
29