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Rachel Khoo shot in her Paris kitchen
Rising star: Rachel Khoo shot in her Paris kitchen Photograph: Patrick Swirc for the Observer
Rising star: Rachel Khoo shot in her Paris kitchen Photograph: Patrick Swirc for the Observer

Why we're watching… Rachel Khoo

This article is more than 12 years old
The Croydon-born chef who is cooking up a storm in Paris

The knowing look, the sharp knife… I'm feeling edgy. Tell me more. She's Rachel Khoo, a Paris-based British cook coming to a television near you.
Paris-based? So, we're not good enough for her over here… She'd always dreamed of studying pâtisserie at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris – so she enrolled and moved over. After graduating, she got herself a job at La Cocotte, a culinary bookstore and "tea salon", where she baked her socks off. Within a few years, she'd published two French cookery books – in France.
And what was the British Amélie doing before then? Originally from Croydon, she studied at Central Saint Martins and then moved into the world of fashion PR, where calories count and food is the enemy (allegedly).
I'd give up shoes for cake, too. When will Mademoiselle Khoo be on telly? The Little Paris Kitchen starts on BBC 2 tomorrow night. It's a petit voyage around Rachel's favourite foodie haunts in Paris and her 20ft kitchen, where she makes cooking soufflés look easy. Which, as we all know, it's not.
She says: "My dad is Chinese/Malaysian and my mum is Austrian, so food was always a big deal in our house."
We say: Importing French joie de vivre. Sans food snobbery.

The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking with Rachel Khoo starts at 8.30pm on 19 March on BBC 2

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