Brooke Silk

Hi, Brooke. Nice to meet you. You arrived in Melbourne today. Where have you come from?

We flew down from Sydney this morning, so got on the 9am flight and checked in.

What are your plans while you’re here?

We’ve got the championship dinner with Princess on Friday night, and then I’ll meet a few other chefs, so it would be a nice little experience. The Championship dnner is to celebrate last year’s Championship. I got third in the world for dessert last year, so we will celebrate that and also it’s to promote us going back this year.

You’ve done so well. I was reading a little bit about the world food Championships. It was Indianapolis last year, and Dallas the year before. Where is it this year?

Indianapolis again. They’ve got a contract for it for a couple of years, I think. But they really turned it up last year, which is pretty awesome

How many chefs were you competing against?

There are 218 groups of chefs that go. And they’re from Dubai, Japan, Europe, Australia, America, and then there’s at least 15 in each category and then it goes down to seven for the final round and then you go against each other for the final round to. It was an awesome experience. It’s something that I’ve never experienced before. You have a red carpet and you walk your food down there, you can make your last minute adjustments and then once it’s on the table, that’s the end of it.

To get to that point, what’s the process?

I won the Sydney competition two years in a row, and that gives you a golden ticket to get into the World Cup Championships. What you have to do is then you will put your recipe in for the judges so they know what allergies and stuff that they need to be aware of. And then we’ve got an hour and a half to cook and get everything sorted, and then you’ve got seven or eight portions for the first round. You have a major decorative one, and then you’ve got tasting ones around the outside, and then for the next round, you’ve got 13 portions.

So you already you have your dish, you know what you’re going to make?

I knew what I was going to make before I went because I have to take most of the ingredients with me. We take everything over, we take our own equipment, we pay for our own flights, we basically get all of our own uniforms, our accommodation, our cars to get around. Once you get there, you have to source everything as well. You source your equipment, you source your edible flowers and everything like that, just to make sure that you’ve got the right produce. Trying to find the places in the first year was very hard.

Everything must be so different in America. How do you go about that? Had you been to the States before?

Only when I was really young. The first year was a very big adjustment for us. I take my partner as my sous chef. He doesn’t know how to cook, but he just cleans the kitchen for me. I really struggled the first year because the sugar is so different and the flour is different, the eggs are different. I had to make adjustments to the recipes, and adjustments to everything that I learned here. I had to start from scratch, learn how to make my recipe again with all their produce. The first few times I failed miserably, because the sugar burns too much. Our eggs are a little bigger, so then you can’t put as much egg in. It was just a whole learning curve. But the second year round, I had learned how to adjust recipes to the way that they do things. I also took my own sugar. The sugar here has a much better flavour. It’s not as sweet, and it doesn’t burn as much for any of the desserts.

Who’s judging you?

We have a bunch of professional chefs from around the world, and they all judge and they give a thing called an EAT score: Execution, Appearance, and Taste. You need a certain percentage to get through.

What did you make?

The first round last year, I did a hazelnut cake with a lemon curd and then I did a meringue with some raspberry jellies and a white chocolate soil. And then the second round, which got me the third, was a buttermilk cheesecake with a crême brûlée top, and I did an almond crumble, poached apples, some freeze dried raspberries, chantilly cream, and then some gold dust and then a burnt caramel sauce.

How do you decide on those recipes? I guess you need that wow factor don’t you?

With the second round, I had to use either cream or buttermilk. I had 24 hours to come up with that recipe. I just tried it out the night before in our little Airbnb that we hired, and it worked well, tasted good, so I thought, this is what we’re going to go with.

How long have you got to do it?

An hour and a half for the final. But this year it’s an hour. Sill an hour and a half for the first round. But the final is down to an hour.

That seems pretty short, especially for dessert.

I’m excited for the challenge.

What are you feeling in that moment? Are you just really focussed? Are you able to get really focussed, really quickly and just do it or are you nervous? How are you feeling?

I feel like my job being a private chef and working in all these different kitchens is pretty much training me for these areas. I’m used to adjusting to different kitchens and I can just focus in and think, this is what we’re got to do. We’re going to get it done now.

That’s in October?

We leave on the 3rd of October and the competition is on the 18th to the 19th. They are also streaming on YouTube so people people can watch it on YouTube or follow along on my socials. I post about it on Dine In by Brooke all the time. It’ll be fun because I get to go out with Princess again, I’ll get to see all my American friends that we’ve made and go back to the same town. We went to so many restaurants. I spoke to so many chefs and made a lot of connections over there as well, which is really nice.

That’s an added aspect isn’t it that it’s nice to find a community amongst all of that.

I love teaching people. I love sharing my knowledge because I have a passion for cooking and I always have since I was a child. Finding that passion and being able to share that with other people, it makes me happy. And I’m sure people out there who love food as well would be finding some sort of joy in that as well.

Brooke Silk, Dine in by Brooke Silk

Is it important to you to take part in competitions? Do you need that challenge?

I think it pushed me outside of my comfort zone. I definitely needed it because I wasn’t that confident in myself anymore, and I think pushing myself out of my comfort zone and knowing that I can do these things has really made me believe in myself a little bit more. That’s why I called the last cheesecake that I did the Believer Cheesecake, because it made me realise that I do have all those skills from working in fine dining restaurants and working as a pastry chef for so many years that I can do this.

What do you love about, pastry, making desserts and cakes?

I find pastry is very methodical: you have to weigh everything up and everything has to be perfect for it to work, whereas being a chef, you can kind just throw it all in and it just works. I like to bring them both together and then just make everything a little bit more methodical, but then it’s slow paced, but you still having to speed it up to make sure it’s ready for the competitions as well.

Fine dining, I guess is like the pastry of cheffing as well; you have to be methodical and precise too. What do you like about fine dining?

I just like how you can make things simple with the techniques, and the flavours make it taste elevated. You don’t have to try hard, you’re not doing all these different styles of food. You’ve just got the same style, but you’ve then got a refined, like a carrot, for example. You can make a carrot taste, fine dining by just cooking it in butter and clarifying it, adding the right amount of salt, adding the right amount of pepper, that just elevates that carrot to the next level.

With Capture the chef, you’re very generous with sharing your knowledge with people, with the public, with us. Why are you being so generous?

I love teaching people. I love sharing my knowledge because I have a passion for cooking and I always have since I was a child. Finding that passion and being able to share that with other people, it makes me happy. And I’m sure people out there who love food as well would be finding some sort of joy in that as well.

And you work with someone else on that to help you produce that?

I’ve just taken over that whole thing.

Oh, so you’re now a content creator and a videoographer and everything as well.

Yes. In the next few months, we’ll be looking at rolling out instructional videos and making it really elevated as well.

Do you do you charge money for that, or you just share?

No, we don’t charge money. We just ask for subscriptions. If we get the subscriptions that helps me to be able to monetise that. Working on that gives being enough to keep pushing out the content and keep making sure I can teach people how to sous vide and how to do a br correctly and how to make all these recipes that I have been cooking for years.

I feel like people can be a bit scared of cooking, of trying some of those things, because they think they don’t know how to do it, or they don’t know what to do if things go wrong. Do you give those kinds of hacks? Because I feel as though chefs have got lots of hacks because you’ve been doing it for so many years and it’s probably about having that understanding of how ingredients work and how temperatures work. Is that right? Do you have to have that kind of understanding to be able to do those dishes?

I feel like having the understanding definitely helps. But there’s definitely recipes that anyone can follow, especially with Capture the Chef. I’ve even got easy meals, so there’s a place to start, and then you can move up to the other ones. I find maybe because I’ve been doing it forever, but I find it’s not that it’s not that hard, and especially if I take the time to explain it properly, then it’s easier for people to understand and achieve at home as well.

Dine in by Brooke is where you go to people’s houses as a private chef. Did that come about as a result of lockdowns?

Yes, that was a Covid baby? I’ve been running that for five years now and I love it. I get to do a five course degustation in people’s houses. I make some freshly made bread with a whipped butter, and then I do seasonal menus, which keeps me on my toes and keeps me interested in the different seasons and the different flavours that I can make work. I do a wine matching as well. It’s nice to work with some local winemakers and make sure that we have a match for our five course degustation..

Do you decide on the dishes or does the client have any input?

I do five entrees, five mains and five desserts, and they can choose their own adventure. It’s very popular, and we’re booked up most weekends, which is fantastic.

There would be a lot of word of mouth I guess.

I got quite lucky. I get to cook in most of the Airbnbs along the south coast. I’ve been to some amazing houses down south. There is a business called Supercalla Private Properties. I work with them. They’ve got 20 properties that I pretty much go to most weekends.

That interaction with the guests must be really nice.

It’s so special. It’s nothing like I’ve ever worked in before. I worked in restaurants where you’ve gone out and said hi to the customers, but actually being there for every step of the way and explaining every element on their plate, answering all their questions, having a personal conversation with them, to plan their table in the first instance, and then once you get there, you feel like you’re pretty much family with them, so they feel more comfortable you’re coming in and then you’re just cooking them an awesome dinner and then you leave them with a clean kitchen. So they’re pretty happy.

I guess you’ve been to those properties a lot so you’re really familiar with them. But if you had a new one that you’re going to, would you go and check out the kitchen first?

No, I take pretty much everything with me. I take the plates, the cutlery, some green place mats, and napkins, and then just set the table so it feels like they’re at a restaurant. And I take all my cooking equipment. I’ve got it down to a fine art now, so I’ve got my trollies that I wheel in and out.

What’s an example of a five-course menu?

At the moment, I’ve got a prawn bisque on the menu, I do that with some freshly made pasta, we’ve got a prawn ravioli. And then I do a chive oil on top of that. And then we’ve got the pork belly with a celeriac purée and some caramelised apples. And then I’ve got the salmon, and a leek purée, and I’ve got some grilled broccolini, and then we’ve got the sous vide beef. I cook that for four and a half hours before I get to the actual properties, and then we’ve got some red wine verjus, and then some Dutch carrots, and I finish it off with my brûlée buttermilk cheesecake.

Wow, that sounds amazing, and no one has to drive home apart from you. They can just roll off. It’s such a treat for people to have that level of food, but to be somewhere comfortable.

Sometimes we get people in their pyjamas and enjoying the five course degustation and having their wine. That’s quite a nice experience to see as well.