The audience watched in fascination as chef Tina Richardson blitzed biscuits in a food processor in the cookery corner at the Sharjah International Book Fair.  She was making her signature chocolate deluxe cheesecake and it had an ever so intriguing secret ingredient; something one would never expect in a dessert … rosemary!  
It may sound rather zany, but the use of a simple savory herb such as rosemary can in fact, be used in a sweet dessert making the taste of it very unique, contemporary and unforgettable.  Richardson is passionate about incorporating locally grown, fresh herbs into all of her dishes. 

 
Born in the North of London, she started off her cooking career at a quaint farm shop in Suffolk, where she would create her unique concoctions using the finest herbs of which there was certainly an abundance of.    It was there, amongst the countryside life that she first fell in love with the magic of herbs and the crisp, varied flavors. As she experimented with them more and more, she realized just how versatile they were and Richardson decided that this information was simply too good to keep to herself!
She started making her own bespoke preserves, condiments and jams using the herbs and then set about marketing them. As well as this, she also began to create and compile unique recipes and she published them on her own personal food  blog with the most beautiful food photography which multi-talented Richardson did all by herself.  
This created a very large following, and her heavy emphasis on homemade goods eventually caught the eye of British TV channel BBC.  She was invited to cook for the BBC food show on various occasions and this experience inspired her to write 3 cookbooks centered around incorporating herbs, from unique ways to use them in your cooking, to storing and preserving them.  In addition to this, she also writes a monthly column for magazine “Hertfordshire Life,” a popular glossy lifestyle magazine.

To make her famous cheesecake, Robertson started off by taking some ginger biscuits and blending them into crumbs in a food processor with one teaspoon of Nutella and butter to give it the perfect consistency.  After that, she pressed the dry, crumbly mixture into a circular pan and instructed to the audience that it this biscuit base should be left in the fridge for one hour.  With flair, she whipped up Nutella, cream cheese, almond oil and her curious addition of rosemary into a bowl and until it became smooth and thick and then proceeded to layer it onto the previously made base to make the cheesecake, advising that for best results, one should keep it chilled overnight.
It turned out that the key use of rosemary was a genius choice when it was complemented with the zing of spice from the ginger biscuits, the rich decadence from the chocolate and the crunch of hazelnut praline. This created an unexpected mesh of flavors which really pack a punch in the taste department.  Richardson has a few more workshops where she will be sharing some more recipes and these will be conducted on Monday and Tuesday on the 10th and 11th of November at 7:30 pm to 8:15 pm.