She’s just published her sixth cookbook, The Little Swedish Kitchen, she’s made a succession of TV cookery shows, she runs a creative studio in London called Khoollect, and an online lifestyle platform of the same name. But despite bursting on to our screens in 2012, seemingly a fully formed domestic goddess, 37-year-old Rachel’s success is down to good old-fashioned grit. Originally from Croydon, she swapped a career in public relations for the student life in France in 2006, attending a three-month Le Cordon Bleu course in Paris (supporting herself via stints as an au pair and selling perfume at chic store Printemps). Within four years, while working at a cookbook store and café, she had two French-language books and opened up her flat as a mini restaurant. ‘It was when my Little Paris Kitchen TV show first aired on the BBC that everything exploded for me,’ she says, ‘but there was a tremendous amount of hard graft behind all of that. There were years of me knocking on doors that didn’t open, and persisting. I have always been somebody who is willing to try things and take a risk. I might fail horrendously, but I will try. The same goes for now. I’m still trying out things and it doesn’t always work out, but I just keep on going.’ Despite her tenacity and drive, there are still times when Rachel can’t help feeling in low spirits. ‘People don’t talk about that, but I do get down,’ she reveals. ‘I have a lot of projects I’ve been talking about since January that I’m still trying to get off the ground. Just last week I had a moment when I thought, “You know what, I’m not going to work. I’m going to have a cup of tea and a biscuit and watch Netflix for an hour.”
Sometimes you just have to give yourself a break!’ It’s not quite the picture-perfect life reflected in her Instagram feed. But unlike many celebrities, Rachel wants to be famous for what she does. She’s not interested in becoming the story and having every detail of her life picked over by the tabloids. And now she’s married with an eighteen-month-old son, she is even more determined to keep her private life just that.
But there are little glimpses of life chez-Khoo. Her Swedish husband, Robert Wiktorin, and the cookery of his homeland is the inspiration behind her new book, designed along the principles of one of Rachel’s favourite Swedish words, lagom, which means just the perfect amount of anything. And this desire for the perfect work-life balance has helped her gain a fresher take on her wellbeing. ‘When you have a family, you can’t suddenly jet off across the world to do a project,’ she reasons. ‘You have to look at how you’re going to make your work fit the life you want to have, rather than you fitting around work.’ Rachel has started to schedule training sessions into her busy timetable, largely because she is not as disciplined when it comes to fitness as she is with her work. Pilates, yoga and body pump are in the diary, and she’s recently become a fan of the NHS Couch To 5K app. ‘I hated running, but I am loving this app, and I can now run 5k, and I’m actually starting to enjoy it,’ she laughs. ‘Exercise is something that I incorporate into nearly every day now, and it’s not just a health thing – it’s a mental thing. It’s an hour when I can do something for me and switch off.’ Achieving an equilibrium in everything she does is something that Rachel is constantly striving to achieve.