Category Archives: Bloggers
Recipe: Neptune’s Bubbles
Recently, I was chatting with @champagnediet on Twitter and mentioned my recent experimentation with a bottle of bubbly in the kitchen. I’d made a truly scrummy dish of scallops and king prawns in a champagne and cream sauce – plenty for two people as a light evening meal, or a decadent starter if you’re hungry. Anyway, I promised @champagnediet I’d send her the recipe for her site, which focusses on how to eat (and live) well without over-indulging. Then I thought it would also be a good idea to share it here.
Timing:
This dish is ready in a flash. There’s next to no preparation time – just as long as it takes to get everything out of the fridge and chop the onions. Cooking time is max 10 minutes.
Ingredients:
200g king prawns, uncooked and 200g fresh scallops, coral removed. In the UK queen scallops are good for this recipe as they’re smaller, but king scallops would work just as well, only you might need a minute or two more to cook through.
**(Please do ensure that the seafood is as fresh as it possibly can be. The champagne component in this recipe is too expensive to waste on close-to-expiry-date produce!)
3 Tablespoons of butter
A dash of light olive oil
1/4 cup of sliced salad onions (aka scallions for our American friends)
2/3 cup of champagne – don’t skimp. This has to be the real deal! I’ve tested with bubbly alternatives and the taste is still nice but not as good.
3/4 cup of reduced fat crème fraîche
Salt and pepper to taste
Method:
Take a frying pan and melt 1 Tbsp of butter, adding a dash (literally) of light olive oil to prevent scorching.
Add the chopped salad onions and stir over medium heat for 1 minute, no longer. We want them to retain their colour if possible.
Slowly pour in the champagne and allow to reduce to approximately one third, stirring occasionally.
Add the seafood and stir until the prawns have turned pink (2-3 minutes).
Add the crème fraîche and stir until the cream has combined with the butter and seafood juices and now coats the seafood easily. Allow the mixture to simmer for a few minutes. Stir regularly during this time, then add the remaining butter and stir through until the sauce thickens slightly.
Season to taste.
Garnish with a sprig of dill or sprinkling of chopped chives. Serve immediately, preferably with a flute of the leftover champers! Et voilà!
Pho Lights My Fire
If you’re Vietnamese and you don’t like Pho, there’s definitely something wrong with your genetic make up. Pronounced ‘FUH’, pho is Vietnam’s national dish and the thought of that single syllable makes my stomach grumble with longing.
Pho’s concept is simple: make a fully-balanced meal fit into a single bowl. The main components are rice noodles, broth and some sort of protein - beef or chicken or seafood, sometimes tripe or meatballs or a combination of different meats and broth. The protein goes into the bowl raw and cooks when the boiling hot broth that has been simmering for some hours is poured over it. The broth varies in strength and flavour depending on the region of Vietnam, often containing spices and herbs like cinnamon and ginger, coriander seed and clove. Once served, the consumer can then season it to their own personal taste with condiments like chilli, spring onions and fresh herbs.
When Monsieur and I were preparing for our trip to Vietnam, pho seemed to pop up everywhere. It was mentioned in all the guides, in online reviews, in restaurant recommendations, and if you look up ‘pho’ on You Tube, you’ll find the likes of Anthony Bourdain trying it out in Ho Chi Minh City and amateur pho chefs demonstrating step-by-step instructions on how to make pho at home. Once in Vietnam, Monsieur and I and enjoyed authentic pho on several occasions, marvelling at the regional subtleties and the many ways in which the simple concept of a meal in a bowl may be interpreted.
The Vietnamese say that Pho is their equivalent of chicken noodle soup. It’s an anti-viral cold-preventative, hangover cure and all-round comfort food. For all of these reasons and because Pho simply tastes good, Epic is a great, big pho fan.
Back in March of this year I was lucky enough to be invited to a food bloggers’ event at a restaurant specialising in pho, called, not surprisingly, Pho. There are now four restaurants in the Pho chain; we went to the one in Great Titchfield Street. There, in a bright basement, we were treated to welcome drinks, including wine or Hue beer, a popular Vietnamese brew. It was Hue all the way for me after that.
First up, we enjoyed learning to make our own summer rolls. I wasn’t exactly adept at this (mine resembled more of a lopsided sausage factory reject than a neat little roll), but I did enjoy eating the results.



Next, we visited the kitchen, where tireless staff worked among steaming vats of pho broth. It was hot in there. No wonder. The stocks take up to 12 hours to prepare. (Bubble, bubble, pho no trouble)
And this is what the staff work so hard to produce – vat upon steaming vat of bubbling hot broth.
Back at our very long table, the crowd was like a Who’s Who of London food bloggers, which made for passionate conversation about who’s cooking/eating what, where to shop for the best ingredients and which chefs we rate or otherwise. There were collective aaahs of approval as we nibbled on our summer rolls and dipped into the share platters of Vietnamese salads. Outside it was dark, cold and rainy. Inside at Pho we could taste summer in the fresh papaya salad, delving for the fat prawns in its midst. This platter, called Goi Du Du in Vietnamese, is sprinkled with chopped peanuts and served with prawn crackers. Everything (apart from the prawns) crunched in a satisfying way: the batons of papaya, the strips of capsicum, the peanuts, the crackers. It was a welcome antidote to the misery of March weather.
At last, the moment came when we could taste the pho of our choice. On the menu was quite a list of pho varieties – served with steak or brisket, or both, with meatballs, chicken or prawns or a couple of vegetarian versions with tofu or mushrooms. I had Pho Tom – more fat tiger prawns served in chicken stock.
The bowls come with special ladle-like spoons and a selection of condiments with which to bespoke your pho: Vietnamese coriander (which looks like mint but tastes completely different), beansprouts, chilli and lime.
Here’s my bowl of glory, steaming away merrily.
The broth was piping hot, the prawns tender and plump with juice. Lots of happy slurping went on around the table that night and the general consensus was that Pho was modern, affordable, with the freshest of ingredients and therefore definitely had its place in London.
Following the spring rolls, salad, a bowl of Pho and a couple of Hues, I was overflowing with good things and had zero capacity for dessert, which was a shame because the Pho menu boasts banana fritters, pandan pancakes and fresh fruit sorbets with flavours like strawberry with fresh basil. I did, however, cave in to the offer of an iced Vietnamese coffee made with condensed milk. I know, I know, it sounds odd, but it’s like a Vietnamese frappuccino and they’re really quite addictive.
So with a round and happy belly I bade farewell to the warm Pho staff and foodie friends, toddling off in the rain in search of an elusive cab, smile on face, with a stomachful of Pho. Methinks that Pho isn’t just the Vietnamese cure-all comfort food, but Vietnamese prozac in a bowl, for it shifts my mood to happy every time.
For further details about the London branches of Pho, go to: www.phocafe.co.uk
The BeanBlogger’s A to Z Guide to Beans
Recently on the London Bloggers’ Meetup Group website I noticed a competition about BEANS. The prize is a lovely luxury bean bag from Ambient Lounge and all the entrants have to do is write a short (Epicurienne? Short? That’ll be the hard part…) post about BEANS. This made me think. Hard. I love beans, so I decided to create an A to Z to help me to remember how many varieties there are.
A Well, this has to be for Ambient Lounge, the supplier of the bean bag prize/s for this competition. They’re super-cool, are used to furnish Kensington Roof Gardens, a top London club with views over London, and there’s even a sun lounger bean bag – how hip is that?
B There are loads of BEANS beginning with B: Baked, Black, Broad, Butter. Beansprouts are great for salads and stir fries. The Adventures of Beans Baxter is a US TV series. Brazil is currently the biggest producer of dry beans and I come from the generation who all know what a Bean-o comic is.
C Did you know that the Chickpea is a bean? Now you do. There are Cocoa beans for hot drinks and chocolate making, Coffee beans to keep us awake, Castor beans which give a delightful flavour to sugar and the Common bean which can be used for just about anything. Coral beans and Cranberry beans are a bit more exotic. In France, Cassoulet is a wonderful meal comprising duck stewed in its own juices with fat, white beans. It’s a hearty winter meal in itself.
D stands for Designer Bean Bags upon which to launch oneself after a long day of arduous work, while watching The Food Channel. There is also a Dolichos bean which sounds delicious.
E is for Edamame, or soy bean, upon which patrons crunch in smart Asian food establishments.
F The Fava bean is another name for the Broad bean. Fagioli is the Italian word for bean. Flageolets are wonderful, juicy white beans which are popular in France (and in Epic’s London kitchen) and Fabaceae is one name for the family of plants whose seeds become BEANS on our plates at home. Flatulence can be the embarrassing result of eating too many BEANS but BEANS are too tasty for us to worry about a bit of wayward wind, no?
G The Green bean is a staple of many a mean-and-three-veg dinner, but for something a little special, you could always seek out the Goldmarie Vining Pole bean.
H Haricots Verts are the French green beans and who doesn’t know the slogan ‘Beanz Meanz HEINZ?’. Hannibal Lechter of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ is renowned for the following spine-chilling quote: “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti,” and on many an international boardwalk you will find teenagers doing unbelievable tricks with their bean-filled hacky-sacks.
I is for India, the second most prolific producer of dry beans in the world.
J is for the eponymous Jack, famed for the magic beans that grow into a giant beanstalk in one of the most popular fairy tales of all time. There is also a variety of bean called the Jack, and everyone has a favourite colour of Jelly bean, although the manufacturer, Jelly Belly, has extended the flavour options so far that having just one favourite is probably a thing of the past.
K is for Kidney beans.
L stands for Leguminosae, another family of plants responsible for giving us beans. There is also the Lima bean variety and LL Bean, the classic clothes mail-order catalogue from the States – very New England.
M Here we find Mung beans (edible) and Rowan Atkinson’s doofy character, Mr Bean (not). Monty Python sang ‘Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam and spam is delicious, trust me!’ Personally, I can’t stand Spam but will take the baked beans any day.
N is for Navy beans, and
O is for Onions. The gardener’s advice is to never grow your beans next to onions – it will end in tears. But onions as a base for bean dishes will add texture and flavour.
P Beans grow in Pods, just like Peas, which are also beans, but let’s not confuse the issue by going into that here. It’s a whole different blog post. Polyanthus beans and Pinto beans come under Beans Beginning With P.
Q Beans form a vital ingredient for the classic Mexican Quesadilla.
R is for the classic Runner bean, the Refried bean used for Nachos, the Red bean, the Rice bean and the Roman bean. Go one up on the Joneses by serving the Roc d’Or or the Royalty Purple Podded Bush beans at your dinner parties.
S Beans are seeds and when planted will grow more beans. Beans beginning with S include Soy beans, Sieva beans and Scarlet Runner beans. The Latin name for the Sword bean is GLADIATA (perfect to give you energy before taking on Russell Crowe’s mates in a Colosseum somewhere). Spilling the beans will only get you in trouble.
T is for Tepary beans, and Tavera beans, otherwise known as French green filet beans.
U finds us with the Urad bean which is black with a soft white interior and highly popular in India, and
V gives us Vanilla beans and Velvet beans – what a sumptuous name.
W stands for Wattie’s, the New Zealand company who canned the baked beans I ate during my downunder childhood and
X is a tricky one so I’ve cheated – X is for TeX-MeX, a cuisine which makes great use of the humble bean.
Y is for the Yardlong bean and
Z is for ZE end.
That’s my A-Z of beans. Now if only I had a big fat bean bag to fall into… I’d be a very happy BEAN indeed.
Parisian Decadence with Razz and Engo (posted from Portugal)
There’s not a lot of incentive for me to get out of bed at 5am on a Tuesday morning, especially in the Northern Hemisphere winter. But when I heard that Australian blogger, Razzbuffnik, and his wife, Engogirl, would be travelling around Europe for a few months, I found that rising at five to go and meet them in Paris wasn’t so bad after all.
Razz and Engo met me at the Gare du Nord and we hugged and fell immediately into easy chatter as if reunited schoolfriends rather than bloggers who’d never before met in person. In spite of the grey skies and drizzle, we forewent museums in favour of a leisurely stroll through le Marais, heading for the Seine.
We popped into a couple of markets, which were disappointing, really, and le Marais was like a ghost town, lacking in its usual buzz. But by the time we reached the Ile Saint Louis, we had decided that spending the afternoon together, eating and talking, was the way forward.
I’d heard about a restaurant called l’Ilôt Vache, filled with cow trinkets from faithful patrons, and we certainly found it, but it was closed. Perhaps that was fortuitous because when Razz spotted a modern-looking frontage with a French-Italian-Spanish fusion menu, we decided to give it a whirl, and how lucky we were that we did.
The restaurant is called Sorza and in spite of it being barely 12.30pm, we were greeted by a warm waitress and took a table in the window. Thus began the longest lunch I’ve had in a while. We were the first to arrive for lunch and the last to leave almost five hours later. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that Razz, Engo and I could eat and talk for so long – we’ve all come to know each other quite well through Razz’s blog and mine and various e-mails in between posts, so the conversation flowed, just as well as the 2005 Côtes du Rhône that we ordered to see us through the afternoon.
Soon a group of Americans arrived to take tables behind us (Razz thinks that our being in the otherwise empty restaurant must have lured them in) and some locals later joined the fray. As dull as it was outside, we were warm in Sorza’s red interior. Now we just had to get down to the serious business at hand: eating.
Engo and I chose the parmesan soufflé to start. Small and rich, it was served warm and small mouthfuls of the cheesy creaminess lingered. This was not to be rushed; this dish demanded to be savoured. It was served with a long plate of leaves with a pesto dressing, shavings of parmesan and a drizzle of balsamic. The freshness of the salad tempered the rich soufflé and the tang of basil married well with the taste of parmesan.
Between bites, Engogirl practised her food photography with hubby, Razzbuffnik’s smart wide-angle lensed-up camera, as we discussed topics as disparate as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and how much you can tell about a country’s climate from its style of guttering.
Amidst all the talking, it’s a miracle we managed to eat as much as we did. Razzbuffnik’s starter was grilled aubergine with parmesan shavings artfully placed at the centre of the plate, and a sprinkling of pine nuts, olives, sunblushed vine tomatoes and a swirl of pesto completed the dish. We, the small Antipodean triumvirate, out to lunch in the French capital, were thus far impressed.
The mains only convinced us that we had stumbled into a very good establishment indeed.
Razz and I chose the Dorade, or sea bream, with creamy polenta and a small herb garnish. The polenta was the creamiest I’ve ever eaten in my life. When it arrived, it bore a gentle foam, and the bloggers’ consensus was that the texture was reminiscent of the softest scrambled eggs. The fish had been grilled to gently crisp its skin, whilst the fleshy underside remained tender, flaking off the fork as it should. And the bonus? No bones.
By this point, we were all sticking our forks into each other’s plates like old muckers, comparing each dish and making all sorts of lipsmacking sounds of gastronomic satisfaction. Engogirl’s risotto with coquilles Saint Jacques, was particularly good. Razz and I agreed that had we the opportunity to return, we’d definitely have to order it for ourselves because one small taste was definitely not enough.
Hours had passed by this point and it was beginning to get dark outside, but we still had to try the desserts. Engogirl tried the pannacotta with two coulis, Razz whizzed through a house tiramisu, and I had the chocolate mousse with crème de menthe. The mousse option arrived in a glass showing its three tidy layers. There was white cream at the bottom, a substantial amount of mousse in the middle, and a glossy cover of chocolate sauce. The surprise was the white cream. It was quite literally delicately sweetened cream with finely chopped fresh mint throughout.
After a digestif or two it was time to thank our lovely waitress, who’d suffered our foreigners’ French with great patience, and hit the road.
Opposite Sorza we checked out the gallery windows, photographing this modern take on Gustav Klimt’s women, and learning glare-avoidance techniques from Razz. Then I looked at my watch. It said 5.20pm. No. It couldn’t be. I thought it was about 4.30pm. Now I had less than an hour to get back to the Gare du Nord and catch my train. Could it be done?
In the end, we caught a metro, got lost changing at Châtelet, found the right line headed north and screeched onto a train bound for the Gare du Nord. Thankfully, when we reached the Eurostar terminal, there were hardly any queues. That, in itself, is truly miraculous.
With a sadly hurried farewell to my two Australian friends, I typically found myself in the slowest-moving customs queues, threw my bags through the x-ray machine and hoofed it down to the platform. I made it into my seat with 4 minutes to spare. Now that’s what I call timing.
Razzbuffnik and Engogirl are my kinda company. They’re feet-on-the ground with a great repertoire of anecdotes, and a love of things that rate highly on my list of passions – namely, food and travel. I wish we lived closer so that Razz could cook for me with that extra-special Weber barbecue of his and so that Engogirl could show me her dams (Engo is an dam-building engineer). For the moment, we’ll just have to be thankful for the wonderful day we shared in Paris, and for the biggest blessing we’ve discovered through blogging: new and international friends.























































