In our house, sherry is one of those Christmas staples: somehow the holiday just wouldn’t be the same without a taste of the stuff. This year, I’ve followed some Harveys suggestions to update our sherry repertoire. Sherry on the rocks with a squeeze of fresh orange (just a small squeeze, mind you!), garnished with a…
Category: food
Day of the Dead Layer Dip
We’ve made it through Hallowe’en, pumpkin carving and small ghouls with treat buckets haunting the neighbourhood, so what comes next? The Mexican equivalent, El Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, celebrated on 1st November. Here’s a Mexican Layer Dip that I feed to certain hungry Mexican food-lovers I know when Mexican holidays…
The Crevette’s First Christmas
Christmas 2013 will be rather special in the Epic household for it will be our first with a baby: the Crevette. It may seem early to be gearing up for this but I find that with a very small, dependent person around, everything takes a lot longer than usual. (It just took over half an…
Bonjour, French Food!
It’s sometimes surprising to think of London as France’s sixth biggest city, with a French population greater than centres like Bordeaux or Nantes. With so many French people living here, Monsieur included, there’s a definite demand for French food to stave off their homesickness for familiar edibles. Factor in a large population of Francophiles and…
Hotel La Coupe d’Or, Lisieux
Monsieur, the Crevette and I were driving south through Normandy when Lisieux, the pilgrimage town where Sainte Thérèse of Lisieux lived, popped up before us, just in time for lunch. We had a pleasant arrival in the small, sloped town, circumnavigating pretty roundabouts, one with a giant Norman apple as its centrepiece, and being the…
A Bun in the Oven
I haven’t posted on Epicurienne in months. Ten months to be precise. As I write this it is slowly, with my left hand only. No, I didn’t lose an arm; I did the longest cooking to date in my lifetime and baked a baby. She’s sitting here on my lap, gripping onto her father’s ancient…
Chez Bruce
On a recent Sunday, as the sun cast a gentle glow over the lazy autumn day, a group of us walked to Chez Bruce, the Michelin-starred restaurant on Bellevue Road by London’s lush Wandsworth Common. Now that we’re domiciled in the Sarf London ‘hood, it was time to check out this south-western stalwart of the cuisine scene, established in 1995 by the restaurant’s namesake, Bruce Poole,…
High Tea with G&T at Le Meridien Piccadilly
High Tea is a quintessentially English tradition, introduced by Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, to maintain one’s aristocratic blood sugar levels between an early luncheon and dinner served late into the evening. The tradition caught on rapidly, developed with the Earl of Sandwich’s then-revolutionary idea to place fillings between slices of bread, and is now…
A London Art-U-Cation with Le Meridien at Frieze
A luxury hotel, lashings of fine dining and a whirlwind of contemporary art? Chez Epicurienne, that’s what I call a killer combination that I’d be happy to dive into on any day of the week. Courtesy of the Le Méridien hotel group, I was recently invited to partake of just such a tantalising synthesis of…
Courvoisier Packs a Punch at our Autumn Party
Having spent the better part of this year looking for a house, finding one, moving and carrying out any number of related activities, Monsieur and I have finally been able to introduce our new home to family and friends. At last we have our own little garden and room for a barbecue, so Monsieur has…
This Little Piggy Went to Market – in La Rochelle
Doing the daily shop, French-style. These aubergines are shinier than a militia man’s boots. The lobster tank was looking a bit empty. I suspect there’d been a rush on lobster for cooling summer seafood platters. This little piggy went to market, to hang out next to his brothers who are now a pair of delicious dried sausages….
The Salade Not-so-Nicoise
World over, there are many versions of the Salade Niçoise and much debate over what constitutes the correct serving of this classic dish. Purists insist that no cooked component should be added, apart from the tuna itself, and even then the tuna is either optional or tinned (not in MY kitchen). As you can see from the title of…
Epicurienne 