L’Art de Bien Manger

  • An Easterly Cake

    An Easterly Cake

    We have been working hard over the Easter holidays in the upper tower room over what soon will become La Chambre Etoile. If all goes as planned it will be available for booking in late summer. I’m very much looking forward to the decorating bit, for now it was mainly stripping down old paint, restoring… Read more

  • The Jarret de Veau, also Foraged Mushrooms

    The Jarret de Veau, also Foraged Mushrooms

    It was a particularly overcast day when I cooked that jarret de veau. A jarret de veau, that’s a veal shank. To cook it right, it takes a lot of time and love and a little finesse. I was inspired by Mimi Thorisson’s recipe for poulet cooked in crème fraîche and garlic galore, as it’s… Read more

  • Window into the Past, the Gateau Sceycolais

    Window into the Past, the Gateau Sceycolais

    The other day I was desperate for an afternoon delight, not having enough time to bake one myself, I popped into the bakery in the village next door (I live in a mere hameau, a hamlet, with no shops and restaurants), because it was the only bakery open at that time (I’ll never ever get… Read more

  • Confessions and the Sea

    Confessions and the Sea

    Quite recently I stumbled across a website advertising a very cool project, to do with art and culture and a French chateau, so inspiring, but then I read that I was encouraged to choose an eco friendly way to travel there and that I could ask the hosts about carbon offset programmes. I don’t know… Read more

  • Oh Kitchen

    Oh Kitchen

    The kitchen is the heart and soul of the house, at least where I come from. Our old farm houses are typically rectangular with four rooms per floor with a built-in tiled oven in the middle of the house. It’s fired up from the kitchen stove, its biggest part reaches into the parlour. Regular meals… Read more

  • Lent

    Lent

    It’s Lent. This is the forty days between Carnival and Easter, when, in an attempt to purify one’s soul and body, one is to abstain from all earthly delights and eat cabbage soup. Forty days of cabbage soup. And water. And stale bread. Or in other words, purgatory. Though I believe, at least concerning the… Read more