Haute cuisine (French: literally "high food", pronounced: [ot kɥi.zin]) or Grande cuisine refers to the cuisine of "high level" establishments, gourmet restaurants and luxury hotels in France. Haute cuisine is characterized by meticulous preparation and careful presentation of food, at a high price level, accompanied by rare wines.
Haute cuisine was characterised by French cuisine in elaborate preparations and presentations served in small and numerous courses that were produced by large and hierarchical staffs at the grand restaurants and hotels of Europe.
The 17th century chef and writer La Varenne marked a change from cookery known in the Middle Ages, to somewhat lighter dishes, and more modest presentations. In the following century, Antonin Carême, born in 1784, also published works on cooking, and although many of his preparations today seem extravagant, he simplified and codified an earlier and even more complex cuisine.
Georges Auguste Escoffier is a central figure in the modernisation of haute cuisine as of about 1900, which became known as cuisine classique. The 1960s were marked by the appearance of nouvelle cuisine, as chefs rebelled from Escoffier's "orthodoxy" and complexity. Within 20 years, however, chefs began returning to the earlier style of haute cuisine, although many of the new techniques remained.
Catherine Frot is a theatre and film actress born in Paris, France on 1 May 1956.
Her surname is pronounced with a silent 't', as in 'to and fro'.
The daughter of an engineer and a mathematics teacher, Frot demonstrated comic traits and expressions at an early age. At the age of fourteen, she enrolled in the Versailles conservatory while still in school. By 1974, she began her education at the Rue Blanche school and afterwards took up full-time studies at the conservatory.
In 1975, she demonstrated her talent at the Festival d'Avignon in the Compagnie du Chapeau Rouge which she founded with the help of others. From then on, Catherine put all her energy into theatre performances in roles such as the Présidente de Tourvel in the play Les Liaisons dangereuses in 1987. She performed in a number of classical plays such as La Cerisaie, directed by Peter Brook in 1982, and La Mouette directed by Pierre Pradinas in 1985. She also received the Theatrical Critic Award in 1983 for her role in Jean Bouchot's C'était comment déjà ?.
Natalia Keery-Fisher (born 15 August 1986) is an English singer-songwriter, actress, and director who performs under the stage name Natalia Kills. She released her debut album, Perfectionist, in 2011.
Kills was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, to an Afro-Jamaican father and Uruguayan mother, where she attended Bradford Girls' Grammar School. In addition, she studied classical drama at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She stated in a post on her blog on social website, MySpace that she grew up flying between London and Florida, where she had relatives, resulting in a mixed American and English accent.
Kills made her acting debut at age 9 in 1995 in New Voices. She had a regular role as Sima on the TV sitcom All About Me and also played Amy Franks in the BBC's long-running radio drama The Archers. She began writing songs at 14, some of which were featured in films and television shows, including Bring It On 4, Sleepover, Just My Luck, and Entourage. After finishing with The Archers in 2003, Kills began pursuing a music career and attributes her musical breakthrough to winning a Radio 1 MC Battle in Leeds under the name "Candy Rapper" in 2003. She signed to the UK record company Adventures in Music and released her first single "Don't Play Nice" under the name Verbalicious in February 2005. Kills' told W that her childhood nickname from her mother was "Verbal" because she talked and sang a lot. She adopted the name and variations of it as her stage name at some points during her career.