Faust

It's not often that one gets a 94% discount on Grand Tier tickets to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, so who was I to miss out? Yesterday was the last night of David McVicar's production of Gounod's Faust, a veritable all-singing, all-dancing feast of the patriotic, divine, infernal and downright macabre. Faust marked soprano Katie van Kooten's début in the role of Marguerite, the chaste heroine who falls for the protagonist's charms and is ostracized after bearing his illegitimate child. van Kooten was by far the best of the soloists, with an unforced, silky, clear voice that seemed equally comfortable throughout the range. This was a stark comparison with Piotr Beczala's Faust, who took a while to warm up and went on some very off-key excursions in Act I. Orlin Anastassov was excellent as Méphistophélès, deftly disguising his evil intentions with playful charm. Della Jones as Marthe Schwerlein was, however, a huge disappointment, with some very forced vocals and poor French.

The choruses were a highlight of the evening, all excellent and visually stunning, particularly Gloire immortelle at the start of Act IV, with shameless trooping and waving of the tricolore that had you wishing for the 1812 overture, cannons, and a fat lady singing La Marseillaise.

But the evening will be remembered for the grotesque creatures of the underworld: break-dancing demons, can-can dancers in Satan's cabaret and vulgar, slithering, spitting, tutu-wearing, ballet-dancing witches, shamelessly prancing, mooning, feigning orgies and sneering at the guilt-laden Faust in cruel mockery. The grandiose scale was facilitated by some elaborate and imaginative sets, including an on-stage cathedral organ, Marguerite's first floor balcony, and a mock Giselle set for the dancing witches.

All in all, one of the best 94% discounts you'll ever get!

Incidentally, I've been making good use of my Barbican membership, having booked tickets for six other things this week! So here are some reviews for you to look forward to:

The Gotan Project (l'Olympia Hall, Paris, Oct 5th)
Yasmin Levy (Union Chapel Islington, Oct 18th)
Qawwali Flamenco (Barbican Hall, Oct 23rd)
Madredeus (Barbican Hall, Nov 2nd)
Michel Camalo and Tomatito (Barbican Hall, Nov 15th)
Shostakovich 10 & 12, Mariinsky/Gergiev (Barbican Hall, Dec 6th)
Romeo & Juliet, Mokhwa Repertory Company (Barbican Theatre, Dec 7th)
Bach's St. John's Passion, Collegium Vocale Gent/Herreweghe (Barbican Hall, Apr 5th)
Murray Perahia (Barbican Hall, Apr 23rd)

See also:

• Faust
• opera
• Royal
• Opera
• House
• London

How to: serve a five-course French menu

You have two general options. The first, always a safe bet, is to ask your guests to bring alcohol. Lots of it. You then get them drunk on their own booze; they won't care what you serve them.

If, however, you have slightly more respect for your guests, you could offer them a decent meal. If the feeling is mutual, they may actually enjoy it and not get completely drunk. The first thing to bear in mind is that a five-course menu requires a certain sense of shamelessness. Olive oil - lots of it - butter, egg yolks, crême fraiche, whipping cream, reblochon, it's all fair game. You should, therefore, make sure that none of your guests has a weak cardiac disposition. Secondly, the broiler's for whimps. Get a blowtorch.

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

On the menu:

Melon with Savoie ham
French onion soup
Tartiflette
Grilled halibut with garlic and paprika butter, and roasted pepper salad
Orange crême brulée

Pictures courtesy of H&A.

How not to: make inside out seared tuna sushi rolls

WARNING: Do not try this at home!

Tere are some things in life that one simply shouldn't attempt. I would class the skeleton louge and encasing yourself in a water-filled sphere for a week qualify as examples of such. I can now also add making inside out seared tuna sushi rolls in this category.

You've been there. You're sitting at the sushi bar in some 'Pan-Asian' joint in Atlanta, you're watching the chef sear a piece of tuna with a blowtorch, and you're thinking: "Hey, that looks good! Actually, it doesn't look that difficult. I could try that at home. And it would give me an excuse to use that blowtorch I got for Christmas that I've never used since..."

Well you can get that thought out of your mind right now. First of all, there's a reason why trainee sushi chefs do nothing but make sushi rice for the first two years. Secondly, tuna rolls look delicious and they may look easy to do, but remember that if it all goes wrong, all you're left with is some manky bits of seared tuna, some mashed up sushi rice and a soggy sheet of nori. As I've alluded to, the rice is everything. If you get it wrong, there's no hope. Temperature and consistency are crucial, because they determine the balance between cohesion and adhesion; cohesion is good, adhesion is bad, i.e. rice sticking together, good, rice sticking all over your sushi mat, bad, bad, bad! You can guess how this story ends....... I did manage a very sorry looking set that looked more or less like a roll, if you turn your head at the right angle.

Note the short focal length used in this picture...

See also:

• Food
• Japanese
• sushi
• tuna

Tout cochon

La Maison Carrier
Le Hameau Albert 1er
38, route du Bouchet
74402 Chamonix Mont-Blanc
FRANCE
00 33 4 50530509
http://www.hameaualbert.fr/

I sincerely hope you will all appreciate the sacrifices I make to feed your vicarious culinary pleasure. You won't find many people ready to endure a 7-course pig menu (otherwise known as le cochon de la tête au pied, which if you don't know what it means, you probably don't wanna know. Let's just say that no part was left unlovingly discarded), and live to blog about it.

La Maison Carrier is the humbler of two restaurants in the Hameau Albert hotel in Chamonix (the other being Le Restaurant Gastronomique de l'Albert 1er - even the name sounds expensive). Run by 8 cooks and one pastry chef, it specializes in regional food, with a menu that changes daily. But what we were really here for was the pig menu (not to be confused with "pigs' menu", although this would also apply in my case (I wonder if a pig eating pig constitutes cannibalism, even if they belong to different species...)). One thing you should know about this menu (other than the obvious fact that it's not suitable for vegetarians): there's not a vegetable in sight (other than cornichons and potatoes, which I'm not considering as vegetables here). Anyway, pay attention now, you wouldn't want to miss a course as it rolls by!



OK, so that was:

1. Asiette de viandes
2. Crostini with some savoury brioche bread type thing
3. Terrine de foie de volaille (you wouldn't think a chicken terrine counts as pig, but it's wrapped in pig fat and baked)
4. Boudin noir (my first foray into black pudding. I must admit I've never found this a very appealing concept. Texture's a little weird, but it's actually quite tasty. Not bad at all)
5. Pied de cochon (grilled in batter)
6. Côte de porc (in a butter sauce with potatoes)
7. Asiette de fromages (this one being the only one I skipped, 'cos I don't eat cold cheese, but we won't go into that here)
8. Glace à la vanille et l'abricot
9. Buffet de desserts (the pastry chef was clearly busy at work: apple tarts, peach tarts, plum tarts, zabaglione, chocolate brownie cake...
10. Chocolats, madeleines et macarons
11. Café noisette

Hmm.... now that I count them, that's more like 11 courses. So, for 39 Euros, you certainly get your money's worth. And don't let the battered pig's trotter put you off, it's delicious!

P.S. - you'll notice I managed to work out how to get my slideshow pictures in the correct sequence, so you can enjoy each dish in the order it was meant to be eaten...

See also: France Chamonix restaurants French food pictures pig