Stay
MIJE Hostel: even if you’re old or going through puberty. In the Marais, central, clean, cheapish, en suite showers in private rooms, breakfast included
Mama Shelter: pricey goodness. In the 20th near Pere Lachaise. Designed by Philippe Starck.

Do
Swim: summertime thing (bathing caps obligatory, boardshorts not allowed at French pools). Go to Roger Le Gall pool by walking there along the amazing Promenade Plantee.
Palais de Tokyo: contemporary art space and restaurant and cooking school. Open noon-midnight. Be there early before the hipster restaurant and bar is packed out.
Place des Vosges: picnic, sunbathe, gawk.
The Seine: join the locals by taking a picnic and drinks down to the banks of the Seine at sunset. Around Ile Saint-Louis especially.
Markets: St Ouen flea markets are big, expensive and lame except for eyeing antiques, but it’s still worth a look (and you can walk up to Sacre Coeur afterwards). Enfants Rouges is a nice little enclosed food market at the top of the Marais.
Invalides and Rodin Museum: both worth seeing. Quite an OK baguette from the Rodin cafe.
Pere Lachaise: cemetery with famous dead folk. Get a map for 2 euro from the entrance nearest the Metro stop, you’ll need it.
Louvre: on Fridays 6-10pm under 25s get in free.
Notre Dame: 7.45am is the best time to go, there’s hardly anyone there and there’s a mass at 8am.
Pompidou: scope out hotties at Georges restaurant while you take in the great views from the 6th floor but forget about eating there. Downstairs you can skip the lines and the admission fee to the permanent collection by catching the Georges elevator (to the left of the main entrance) and simply get out on the 4th or 5th floor.
Eiffel Tower: going up it is for chumps. Great views of it from the opposite river bank near Palais de Tokyo.
Institut Monde Arabe & Pantheon: good Latin Quarter architecture tour.

Move
Velib: super cheap city-wide bike hire scheme. Need to have a credit card with a microchip.
Metro: buy a booklet of tickets from the touchscreen outlets.
Walking: wear comfortable shoes, don’t be a fashiony douche, seriously.

Drink
Minibar: Marais, next to the Seine. Cool kids.
La Belle Hortense: Marais, Jewish quarter. Cool oldies. Bookish wine bar.
Cafe Charlot: Marais, north side. Definite hipster vibe.

Eat
Rose Bakery: 30 rue de Belleyme, Marais. British brunch spot. We went there on a Sunday. Has its own Phaion book, pricey but delicious fresh stuff and very nice to sit in.
Le Taxi Jaune: 13 rue Chapon, Marais. The chef is awesome. It’s a bistro vibe with haute cuisine pedigree. Around 40 euro per person for meal with wine. Serves a great horse dish.
Traiteur Marocain: at the Enfants Rouges markets. Great mint tea and kefta tajine (meatballs, tomato, eggplant and egg).
Pozzetto: 39 rue du Roi de Sicile, Marais. Berthillon may be the old king of ice cream (31 rue Saint-Louis en l’Ile) but Pozzetto is the upstart north Italian prince that will one day rule.
Felafel: all of the Jewish quarter does perfectly decent felafel. But after trying four places L’As du Felafel came out on top.
Legay Choc: 45 rue Sainte Croix de la Bretonnerie. Specialists in crafting cock-and-balls-shaped patisseries and breads. Kitsch value massive.
Cheese and Baguette: find a good local boulangerie and fromagerie and dive in. Suggestions include Reblochon and Brie de Meaux but go for what you feel like. There’s a great boulangerie for baguettes called Tout Autour du Pain at 134 rue de Turenne

Shop
Colourette: Marais clothing and jewellery shop with its own designs.
Springcourt: France’s long-standing answer to Converse. Better foot support, not available much outside France.
Vielle du Temple and elsewhere in Marais: more shops than you can afford to buy stuff at. Great to wander through. Check all the laneways.
Sales: July – August is the time for massive sales across Paris. Earlier = more stock. Later = second round of discounts.

Other
Though we didn’t have a chance to explore it, the area around Belleville in the 20th arrondissement is the next Marais. Check it out.

Somehow I’d managed never to cook pork in anything but mince form until this dish. But with pork being the only readily available meat at the Bretenoux markets, I had to come up with something to sate our carnivorous urges. Et voilà!

Serves 2

6 baby carrots, peeled
2 scallions or spring onions, halved lengthways
500g kipfler potatoes, peeled
50g butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1 leek, sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
cup of stock (vegetable or chicken)
8 sage leaves
2 pork loin chops

Place scallions and carrots on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, season and roast in a medium-hot oven (the scallions will obviously start to caramelise much faster than the carrots, keep an eye on them).

On the stove, boil kipflers in salted water until just tender (10 min). Meanwhile, heat half the butter and half the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat, add the leek and half the garlic and cook until tender (5 minutes).

Also meanwhile, heat the remaining butter and olive oil in a frying pan, add the sage leaves and fry until starting to crisp. Remove the sage leaves to a bowl and add remaining garlic. Once the garlic has become slightly golden, remove it to the bowl as well. You should now have some happy sage and garlic-infused fat in the pan. Fry the pork in it to your desired state of doneness.

Back with the vegetables, drain the potatoes and add them to the leek, coarsely crushing them with a wooden spoon, cook until golden (5-6 minutes). Add the stock and cook until almost fully reduced, season to taste and keep warm.

Plate up as shown, garnishing with crispy sage leaves and garlic.

* I was improvising and amending on the go, so measurements and timings are approximate. *

When do you know you’ve arrived? In Sweden, it was the first crunch of snow underfoot in the Landvetter carpark and air so cold it could bite your face off. In Borneo, it was the hot, clinging humidity in the air bridge. In Greece, it was the undeniable whiff of cheap aftershave mixed with dubious fiscal policies. This time, at Charles de Gaulle airport, it wasn’t the 150cm-tall policewoman with an 80cm-long assault rifle or the 50 centimes toilets, it was the sudden and instinctive loss of muscular tension at the gentle touch of 7am sunshine on a 30° day.

Today is Bastille Day and I wasn’t meant to be indoors. I’d planned to join a Finnish artist and a bunch of others on a 44km walk that would spiral through the centre of Paris’ numbered arrondissements, from the 20th to the 1st. Unfortunately, getting up at 5am to do so proved untenable after a sleeplessly muggy night listening to mosquitoes, firecrackers and general revelling. But more on that anon.

The first week here in France was spent in and around the Dordogne Valley. Two short wogs, père et fils, had the run of a cottage in the little village of Carennac in a part of France famed for its truffles, its foie gras and its history of cardiovascular disease. And when in Rome … so, much of our time in Carennac was spent lowering our fitness, raising our cholesterol and otherwise pushing strongly for a bout of gout.

Being at the Lot end of the Dordogne, rather than the more touristed Perigord, the local markets at Bretenoux were truly local and it soon became clear that the only person importing anything from outside the valley was the fromageur. Thus we found sustenance in stone fruits and berries, potato and leek, lettuce and tomato, pork and more pork, a little bit of extra pork, and quantities of cheese that I’m still digesting a week later (for those playing at home: Brie de Meaux, Tomme d’Estaing, Tomme de Savoie and Bethmale Vache, plus the pale, fatty goodness of Beurre des Charentes Grand Cru).

In between cooking, eating and watching the World Cup, we did manage somehow to raise our fatted arses from their rustic thrones and career around the winding roads to sightsee and the like. The region is unimpeachably lovely in the summer, with the humid heat making every inch of soil sprout a bounty of lush, chirping undergrowth beneath the enormous walnut and oak trees that forest the hills. Popping up every few kilometres are villages of old stone houses, sometimes lovingly restored to uberquaint perfection by Brits, sometimes pragmatically repaired with unbecoming cinder blocks by the locals, and occasionally refitted with glassy appendages by Germans. However, while the place is far from untouched, the narrow roads and lack of amenities keep the tourist buses away and the town squares humming with children and tractors rather than American accents.

I can’t claim to have seen a single tractor on the streets of Paris though. Tanks, fighter jets and other military miscellany, on the other hand, are in great supply today on the Champs Elysées — as are puffy dignitaries and very wet spectators. As the rain beats down and the lightning strikes, some of the baking heat trapped in the city’s cobbles and facades is being washed into the Seine to everyone’s relief.

As has become tradition when we’re in Paris, John and I have been startling council workers and homeward-bound drunkards by jogging the boulevards at 6am. The temperature is clement, the footpaths free, the smell of piss demure, and the city is almost entirely asleep. Indeed, it can be said quite definitively that Paris is not a morning person. Plenty of places don’t open til 11 and it can even be hard to get a baguette before 9. To top it off, my favourite new find, the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art space, restaurant, cooking school and general cool factory, is open from noon to midnight every day of the year. Yes, please!

Once the city gets going, the Marais, where we’re staying, bristles with the heady mix of people that comes from it being the orthodox Jewish quarter, the gay and lesbian quarter, the French hipster quarter and the young-american-with-a-trust-fund quarter. And, while I was loving the locavore cooking in Carennac, it’s nice to be back somewhere where terms like couscous, kibbeh, pho and polyunsaturated are used more commonly.

Ah, but now, the rain has paused. Perhaps only briefly. Or perhaps I’ll join the walkers when they get to the 10th.

This year’s Adelaide Festival was awash with dialectical entanglements: cultures melding, disciplines merging, texts colluding. The artist takes the given and makes it new or, in some cases, newish.

vs macbeth

In Vs Macbeth, the given is William Shakespeare. And the new is danger. The Sydney Theatre Company’s Residents and Adelaide’s own Border Project teamed up for this new work that sought to reimagine Macbeth through the accidents that have made it the superstition-laden “Scottish play” that it is. The conceit is honourable. After all, the dangers of theatre can be very real. Performing it and witnessing it can be like walking along a cliff top backwards. Yet, this production never raises a solitary hair.

The problem is not in conception, but in realisation. From the outset, there is an undeniable whiff of Occupational Health and Safety, from the high visibility jackets to the yellow hazard tape. Yes, they mark the space as perilous, but they are also measures designed to dampen the unexpected and to ward off danger. If anything, they mark this theatre as eminently safe and flag in fluorescent clarity the fact that we should be prepared for things to go safely awry. When paintball guns are brought out for every death scene, so too is a cumbersome protective curtain of cyclone fencing meant only to protect the front row from pink shrapnel. Suspense? No, thanks.

The lack of tension in the space is only compounded by the bathos exerted by a series of interruptions—a missed entrance, a hurt hand. The sporadic nature of the interruptions suggests an unwillingness to commit wholly to the conceit, though it must be said that some of the actors commit themselves to the text beautifully. Indeed, it is the half-heartedness of the reimagining which is most problematic. The central melody here is still Shakespeare’s voice but the counterpoint is little more than an embarrassed suggestion of revolt, leaving even the erstwhile iconoclasts in the audience yearning for tights and doublets (the lycra-hungry had to head to Back to Back’s Food Court for their fix (RT 92, p42).

the sound and the fury

Fittingly, there wasn’t an inch of spandex to be seen at Elevator Repair Service’s staging of April Seventh, 1928, the first part of William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and The Fury. The company is familiar to these shores. Last year’s six-hour Gatz [RT91, p43], saw them transpose the entirety of The Great Gatsby to the stage. In that work, the dialectical frisson between the forms of prose and theatre was a little elusive—the vastness of Fitzgerald’s text was inflected by the joy of reading it rather than the thrall of deconstructing it.

In The Sound and The Fury, a newer work, there is a sense that director John Collins and his ensemble are developing their modus operandi. Again the text is read from the novel but this time not its entirety. Again the text swirls about in a non-literal mise en scène but seeks now to represent the world of the novel rather than an anonymous backdrop. And again the narrative voice propels the text forward along with dialogue but this time it is complemented by projected surtitles that swing our attention in a different way to the written quality of the language. These changes, along with the more stylistically demanding source, serve to make this a far more complex and concentrated production than the sprawling, durational transparency of Gatz.

Remarkably, despite its complexity, the sense of theatrical storytelling and its grounding in prose is rarely lost. The disorienting carousel of actors and characters manifests the chronological jumps of Faulkner’s prose but also produces a fractured perspective, a kaleidoscopic confusion of glimpses into the Compson household that are as rowdy and shabby as the characters themselves. Amongst this kinetic frenzy of staging and the odd Woosterish dance interlude, Collins has wisely left room for moments of transcendent stasis, when the text, projected, is allowed to speak for itself. Yet these moments work not only because of the strength of Faulkner’s writing but also because of the strength of the theatrical text around it—Hegelian synthesis at its finest.

be your self

Across town at Her Majesty’s, Australian Dance Theatre was premiering its latest work, Be Your Self, an investigation of the body-mind compact inspired by the work of 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume. As director Garry Stewart notes in the program, Hume’s A Treatise on Human Nature suggests that humans are “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” This quotation is almost a pithy précis for the show itself.

It begins with a clinically white and vast stage. As a dancer slowly and meticulously begins to ripple movement up from the floor, through the feet and into the legs, another performer speaks an impressively detailed, thorough and ceaseless description of the neurobiological processes involved in what the dancer is doing. It is an inspired overture that deftly introduces the two disciplines that inform this work: science and dance. The former is taxonomical and exhaustive, the latter expressive and essential. If we were to think of them linguistically, science is the langue and dance the parole.

Unfortunately, the promise of the beginning is not maintained throughout. The piece itself sets out to be somehow analogous to the erratic nature of our human thoughts and physicality, but it feels instead like a physical illustration of the text we heard at the beginning without further development or consideration. The rhythms are punchy, the soundtrack is banging, the lights are in full wizardry mode but the result is a continuation of the clinically detached aesthetic of the start, without any of the discoveries that merit the scientific method, making for a surprisingly joyless experience.

Nevertheless, there is consolation to be had in the uber-athletic performances of the ensemble. The ADT dancers are surely some of the most muscular in the world and their broad shoulders and tendency towards explosive piston-like movement is displayed here to great effect. The set by New York architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro is largely circumstantial until the very end, when a wide ramp set at 45 degrees is rolled to the front of the stage. As carefully designed animations are projected onto the surface of the ramp, isolated sections of bodies emerge through its weave, swimming in a protean liquid of colours and swirls. It is an assured finish and a striking image, but it is simply the final element in a “collection of different perceptions” that, combined, paint a very cold, distant and unwelcoming sense of what it is to be human.

ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (wrong skin)

A much warmer, though hardly uncomplicated vision of humanity was to be had at Her Majesty’s a fortnight later with the premiere of Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin), which teamed Elcho Islands’ Chooky Dancers with director Nigel Jamieson.

The Chooky Dancers, like Justin Bieber, Susan Boyle and the Back Dorm Boys, came to fame on YouTube. In a dark gym hall they danced to a remix of Zorba the Greek in a unique hybrid of dance vocabularies—part Yolngu, part hip hop, part disco, part Busby Berkeley. The cultural provenance of their performance is breathtakingly complicated, but unadulterated joy and immediacy are the key to its appeal. Existing in a geographically isolated community that, thanks to modern telecommunications, can consume an entire world of creative influences, the Chooky Dancers made manifest postmodern intertextuality not as an ironic exercise in form but as a fundamental expression of self.

Jamieson’s attempt to build on the Chookies’ self-expression and foster it into a piece of theatrical storytelling is an unenviably difficult but worthy undertaking. The director chooses to use the complex Yolngu moiety laws as the basis for a forbidden-love story, with overt references to West Side Story along the way. This gives him a straightforward narrative hook on which to hang various dance sequences and video montages of life on Elcho Island, but it also imposes a stifling rhythm on proceedings and creates a strange tension: are the performers co-creators or merely the subjects of the work? Occasionally, it even reveals the technical shortcomings of the dancers when they are required to step out of their own style. At other times though, the show is a brilliant populist work that sheds light on an oft-overlooked part of our country, and the charisma and pleasure of the performers is disarming and contagious. Indeed, whether it be the Zorba or a riff on a Bollywood dance scene, the most engaging moments are those in which the mechanics of the theatre step out of the way and allow the Chookies to simply do their thing.

This article originally appeared in print in RealTime issue #97 June-July 2010 pg. 4-5, and is reproduced with permission. http://www.realtimearts.net/article/97/9852

Serves 8 – 12

500g fresh strawberries, hulled
500g seedless watermelon
juice of 1 large lemon
up to 200g icing sugar
60ml ouzo
mint leaves to garnish (optional)

In a food processor, blitz all of the ingredients (except for the mint) at a slow speed until it’s a smooth liquid and check for sweetness. For an unfussy granita, pour into tupperware and place in the freezer for a few hours before removing and stirring. Depending on the temperature of your freezer and how soon you’ll be serving the granita, you’ll need to play around with if and when to fridge or freeze it. For a sorbet, pour the mixture into an ice cream machine and churn according to instructions. Serve in short glasses with a mint leaf.

Another late summer essential is tomato sauce. I’m not talking condiment here, I’m talking sugo. Until now, I’d been well-versed in the old blanche, peel, blitz and boil methodology (deseeding was tiresome). It took an Englishman with floppy hair to suggest otherwise (this one) and it seems quite a useful way of doing things. He prefers using lovely heirloom varieties, but what’s in big supply in SA right now are Romas. I’ve done it in two different ways, both with excellent if divergent results. One yielded a rich roast tomato purée that I used as the basis and liquid for a quinoa and vegetable melange, the other made a rustic tomato base for a pasta sauce.

Method 1: purée

Makes about a litre depending on tomatoes

1.5kg Roma tomatoes
2 cloves Australian garlic, crushed with some salt
freshly ground black pepper
50ml extra virgin olive oil

Cut tomatoes in half and place in a baking tray with cut side up. Splash on the other ingredients then roast in 180°C oven for 35-45 minutes, until soft, browning and oozing. Remove, allow to cool slightly, then rub the tray contents through a sieve, discarding the seeds and skin that get left behind.

Quinoa pilaf

Quinoa is à la mode right now with its whole urfood thing going for it, so who am I to skip it.

Serves 3-4

1 quantity of the above tomato purée
1 cup dry quinoa
a big splash of extra virgin olive oil
1 onion
2 carrots, sliced (optional)
1 red capsicum, cut in chunks (optional)
2 small zucchini, cut in chunks (optional)

Heat the oil in a heavy-based saucepan and gently fry the onion until soft. Add the carrots and capsicum (if using) and then a few minutes later add the quinoa and tomato purée. Stir well and simmer. The quinoa should take around 15min to soften (the white ‘tails’ become more prominent) so add the zucchini (or any other vegetables you might be using instead) as required.

Method 2: sugo

Makes just over a litre depending on tomatoes

1.5kg Roma tomatoes
2 cloves Australian garlic, crushed with some salt
freshly ground black pepper
50ml extra virgin olive oil
a mixed bunch of parsley, basil and oregano leaves

Cut tomatoes in half and place in a baking tray with cut side up. Splash on the other ingredients then roast in 180°C oven for 35-45 minutes, until soft, browning and oozing. Remove, allow to cool slightly, then blitz it all in a food processor. The result should be a thick, rich, slightly smoky sugo that’s a perfect base for strong tomato sauces like puttanesca or amatriciana.

Rampant basil in the garden is one summer glut that’s always welcome. Basil pesto makes sense at no other time. Recipes don’t really differ that markedly, but this one is based on Tessa Kiros’ Tuscan recipe in Twelve. I’d usually use pine nuts but since they’ve reached $100/kg, I decided to swap in some macadamia nuts that were loitering with intent in the pantry. If you have patience and a big mortar and pestle, pound away for that extra flavour, otherwise blitz it up in a food processor. Use immediately or refrigerate it with a layer of olive oil on top in a tight container.

1/2 cup macadamias
1/4 cup walnuts
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 fat cloves of Australian garlic, crushed
60g pecorino, grated
90g parmesan, grated (grate extra for serving on pasta)
as much basil as you can fit in your food processor (2-3 large bunches)

Lightly toast the nuts in a pan. Then pound or blitz it all to a coarse paste.

Why anyone buys tzatziki is beyond me. If push comes to shove, you can make it with nothing more than yoghurt, cucumber and garlic and still have it taste better than the bought stuff. I never really measure anything while I make it because I enjoy tasting it to see how it’s shaping up, so treat this as a guide.

Serves 8 as a meze

2 cloves of Australian garlic
a sprinkle of salt
1 Lebanese cucumber, peeled and coarsely grated
extra virgin olive oil (optional)
juice of half a lemon
around 750g Greek yoghurt
small handful of mint (or dill), finely chopped

Peel and finely chop the garlic. On the cutting board, sprinkle salt over the garlic and then use the flat of the knife to mash it into a paste. Having grated the cucumber, squeeze the water out of it between the palms of your hand or in a sieve. Place the garlic paste and drained cucumber in a bowl and mix well with a fork. I add a splash of seriously good extra virgin olive oil at this stage because I like the grassiness it adds, but don’t do it unless it’s oil good enough to take intravenously. Add two thirds of the yoghurt and a splash of the lemon juice and mix well. Taste (a subjective thing, but check for the balance between the garlic’s heat, the yoghurt’s cool and the lemon’s acidity). Add the rest of the yoghurt and lemon juice to taste. Add the mint, mix and taste again. Refrigerate or serve with bread to dip or as an accompaniment to a meal, especially something like roast lamb.

Serves 2

1 clove of Australian garlic
half teaspoon salt
juice of 1 lemon
60ml extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper

4 ripe tomatoes
1 Lebanese cucumber
half a red capsicum
half a red onion (or half a cup spring onion)
a few leaves of cos lettuce (optional)
half a cup parsley leaves
half a cup mint leaves
half a large Turkish pide

Make the dressing first. Crush the garlic into a measuring cup or jar and add the salt. Stir together into a paste and then add the lemon juice, oil and pepper. Stir to emulsify.

Chop tomatoes, cucumber and capsicum into chunks. Roughly shred the lettuce and finely chop the onion. Cut the pide open horizontally and place under the grill until lightly browned. Cut the toasted bread into bite-sized chunks. Finely chop the parsley and mint and toss all the above with the dressing in a large bowl.

Sometimes the lure of a minimal ingredient list really gets the better of me. This comes (barely adapted) from the River Cafe Cook Book and the brevity of it was appealing but I can’t say it’s something I’m going to make again. Not that it didn’t turn out well — it’s just insanely rich, quite stupidly expensive to make and essentially a great big flavoursome wad of fat on a plate (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Anyway, if that seems like a fun night out rather than Type II diabetes, carry on!

Serves 16 at least

400g bitter chocolate, broken into pieces*
900ml double cream, at room temperature**
cocoa for dusting

Line a 25cm cake tin with Glad wrap (if it’s a spring form, all the better). Slowly melt the chocolate in a bowl over simmering water. Don’t stir the chocolate and don’t let the bowl touch the water. Thanks to a coolish ambient temperature, the top of my chocolate stubbornly retained the shape of the pieces even though it was melted and the rest was liquid underneath. Rather than stirring the chocolate, I simply pierced the top ‘skin’ with a skewer to check that the chocolate was liquid underneath. Once liquid, allow the chocolate to cool ever so slightly. Meanwhile, whip the cream in a large bowl until it can form very soft peaks (be careful not to over do it). Add a large spoonful of the whipped cream to the bowl of chocolate and fold in quickly until there are no white streaks visible. Then quickly transfer the contents of the chocolate bowl into the bowl of whipped cream and fold everything together. You should have a lustrous milk-chocolate-coloured batter to pour into the lined cake tin. Chill for at least 2 hours, then invert onto a plate or do a sneaky slide and pray if you have a spring form to get the top looking all swirly like I did. Dust with cocoa and cut with a sharp knife.

* I went with good 70% cocoa Fair Trade stuff … there’s no point skimping on quality when there’s only two ingredients at work.
** none of that half-arsed thickened cream, this is all about having at least 50g of fat per 100g serving … check the “nutrition” information on the cream tubs.