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| The Opera Lover's Cookbook: Menus for Elegant Entertaining | 
 enlarge | Author: Francine Segan
Creators: Renee Fleming, Mark Thomas
Publisher: "Stewart, Tabori and Chang"
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $13.65
You Save: $21.35 (61%)
New (31) Used (8) from $8.72
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 465131
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 9.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 1584795360
Dewey Decimal Number: 642.4
EAN: 9781584795360
ASIN: 1584795360
Publication Date: November 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book - May have a remainder mark.
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Product Description
Great music and great food make an exhilarating duet. Taking her cues from the worlds most beloved operas, food diva Francine Segan has composed a cycle of menus that are sure to have your family and friends shouting, Brava! Bravissima!
Each chapter of Opera Lovers Cookbook presents a culinary performancean elegant five-course dinner, a brunch, a dessert party scored to a particular operatic motif or keyed to the work of a renowned composer. Operas set in SpainCarmen, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Don Giovanniare the exotic backdrop for a tapas fiesta. The far-flung locales of Puccinis La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, and Turandot inspire an eclectic international buffet. A rustic Italian dinner is orchestrated to the strains of Verdis Traviata. And Gilbert and Sullivan, of course, provide the overture for an English-style pub supper.
Sumptuously illustrated with photographs of featured dishes and lavish productions mounted by New Yorks Metropolitan Opera Company, Opera Lovers Cookbook also dispenses advice on home entertaining and on setting the scene with stunning table decor. Its more than 125 recipes include appetizers and hors doeuvres; soup, salad, fish, and pasta courses; main dishes; sweets; and thematic aperitif, cocktail, and after-dinner drinks.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Booze, not chews January 17, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book was given to me as a gift by a friend who knows that I love opera and food. I'm going to have to pass this book on, however. The recipes are impractical, goofy, and have a kind of playing-with-the-food quality to them. Every chapter starts with a long series of cocktail recipes. You get the feeling that this book is really about drinking. And these are STRONG cocktails, from the look of the recipes!
Many of the ingredients for the recipes might be hard to find even in a big city (I live near Washington, D.C.).
To give you some idea - I have a Michel Richard cookbook, and even though this great chef requires a huge amount of slicing and reorganizing of ingredients, his cookbook is more practical and realistic than this one!
But the pictures are nice, both the food pictures and the opera photos.
 Natural Synergy Between Opera and Food Realized in Sumptuously Presented Cookbook November 10, 2006
21 out of 24 found this review helpful
The connection between opera and food is such a natural that food historian Francine Segan has a field day with the lavish format of her eminently entertaining cookbook. Each chapter reflects a specific operatic work or theme (e.g., Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess", German opera) or the overall work of a legendary composer like Puccini and Mozart. From that basis, Segan offers the appropriate menu, whether it is a casual brunch, a formal five-course dinner, or in the case of Mozart, a collection of delectable sweets like Figaro's Orange Cake or Linzertorte Music Bars. The tastiest-looking recipes include the tapas inspired by Bizet's "Carmen", including Serrano Ham with Drunken Melon and Melty Manchego with Spicy-Sweet Tomato Jam, and the down-home, "Porgy and Bess"-inspired dishes like Maple Buttermilk Biscuits and Butternut Squash "Hash" with Southern Comfort.
There are over 125 recipes included, all meticulously chosen for their compatibility with the music, and Segan offers such relevant facts as how Mozart's Don Giovanni offers tapas-like nibbles throughout Act I as a means to divert attention from his philandering. In true Food Network fashion, she also provides entertainment and presentation tips to complete the picture. Moreover, to fortify the opera connection, she enlisted world-renowned soprano Renee Fleming to write the foreword and baritone Gerald Finley to act as a wine sommelier for some of the recipes. There is also a nice collection of archived photographs from past Metropolitan Opera performances to see the specific inspirations for the food, as well as loads of trivia and historical facts about the operas themselves. Mark Thomas provides the stunning culinary photographs. This book is obviously most ideal for opera lovers who aspire to become the next Martha Stewart.
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