The Recipe Project A Delectable Extravaganza of Food and Music

by Hearst, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781936787005
• ISBN10: 1936787008
• Format: Package
• Copyright: 2011-10-11
• Publisher: Catapult

Summary

A quirky cross-pollination of food and music, featuring interviews with famous chefs, lyrical essays by well-known writers, and charming graphics. The accompanying CD by One Ring Zero introduces musical versions of the chefs' recipes, sung word for word.

Author Biography

One Ring Zero (songs) has released nine albums including the acclaimed literary collaboration As Smart As We Are. They've performed at Central Park Summer Stage, The Kennedy Center, and been featured on This American Life, Fresh Air, and Morning Edition.

Interviews and Recipes: Mario Batali (Babbo, Eataly, Lupa, Iron Chef), John Besh (August), David Chang (Momofuku), Tom Colicchio (Craft, Gramercy Tavern, Top Chef), Chris Cosentino (Incanto, Boccalone, Food Network), Mark Kurlansky (author Cod, Salt), Isa Chandra Moskowitz (Post Punk Kitchen), Andrea Reusing (Lantern), Aaron Sanchez (Chefs vs. City), Michael Symon (Iron Chef, Lola)

Essays: John T. Edge (introduction – New York Times, All Things Considered), Matthew Amster-Burton (Hungry Monkey), Melissa Clark (In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite), Jonathan Dixon (Beaten, Seared, and Sauced), Tanya Donelly (The Breeders, Belly), JJ Goode (Food & Wine), Emily Kaiser Thelin (Food & Wine), Christine Muhlke (Bon Appetit), Michael Harlan Turkell (The New Brooklyn Cookbook), Michelle Wildgen (Tin House), Kara Zuaro (I Like Food, Food Tastes Good)

Leigh Newman (editor) is the author of the memoir Still Points North (Dial/Random House). Her travel, food and culture articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Travel Holiday, Conde Nast Concierge, Brides and elsewhere.

Michael Hearst (editor) is a founding member of the band One Ring Zero.

Excerpts

David Chang: Fried Chicken, David Bowie, and Girlfriends who likeDesperate Housewives.

David Chang is chef and owner of Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ko, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, and Ma Peche in New York City. Famous for his pork buns and soft serve, Chang takes no reservations except for parties of six who promise to order a whole pork belly or triple-fried Korean chicken. He is the author of theMomofukucookbook and appeared inTimemagazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2010.


RP: Let’s say you weren’t a chef—how many months of your life could you lose to music?

DC: I have almost 2 years worth of continuous music on my computer. A lot of it comes from the restaurant—managers from bands come in and they're like, “Oh you're playing the band I represent!” and slide me some CDs. So my collection is a massive weird mix of stuff.

RP: And you make your own playlists, right? How’d you come up with the bizarre mix of Nina Simone and Smokey Robinson for La Peche, your newest place in midtown Manhattan?

DC: We started playing music for cooks, not the customers! At Noodle Bar, we used to blast it just to keep awake. Really loud music is great to cook to, but it’s weird because customers notice it, and pay more attention to the music than the food.

RP: You’ve got a kind of rock ‘n roll crowd—when bands come into the restaurant, do you make a point to play their music?

DC: No! No no no, I make sure we don’t play their music while they’re there, it’s embarrassing. And my other rule—we don’t bother people. As wait staff, we have aspiring musicians and actors, and I will kill them if they approach anybody.

RP: Which brings us to your temper. What's the worst temper tantrum you've ever thrown?

DC: I should be in jail. I literally black out in rage. It's like temporary insanity. It's bad for my health, so I haven't gotten mad – that mad—in a long time. Especially now that I'm rarely working service. Service is what kills me. On my feet, on the line. I just can't do the stress and perfectionism. I just want to make stuff.

RP: Let’s get pissed off now. What the fuck is wrong with food in America?

DC: With food, I love the very things I hate. Take comfort food. I think it's great if some restaurants do it, but again, if every restaurant's serving meat loaf and mashed potatoes and biscuits, it’s boring. I call that staff meal-ization. My chefs will go out to a restaurant and think, “This is our fuckin' staff meal! This is what we cook ourselves, between shifts!” I hate that sort of dumbing down of the culinary world.

RP: Do you think the same thing is happening with music—it’s getting dumbed down?

DC: I'm sort of disenchanted with the current music scene. For example, someone just told me, “I love Kings of Leon.” I was, like, (dumbfounded expression). I'm not a musician, but I feel like the musicianship in music has disappeared. The artistry. I hate Top 40. Then again, it's so easy to slam Britney Spears. Sometimes it takes me years to appreciate something. I wasn’t a huge Eminem fan until I actually listened to his stuff, and I was, like, wow—he’s extraordinarily talented.

RP: What about you—how do you compose your dishes? Some are so original, like cereal milk—toasted cornflakes steeped in milk, then strained—the milk is left with just a hint of salty sweet. How’d you come up with that?

DC: Right now, we have a lab where I spend most of my time. We want simple. Clear. We want a dish where people are like, Fuck! Why didn't I do that? It's so easy! As a team, we’ve reached a point of saturation, not so different with music, where it's like….what do you do when everything's been done?
So we're focusing on things like rice. How can we get a better understanding of, say, a rice noodle, by making it from scratch without a stabilizer and high-tech machinery? By putting a creative limit or ceiling on what we can do, it forces us to really push the envelope.

RP: Would you say cooking requires artistry? Is it even an art?

DC: It's a mixture of craft and art. It can be an art depending on how pretentious you want it to be. That’s not the problem. It’s the entertainment side of the business that you want to watch out for. There’s real distinction between an entertainer and a chef. I've said some terrible things about Guy Fieri (fromMinute to Win,and on the Food Network). I said I'd throw him down the stairs and kill him. I said I’d throw him down again to make sure. My oldest brother was like, “How can you make fun of Guy Fieri? He wears a wristband in honor of his son.” And I was like, “If it really mattered that much to him, he wouldn't fucking tell anybody! It'd be just between him and his son.” (laughs)

This whole thing is a marketing ploy. Is it great for food? No, I don't think so. Then again, people do what they have to do. Take Rachael Ray. Rachael Ray busts her ass. She never proclaimed she was a chef, not once. People wanna hate on her because she's massive—I used to be one of them. But Rachael Ray is fucking nice.

RP: If you went out to see a band and had a few beers—okay 10 beers, what do you want to eat on the stumble home?

DC: My guilty drunken pleasure is chicken fingers. There's something about the fried chicken finger. We’re serving fried chicken at Noodle Bar—whole, no fingers. It was born out of a contest between Peter Serpico (the chef at Ko) and myself, about who could create the crispiest chicken.

I made a Korean fried chicken—crazy popular all over Asia and America right now. It's a triple fried bird, it's so crispy and spicy. Peter grew up in the Baltimore area, so he coated his in Old Bay seasoning. Anyway, we started this contest. We both just talked mad shit to each other. I was like, “This chicken is gonna break your fuckin' teeth…” It took a couple months. And I think it ended a tie. I never wanna fry another bird in my life.

RP: Do you cook for girls?

DC: I have cooked for a girlfriend. When she was sick. Chicken soup. That kind of thing.

RP: Did you check out her CD collection before you did it?

DC: Yeah. Kind of. Like one woman turned to me and said, “I need to see Lady Gaga.” And I was like, “Ohhhhhh no…”

What's that fucking TV show?Desperate Housewives?I dated this girl and normally— if it hadn't been that she was extraordinarily good looking—there would have been all these red flags. But in my head I just kept thinking, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. And then, it just all built up—the bad music, the bad TV. And books too, it's like, “What? You're reading what? John Grisham!? What the fuck??”
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