If that’s a banana in my curry, I’m plenty glad to see it.

This dish is called Voodoo Chicken because when I invented it, I was slogging through one of those dreadful snuffly colds that intensifies for weeks. I resolved to throw into one easy-to-make dish every health-inducing ingredient I could find in the kitchen. And I woke up the next morning with a bare minimum of symptoms.

Bet your chicken soup can’t say that!

It also fulfills the requirements of combining bananas and nutmeg for the January Improv Cooking Challenge at Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker.

The dish is an implausible mish-mash, which means its musical accompaniment is another implausible mish-mash that somehow works: The Caribbean (Facebook). The band’s most recent album, Discontinued Perfume (iTunes, Amazon), is a bizarre and wonderful fusion of rock, jazz, folk, lounge, and Brazilian music. Let’s preheat the oven to 350, regard some chicken breasts with a bleary eye, and check out “Mr. Let’s Find Out,” the track that’s earned the loudest critical plaudits.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a brash bread that wants to be bruschetta.

Old Market Eatery (official site) in Brookings, South Dakota, offers the twin lures of New American food and live music every Friday night. So in honor of its commitment to local music, we’re going to make herb bread.

No, wait, the herb bread is in honor of Old Market Bakery’s Grown-Up Grilled Cheese. The local music featured tends to run toward the jazzy and/or “traditional pop” end that goes down easy with a smooth red wine, which is frankly not my taste. But then Jonathan and Jeremy Hegg (official site) mentioned that they’re releasing an entire album of songs about trains. Read the rest of this entry »

I know a dark, secluded place.
A place where no one knows your face.
A glass of wine, a fast embrace.
It’s called Hernando’s Hideaway. Olé!

In Phoenix, it’s called The Nash.

Admittedly, The Nash doesn’t have a liquor license, and any hasty embraces will likely involve posing for a photo with a visiting jazz great. But The Nash is Phoenix’s nearest approach to the sort of underground watering hole that might feature in the livelier works of Dashiell Hammett or Earle Stanley Gardner. There are even men in snappy snap-brim fedoras.

My last prolonged live exposure to jazz involved a mandatory Dave Brubeck concert for some high school or college music appreciation class, an experience that left me with a headache and a lifelong loathing for 5:4 time. However, friends lured me to the Sunday night jazz jam session, which turned out to be quite fabulous, not least because of who showed up.  Read the rest of this entry »

One retro cupcake deserves another.

The genesis of these cupcakes was Offbeat Home’s Weekend Challenge: Nerdy Cupcakes or Unicorn Heads?, and yes, I realize there are people who wonder how I could pass up a chance to attempt to build papier-mâché taxidermy. Someday, I shall tell about the Heffalump Head Disaster. But not today.

Haley Reinhart’s sultry, retro-19060s soul/pop debut album, Listen Up! (buy at iTunes or Amazon) seems like a good fit for my urge to try a retro-1960s cupcake recipe. I’m going to go track-by-track, so you may want to mosey on over to Spotify to listen along. Or you can preheat the oven to 350 and prepare for surprises. Read the rest of this entry »

Shhhh! Avert your eyes from the lime curd! This story is about the bread.

Yes, bread. I made bread with yeast and nothing bad happened. Indeed, quite good things happened.

Georgia had remained on my mind because I punted and made peanut-butter-and-jelly muffins rather than the iconic pecan pie — mostly because I’d rather eat raw pecans than pecan pie, thankyouverymuch. So it was time to tackle something truly challenging for Hawaii, and that something became Hawaiian bread (recipe from Dinner’s On Me).

My search for a Hawaiian band led me to this article in the Honolulu Pulse. My first pick, Sabrina Velazquez (Bandcamp) had up and moved to Portland. My second pick, Kamuela Kahoano (MySpace) has some nifty ukelele work but has also perpetrated the sort of sexist “humorous” song that causes me to turn off my local country radio station. My third pick, Candy Diaz (MySpace), turns out to be cultivating an indie/folk/jazz hybrid sound that’s pleasant for weekend brunch — plus, she herself bakes. So let’s listen to Diaz and do our own baking. Read the rest of this entry »

Since I’ve been planning to explore Middle Eastern food, I was delighted to find a little falafel on my Secret Recipe Club assignment for September, This Is How We Eat.

Site owner Laura is a major olive oil afficionado, so it seems appropriate to cue up the Olive Oil Jazz Band (lots of Youtubes here) — but don’t get attached to the band, as the recipe goes lightning fast.

Also don’t expect me to say much about jazz, as I lack even the scant beginnings of a clue. I’m still trying to figure out why this jazz band appears to be in Italy. Read the rest of this entry »

Look! More boneless, skinless chicken! (I initially typed this as “chinless chicken.” Do we doubt?)

My original intent was to use the can of coconut milk in my cupboard to make this lime-coconut chicken from A Perfect Bite. Then I read the calorie count on coconut milk. When I came to… other things happened.

This also seemed like the evening to reconsider my reluctance to embrace Adele. Having read seemingly every music source on the planet raving over how amazelating 21 is… it’s tough to approach that kind of album with an open mind. So I skittered up to it crabwise, plucking a few tunes from Youtube, starting with this one. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a delightfully simple little package of prefab croissant dough, stewed apples, and cheese. This calls for another delightfully simple little package, the Matt Embree/Love You Moon (listen) with Lauren Coleman of Pebaluma (listen), which I saw Wednesday as an opener for Steel Train.

If you’ve followed my instructions exactly, you are now trying to listen to two acts at once. This will never do. Pick one, and let’s get cooking. Read the rest of this entry »

The kick-off to the World Cup Food Challenge would not be complete without host country South Africa. These sweet-savory corn muffins are the result of a conflation of vetkoek (tempting because it’s often stuffed with mincemeat–but I don’t deep-fry) with mealie-bread (a sweet corn bread), garnished with the East Indian influence that shows up in South African fusion cuisine.

Well, it’s garnished with cherries because everything’s improved with a cherry on top. And it’s accompanied by South Africa’s Freshlyground (listen) because lead singer Zolani Mahola was featured in the 2010 FIFA World Cup theme song “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).” In summer 2010, the group is performing at festivals in Europe and Africa, supporting its new album, Radio Africa. Read the rest of this entry »