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.

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Pssst! Cranberry-mushroom flan with onions and walnuts!

This is my go-to Thanksgiving dish for vegetarians, and you will want to make plenty, as non-vegetarians will snurfle up more than their share. This version is a flan, rather than a quiche, because it lacks a crust, thus making it a lot lower-calorie, as well as gluten-free (if you omit one optional ingredient).

Since it’s thrown together somewhat randomly, I’m going to take a random stroll through my Twitter feed and play whatever comes up, regardless of thematic consistency. Let’s start with Colorado blues-rock band The Amends (official site), who endearingly want to be your 11th favorite  rock ‘n’ roll band. Preheat the oven to 350 and check out their latest single.
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Carrot bread is notoriously shy. The number of slices I had to eat in order to achieve a passable portrait is not to be discussed.

Carrot bread is also the first installment of what I hope will be a series of Thanksgiving recipes for the single, the dual, the bringer-of-a-dish-to-parties and the uninspired but hungry. You can make this on the Wednesday to serve for Thanksgiving morning breakfast, with a little cream cheese, secure in the notion that your tots, if any, will thus be consuming a vegetable other than green bean casserole.

The presence of a vegetable makes this a natural match for this month’s selection from Run Hundred‘s top workout songs. Preheat the oven to 350 and prepare to bounce around to The Ready Set’s “Give Me Your Hand (Best Song Ever).”
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A journey of 50 recipes for 50 states begins with a single pudding… and ends with one, too.

Technically, Alabama was sweet-potato pie, but experience testifies that the difference between a custard, a flan, and a pudding is largely the angle of view. And now I’m going to contradict myself and try to construct a Wyoming apple pudding that doesn’t contain eggs and milk. I’m complicated that way. I also couldn’t face chopping apple with my damaged hand (it’s much better now) and wanted an easier approach.

Since this project — based on the Jiffy corn pudding that snuck into New Mexico — is highly experimental, it’s fitting to accompany it with the highly experimental music of Harriman Exit (Reverbnation). Preheat the oven to 350 and let’s open packages! Read the rest of this entry »

Some of us are just hams at heart.

In trying to find a dish for Virginia, I dithered over numerous varieties of chicken. Then I suddenly remembered that I couldn’t remember having ever baked a ham before, and if I couldn’t remember baking a ham, then even if I had baked a ham, it wouldn’t count.

An authentic Smithfield ham isn’t something one can readily obtain in Phoenix… but a ham’s a ham for all that. Especially when it’s accompanied by a nice corn meal biscuit, in the spirit of Southern hot breads for future sandwiches.

To accompany hamming it up, I went a-Googling, through the fields of corn, and decided to start a three-band set with dark electronica band Dead Fame (Reverbnation), who are roughly what would happen if Joy Division had collaborated with The Cure. Preheat the oven to 350 and let’s ham it up. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the morning mind screw.

Blackberries seemed inevitable for Oregon, despite my recently having wallowed in them for the Black Keys, where the blackberry sour-cream coffeecake had salted caramel topping. One of the flagship recipes for Oregon blackberries is blackberry roll, which is ordinarily a yeast pastry. Yeast pastries require the sort of advance planning that involves getting up at 4 a.m. to have breakfast at 9 a.m., at which point I’m wailing about starving to death louder than the cat, so they rarely happen in my world.

Then I found Small Things’ recipe for a biscuit-style blackberry roll with a surprise ingredient (recipe). Now we’re cooking with gas… well, with baking powder. And with the surprise ingredient.

One good mind screw deserves another. I went looking for a Portland, Oregon, alternative artist on Reverbnation. When I clicked on Jennifer Batten (official site, Reverbnation page), I assumed I was getting another earnest, sweet-voiced, guitar-strumming gal with heartfelt yet cynical lyrics. No objection: I often like that sort of thing. Instead, it’s a funk/art rock sound with heavy distortion and sampling, like a brunch soundtrack beamed in from Saturn. Preheat the oven to 350 and come check it out. Read the rest of this entry »

These are scones of anarchy.

Scones of anarchy were invented to accompany the new single from Calling All Astronauts (official site), a London indie band whose dark electro punk sound is roughly what would happen if Sisters of Mercy had a life-changing fling with the Sex Pistols, followed by a hot rebound relationship with Nine Inch Nails.

If London is calling (yes, I know, Clash), it’s time for New British cuisine. But New British restaurants exhibit stereotypical English reticence. Where a comparable American menu would gush and bubble about “farm-raised,” “grilled on a bed of fresh rampions,” and “raspberry-leek reduction,” its London cousin murmurs a stiff-lipped “hake with leeks” and moves on.

Stymied, I did the American thing and simple-mindedly (as opposed to Simple Plannedly) associated “English” with “afternoon tea,” settling on a multi-cultural and violently spicy scone that started from the Joy of Baking’s gingerbread scones (recipe) but mostly rebelled against dictates of mass baking culture. Are you ready to hear something new? Read the rest of this entry »

Montana means bison.

Not literally. Literally, “Montana” probably means something like “big-nosed gaijin wanted name for state with lots of mountains.” But in a culinary sense, Montana means bison.

I’ll confess up front that ground bison makes the best burger I’ve ever accomplished in my home kitchen, with the least effort. At $9.99/lb, it had better.

Paying fair price for an album from Trego, Montana’s Pterodactyl Plains (Bandcamp, official site) seems downright cheap, in comparison. Pterodactyl Plains is a Boston Phoenix best-of-state pick; it identifies the band’s style as “electroacoustic,” which apparently means acoustic piano with brooding bass and drum, distortion effects, fugue-like vocals… it’s beautiful and menacing. I have no idea what “In the Air” is about, but the way the vocals interweave with each other and the piano is drop-dead gorgeous. Read the rest of this entry »

Bread. In a can.

You probably want to know why the slices of my canned bread are not perfectly round. We’ll get to that. You may figure it out earlier in the cooking process than I did.

Reaching Massachusetts in the 50 states / 50 dishes / 50 bands project called for Boston brown bread (Epicurious recipe), which is traditionally steamed in a can. It also called for a different approach to the accompanying music, as Boston’s huge music scene was distracting me from my goal of pleasing obscurity. So I went to The Deli Magazine’s list of the 300 most popular bands in Boston at this moment and decided to include one song from each of the top three bands. That starts us off with electropop band Passion Pit (official site). Read the rest of this entry »

The oyster makes me want to roister.

My first encounter with oyster gratin was at Colonial Williamsburg, where I might have insisted on having breakfast at the same restaurant every day because I needed my oyster mush. But I’ve never dared make it, figuring it has to be difficult.

It’s not. It’s oysters with crackers and seasonings. Indeed, to raise the level of difficulty — well, actually because I’m too lazy to haul myself to the grocery — we’re going to make the crackers from scratch.

Maryland’s a weird sort of challenge for the 50 states / 50 dishes / 50 bands project, as it’s the home of plenty of bands that every hipster knows (e.g., Animal Collective, Good Charlotte) and it feels like cheating to write about one. We need something obscure. We need a member of the Wham City collective. We need Dan Deacon (official site). This’ll drive you crackers. Read the rest of this entry »

Because I have a heart-shaped cookie cutter, that’s why.

Also, it’s time for the monthly workout song post that starts with a song from Run Hundred’s delightful list (found here, with instructions on how to participate in voting). My pick from the top 10 for February is the DJ Escape and Tony Coluccio club mix version of Selena Gomez’s “Love You Like a Love Song,” as it’s a hook to let us wander through self-referential love songs.

Love calls for hearts. Selena Gomez calls for something sweet, innocent, and Mexican-derived. Sugar cookies call for shaking one’s booty so fast that the fat molecules don’t have a chance to get a solid grip. I sense synergy here. Let’s get some Mexican sugar cookies (recipe) into the oven! Read the rest of this entry »

This salmon needs a cure.

Not The Cure. A cure. Stop #2 on the 50 states / 50 dishes / 50 bands project (#5 on the Life List) is Alaska, where the Boston Phoenix’s pick is experimental electronic band Pretty Birds That Kill (Bandcamp page).

Alaska is a rough-and-ready state where tough women cure their own salmon. Since my fondness for lox is greater than my budget for lox — a situation that results in a lox-out — I thought I’d take some $1.99/lb salmon chunks from Pro’s Ranch Market and see if I couldn’t cure my own salmon at home. Salon.com helpfully provided instructions for curing gravlax, so let’s see if the cure is worse than prevention. Read the rest of this entry »

Why are “inspirational songs” always required to be about how great things are?

If everything’s nifty keen, presumably we could all go home, put our feet up, pour a glass of wine, and read a good novel. Certainly, what’s inspiring me to tackle yet another round of ground turkey is not the Greatness of Stuff so much as the Deficiency of Budget, the Heart-Health of Not Getting All One’s Protein from Sausage Pizza, and the Reality That Woman Cannot Live by Pecan Pie Muffins Alone.

Let’s tackle a turkey meatloaf with a tunnel of lemon-zested spring vegetables, along with some inspirational songs that do not run heavily to flowers and sunshine. Read the rest of this entry »

I woke up this morning with an irrational urge to make French toast, a dish I’ve eaten maybe twice in my life. As a tot, I was in contention for the title of World’s Pickiest Eater, under which rules I refused to eat eggs in any form but hardboiled until I turned 18 and a friend lured me into trying an omelet.

The blueberry preserves didn’t quite gel, which makes this an excellent moment to look at another project that doesn’t quite gel (though it got very solid reviews): Neon Neon’s 2008 Stainless Style (listen, though there will be vids). A side project of Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys and producer Boom Bip, the guiding purpose of Neon Neon was to make a 1980s-style synthpop concept album about the life of John DeLorean.

How was I supposed to resist that? Plus, the best of the singles is an elegant, moody meditation on the superficiality of flashy celebrity relationships, reminiscent of a better-known Pet Shop Boys song, but with a more cynical and less wistful point of view. Shall we soak some bread and start there? Read the rest of this entry »

Meet biscuit fusion.

These are the Betty Crocker butter dips rediscovered by TheKitchn, with some modifications in the direction of hot cross buns. (There are no crosses because these biscuits are unrelentingly cheerful.)

This delightfully easy concept biscuit calls for a cheerful fusion band, a need that points ineluctably to Dynasty Electric (listen — or not, as there will be videos), the Brooklyn-based psychedelic-punk-fusion band that will not tell you to put your hands in the air because hands belong on the strings of the bass. Read the rest of this entry »

M-m-m-muffins!

My modus operandi is to muster massive muffin enthusiasm because pulled pork was something I didn’t quite pull off, my souffle was insufferable, and a perfectly nice shrimp pesto pasta proved to be a dish I’ve used before. A small batch of muffins, however, saves the day.

In the spirit of finding the positive in the negative, let’s start tonight’s music with an original anti-bullying song from BlaiseSings (Twitter), a 16-year-old singer-songwriter from back East. She recently performed the song at an innovation gathering for teens in Manhattan (article). Read the rest of this entry »

Grape pie looks a tad sanguinary.

Last night’s show headlined by Azure Ray (listen) somehow put me in mind of grape pie, which is odd, as I’ve never had grape pie. But I’d also never heard Azure Ray before. Before making the group’s current album, Drawing Down the Moon, Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink had spent seven years working on separate projects. With that kind of wait, it’s not surprising that the fans gathered at the Rhythm Room were the oldest I’ve seen there since a show that involved the reunion of a blues band from the 1980s. Not in walkers, mind you–but the drinking side of the house picked up bodies faster than the non-drinking side. Read the rest of this entry »

This pear relish is dietetic because it is not pie. It was going to be pie until I read the pie crust box, which states that a single serving (1/8 crust) is 110 calories. No big, right? Except that on a double crust pie, a slice is 1/8 of two crusts. I’d intended to make turnovers, at 1/4 crust each. 440 calories on dough? Not a chance.

In line with the theme of simple recipes going awry, today’s topic is MacGruber, which a girlfriend and I belatedly watched on Pay Per View because hauling ourselves to a theater for the serious new action-adventure movies on offer seemed like too much trouble. A key point of characterization occurs when Our Hero hops in his red convertible — to the swell of the usual sort of overwrought action-adventure “rock me like a hurricane” music — and then switches his car stereo to the Adult Contemporary listen-at-work station. Every time the movie wants to imply “we are being deliberately cheesy, wink-wink, nudge-nudge”… cue soft-rock hits of the 1980s. Read the rest of this entry »

“My little dumpling” is probably a better endearment than “my little umlaut,” unless the target is feeling dumpy, in which case one is a lout for trying it. As part of my foray into Normal American Cooking, kccadtr had suggested chicken with dumplings, seconded by amystruth, while Curious_JG had thought chicken pot pie was a must-have.

Exploration proved that chicken-and-dumplings and chicken pot pie are roughly the same dish with different pastry constructions. So invigorated was I by my adventure with nectarine-blueberry cobbler that I decided to split the difference and create hearty chicken stew with a biscuit-like topping.

Since conversation had veered into whether today’s music is especially dreadful, I’d been thinking about disco, which fortunately is for me a vague, traumatic memory rather than a formative influence. This led to an urge to wallow in one of the earlier manifestations of New Wave as a Top 40 movement: Blondie. Read the rest of this entry »

After my adventures in the World Cup Food Challenge, it was impossible not to get a speculative gleam in my eye when The Kitchn declared July to be devoted to “escapes” to foreign cuisines. And the project started with Italy, which means pasta, which is one of the Perfect Foods when cooking for one.

How spaghetti with mascarpone, Meyer lemon, spinach, and hazelnuts turned into soba noodles with beef, nectarines, feta, and pistachios is… a mystery I will disclose after the jump. But first, we need music to soothe the savage fry pan. After 30 minutes of delving into the weird wonders of Italian indie goth rock, I developed a bad case of punning ethnocentrism (distinguishable by its characteristic rash, in the sense of “rash cooking decisions”) and settled on When in Rome (listen), a revival of the 1980s one-and-a-half-hit wonder electronica group. Read the rest of this entry »