In Their Bellies And In Their Hearts

Cookbook Explores The Cupboards And Kitchens Of Your Favorite Bands

\ May 03, 2007

4 min read

Maybe you, like me, are one of those people who imagines reverse personifications. For example, if that lady were a vegetable, she would totally be an eggplant. Perhaps you look at friends and see colors (Bob’s just blue, you know?), animals (I’m an osprey) or brands of cola (Sally is so Mr. Pibb).

That kind of thinking is the only way to fathom I Like Food, Food Tastes Good , a book of recipes from your favorite bands. Food as bands. Bands as food. The ever-pragmatic NOFX offers twists on mac ’n’ cheese and ramen. Odd, nutritious and Americanized Shonen Knife volunteers a lovely green tea cookie recipe. Chris Mills exposes a surprisingly simple side with the bologna, mustard and pickle sandwich.

There, right there, lies the flaw in the decent idea that fueled the assembly of I Like Food . Does anyone really need a recipe for this kind of sandwich? Even if it does come from the pen or mouth of the man behind The Wall to Wall Sessions ?

Reminds me of the Spring Crawl questions we just sent to 9,462 billion local bands. The goal was to represent sound and style with funny fill-in-the-blanks for things like mascot, pre-game locker room ritual, etc. Author Kara Zuaro, intentionally or not, sought out menu representations of musicians. What’s in your larder is what’s in your soul, after all. Taste is taste is musical taste.

When the recipe is something unique, specialized and tasty (They Might Be Giants makes a smart Countrypolitan that will get you humorously drunk), it all comes together. But when the menu is dull or average to a cutesy fault, the cookbook becomes less functional as a cookbook. As a creative window into your favorite band’s core motivation, favorite food is probably not a terrible interview question, or a bad metaphor, come to think of it. I wonder if Danzig knows anything about blood pudding?

There are only a few such useless/poetic moments. The rest span a range of practicality and frugality to exotic and extravagant. Enon brews a soup in 20 minutes "for the one who is getting some kind of cold" that includes seaweed, miso and a heavy dose of ginger. The Violent Femmes stews up a hearty wild boar ragu using two pounds of boneless boar meat and grated pecorino cheese. Belle and Sebastian makes a mean HRT—halloumi, radicchio and cherry tomato sandwich. Dr. Dog and Pegasuses-XL betray shrouded family cooking traditions with mom’s muffin bread, a cornbread-based morning treat, and the “secret Tobias family potato pancake recipe."

Introductions to the recipes are made up of Zuaro’s musings on the band, its sound, her relationship with it or how she met the members one time and a quote from the imparter of the recipe. Some are beautiful and informative. Others, less so. They’re most effective when making that chow-music correlation happen.

Vegetarians rejoice, because the sheer number of novel meatless options are worth the door charge. Scattered throughout all sections (and in an entire vegetarian chapter), the recipes read like the kind of thing you come up with when you’ve got only a package of tofu and some barbecue sauce in your soul-pantry. But, as luck would have it, it’s enough. Your necessity breeds innovation, and viola! You introduce the world to baked barbecue tofu, à la Heston Riffle. And really, what a perfect parable for rock.