Dinner for a Song

I’ve had this persistent fantasy of being camp cook at a hunting or fishing camp for a couple of decades, now. Something about feeding people who are exhausted and vibrating with ancient hungers strikes me as something I’d really like to do, but, two things have stopped me from trying - one, that it would interfere with my own hunting seasons, and, two, I suspected that I might not be up to the task and I was chicken to find out on the job. This week I got a chance to test my mettle - not at deer camp, but band camp. There’s this sweet little recording studio in an old farmhouse just around the hill from my place, Great North Sound Society, and they asked if I was interested in cooking for musicians who come to record. I was, especially given that the first act would be this tidy collection of people that I’ve already admired from afar; Kris Delmhorst, Jeremy Moses Curtis, Erik Koskinen, Ray Rizzo, Sam Kassirer. At first I thought this could happen alongside my other work for the week but I soon found myself in a quicksand of logistics —how to please six strangers, how to transport food, how to buy food I felt good about and not spend the whole budget on groceries, how to share some foraged foods without challenging anyone’s taste buds or depleting my pantry, what foods reheat well, when to dress the salad?! But, mostly, I found that I was really, really enjoying myself, so, I put other work aside and just gave myself to it. Turning away from my writing-mind, my homestead-mind, my hunting-mind, my worry-mind, and working only with my cooking-mind, because there is no deadline more pressing than dinner. It shifted me tectonically. I settled back into the curvature of the earth, a little mercurial liquid drained from my ear - I heard songs. I stood at the kitchen sink in that farmhouse, full of music, I heard the musicians talking about the songs, making choices, about sound, resonance, I heard myself, revising a poem, I heard anyone cooking a meal —instruments —people, trying to say something, tune in, hear something, then dinner.

Here is a photo diary of my week and links to what I listened to while I was cooking, which was very intentionally paired.

LISTEN HERE

Listen Here

Marcella Hazan’s famous tomato sauce with butter and onion, which I love dearly, calls for the onion to be discarded. I’ve always fawned over them, perfectly poached in buttery tomato sauce and wanted to give them a second life. Having focaccia sourdough proofing was the answer. This was one of the more satisfying innovations of my life.

LISTEN HERE

LISTEN HERE

Some sweetheart sent me THIS blender after reading my wish list here last week. Really added some style to my pozole process,

Hot leached acorns in the pozole along with hominy - they have a similar, toothy texture, but with more nitrition.

2021 Birch syrup instead of molasses in the pan dulce.

LISTEN HERE

The menus were an afterthought - the first one was almost an accident but I had fun making it so I continued. I wish I’d thought of it earlier so I could have put more time and attention into them, but part of me likes that they’re kind of characteristically well-intentioned but amateur and haphazard,

The band taped them to the kitchen wall. This was a nice thing to do.