If you (like me) find yourself ferreting through an increasingly narrow tunnel of cultural obsessions you’ve cultivated through the years, you’ll understand the latest iteration of my OCD: pairing music with food. Certain very particular flavors simply demand to be serenaded by certain very particular artistes.
My top picks (this week):
Björk and Roquefort cheese: The pungent, wet, moldering, delicate, umami-packed, grassy, sheepy richness of my favorite cheese, cut with tiny razor-sharp pin pricks of flavor-bitchslaps always tastes better with the outré Icelandic princess aggressively wailing, whimpering, simpering, sighing, giggling and shrieking in my tingling ears.
The Decemberists and baby back ribs with a tangy black bean sauce: Classic fare that tastes like America (a zesty, caramel-candy crust enveloping succulent flakes of melting, plump meat topped with a 20-spice, beer infused rootin’ tootin’ fiber-packed sauce) can only be truly appreciated while listening to the accordion and Wurlitzer organ-wielding tall-tale tellers from Portland. “My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist” indeed.
Brazilian Girls and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese buttercream and sprinkled with shaved almonds: Deceptively intimidating looking but totally accessible and addictive, these cocoa-packed red velvet cupcakes are lathered with creamy swirls of toe-scrunchingly sweet and lip-puckeringly tangy frosting with reassuringly crunchy, buttery slivers of almond. They’re even more prone to being mauled by my mouth when the tango/chason/reggae/lounge-flecked electro-dance curators the Brazilian Girls are zinging through my ears.
TOPICS: Eat to the Beat, Kathleen Willcox