1001: Arcade Fire: Neon Bible

I honestly hadn’t listened to Arcade Fire much before I bought tickets to the Denver concert as a Christmas gift for Dylan.  After I did this album became one of my favorites, though I would have to favor Funeral slightly more.  As it comes to food to combine with this I wanted to do something that was reminiscent of that which I had in Denver.  Therefore I decided to go with a dish that Montreal is iconic for and give it a little Denver flare.  Green Chili Poutine was born.

The Music

Favorite Tracks:

-Intervention: I love the lyrical content of this song more than any other.  It’s one of the ones that I can picture the story told in the lyrics very vividly.  It is brought to life

-(Antichrist Television Blues):  This song would be great as it is but the title for it just throws it over the top.  The allusions to terrorism are very intriguing.  If you asked me if a song about such a subject could be so upbeat but come out as reflective in tone and actually sound good, I would tell you that that is impossible.  This track pulls it off in style though.

Unfavorite Tracks:

-Black Waves/Bad Vibrations:  It’s kind of weird because usually the songs that Regine sings lead on are some of my favorites.  I don’t really dislike the song much either I just have a bit of a quibble about where it shows up in the track.  Immediately after hearing Intervention, I want to hear Wake Up.  Thing is Wake Up isn’t even on this album, and pretty much anything other than Wake Up is not something I want to hear.  It’s kind of weird but that’s just the way my head arranges songs.

Overall Ranking:

1.       Prince: Purple Rain (Amazon)
2.       Arcade Fire: Neon Bible (Amazon)
3.       Stooges: Stooges (Amazon)
4.       Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours (Amazon)

The Food

Green Chili Poutine

French fries can be a little tricky when you’re using fresh potatoes.  There are several things that you want to get right about them.  You want them to be crisp on the outside but soft on the inside.  Something that you can only really accomplish with an ice bath to get rid of the starch and double frying.  It is a bit of extra work to go through but is well worth it.  I do however have no big opposition to bag fries and you can definitely use those instead.

Ingredients:

3 Anaheim Chilies

2 Roma Tomatoes

1 Small sweet Onion

4 Small Russet Potatoes

¼ Cup Vegetable Stock

4 Ounces Cheese Curds

Oil For Frying

Start by roasting the chilies.  More info on how to do that in this blog post.

Run the potatoes through a French Fry Cutter.  Place them in an ice bath for at least 15 minutes before frying.

Dice the onions and tomatoes and sauté in a small sauce pan over low heat.  Once the onions start to become translucent, add the diced chilies and vegetable stock and simmer until sauce thickens.

Preheat the oil to 325F.  An electric deep fryer is perfect for this.

Fry at 325 for three minutes.

Raise the temperature to 350F

Fry for four minutes.  Immediately season fries with salt and pepper.

Pour sauce over the fries and top with cheese curds.  I throw them in the microwave for about 30 seconds until they are just about to melt and hit them with a blow torch just before serving.

The Drink

Firey Black and Tan

For the Drink, I decided to do a little spin on the Black and Tan.  I did however make it with an alcoholic ginger beer rather a lager to give it bit of a spicy taste as an homage to the band name.

Ingredients

1 Ginger Beer

1 Stout Beer

In order to make this drink it is very simple.  Just fill the glass halfway with the ginger beer.  Layer the dark beer by pouring it very slowly over an upside down spoon angled towards the edge of the glass.

1001: Prince: Purple Rain

Prince: Purple Rain

First Listen: At Home, Bose Lifestyle 15 Audio via Chromecast.

Second Listen: At Home, Bose Lifestyle 15 Audio via Chromecast.
Third Listen:  On HP Folio Ultrabook with Sennheiser HD-360 PRO DJ Studio Style while reading lyrics

While I am very familiar with Prince, I don’t think that I’ve listened to many of his studio recordings in their entirety.  I usually reach for the greatest hits.  That aside I had never listened to the Purple Rain Album before I did this time.  I also watched the movie which sort of changed my feeling about some of the tracks on the album as a whole.

The Music

Favorite Tracks:

-Let’s Go Crazy:  How can you not love this classic track.  It’s one of those tracks that is an instant mood changer.  You listen to this track and you’re instantly happy and ready to dance no matter your mood.  Not to mention the sick guitar solo.

-Purple Rain: Maybe it’s the experience of doing this song at karaoke and being held up on my friend’s shoulders as I horribly belted out one of the worst renditions of Purple Rain to an ironically enthusiastic crowd, that makes this song one of my favorites but I absolutely love it. 

-I Would Die 4 U: That upbeat tempo combined with that smooth execution of quickly belted out run on sentences is a combination that can’t be beat.

-When Doves Cry: Rounds out the list of songs that I’ve heard before in great fashion.

-Beautiful Ones: This song is played in an early and somewhat pivotal point in the film as Prince declares his love for Apollonia through this song.  I’m a sucker for dramatic declarations of love so there you go.

Unfavorite Tracks:

-Computer Blue: It is like the only song you get to on this album and you outright want the skip.  You don’t really do it though because the guitar in the middle is amazing but to get to that you have to torture yourself with this just plain mediocre verse.  It’s also far too long.

-Take Me With You: While I do love the lyrical simplicity of the song and I do love the drum riff that breaks out in the beginning and end of the song, I feel like the transition between that riff and the rest of the song is not as clean as I would like it to be.

Overall Listing:

1.       Prince: Purple Rain (Amazon)
2.       Stooges: Stooges (Amazon)
3.       Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours (Amazon)

The Food

So Prince is a Vegan.  Because of that I had to go with a vegan meal. I wanted to incorporate the color purple into both food and drink but quite frankly that is rather difficult to do.  I really don’t know of that many purple foods, it’s just not that easy of a color.  Grapes, red cabbage, red onion, eggplant.  Exactly four things that don’t really go together.  Although I may have not completely owned up to the challenge of making a meal that exactly goes with the album.  I did make a good vegan dish, and I did use a bit of eggplant.  For the meal I made a decadent smooth and creamy curry cauliflower soup, along with portabella mushroom steaks and sautéed eggplant.

Curry Cauliflower Soup

1 Head of cauliflower diced (you can use much of the core for this but not the green leafy part)

1 ½ Teaspoons Curry Powder

1 Can Coconut Milk

1 Cup Vegetable Stock

2 Tablespoons Coconut Oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

Sautee the cauliflower over medium heat with the curry powder, salt and pepper.

When the cauliflower starts to brown.  Deglaze with the vegetable stock and the coconut milk and cover and simmer until the cauliflower is very tender.  (If the cauliflower is not very tender, you won’t get a smooth and rich texture when you try to blend it, it will come out sort of grainy, if this happens to you though you can always take what you have in the blender, add it back to the pan and keep on cooking it for a bit before blending again.  It really isn’t that huge of an issue if you mess up)

Transfer to a blender and blend until smooth

For the sides

4 Portobello Caps

1 Medium Eggplant

1 Tablespoon Ground Cumin

1 Tablespoon Ground Coriander

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 Tablespoon Coconut Oil

Remove the stems from the mushrooms and season with the cumin, coriander and season with the salt pepper and coriander.  Cook over medium heat until browned.

Remove the top from the Eggplant and cube it.  Season with salt pepper and coriander and sauté over medium heat until tender.

The Drink

For the drink I wanted to make something purple again, but what out there is purple.  I thought about this for quite a while and then I finally came to the conclusion that well…. Hibiscus Tea is kind of purplish-red.

Hibiscus Tea Martini

3 Ounces Cold Hibiscus Tea, sweetened appropriately

1.5 Ounces Gin

Shake the two together and serve up in a chilled martini glass.

1001: The Stooges

The Stooges:  The Stooges

First Listen: Samsung Galaxy Note 3, House of Marley Exodus Headphones while studdying

Second Listen: Samsung Galaxy Note 3, House of Marley Exodus Headphones, while reading lyrics

Third Listen: Bose Lifestyle 15 via Google Music Chromecast

I had no clue who the stooges were at all before listening to this album.  I did hear the name Iggy Pop, but I never knew what at all he was famous for.  It goes to show just how limited my knowledge of punk music is.  I did end up liking the album very much.  It is quite laid back as compared to Punk music of today, but I guess that is to be expected.

For this album I wanted to make something that was rather down to earth yet over the top.  I ended up deciding on curly fry pizza.  This was met with a lot of strange stares.  I thought everyone would think Curly fry pizza would be amazing, yet I got so many mixed feelings.  Yes I realize that Curly fry pizza wouldn’t be the healthiest thing you ever ate, but that’s not the point.  You can let go sometimes.  This pizza is letting go in a big way.

The Music

Favorite Tracks:

-1969: This song has a nice catchy tune and it really puts you in the timeframe of the era really well.  I say that in spite of the fact that most of the lyrics are pretty ambiguous and can be used to describe any timeframe.  The only thing that really invokes the time period is the repeating of the year.  It is the songs ambiguity in describing the time frame that allows it to take on a bit of a timeless effect.

-No Fun:  It’s just simple and straightforward music.  I love the guitar solo at the end as well.

-Ann: I appreciate the darkness of this song and the fact that it doesn’t linger on much.  It is direct to the point and finishes up nicely with a cool guitar solo into a fade out.  Straight up music without pretense.

Unfavorite Tracks:

-We Will Fail: I don’t have a problem with giving up in principle and the lyrical content of the song doesn’t bother me a s much as the constant chanting in the background.  It really gets on my nerves after the first couple of verse.  It’s kind of weird though because I do love the guitar in the background and replacing the percussion with simple claps in the background.

-Real Cool Time: You can’t have moral superiority and diss the lyrical content of a song like Turn Down For What, while simultaneously embracing Real Cool Time.  Real Cool Time is essentially the original Turn Down For What, although I must applaud the ability to make a catchy song with under twenty words.

Overall Rankings:

1.       Stooges: Stooges

2.       Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours (Amazon)

The Food

I was doubted about whether or not this pizza would be good, but I have to give myself some good credit for coming up with this one because it tastes pretty good.  There was a lot of experimentation going on in writing the recipe for this one and along the way I learned a few things.  I initially chose a really hoppy IPA in order to make the beer sauce, that goes on this pizza but that was a fatal error as when the beer cooks down you’re left with a weird aftertaste.  This is one place where a cheap light beer succeeds.  I also experimented with the cheeses as you can see in the picture.  I came to find out that the cheeses were the best in the following order: Pepper Jack, Swiss, Velveta (I don’t typically use processed cheeses at all but I figured it would work out alright, I actually expected it to fare better, but it was just alright), Cheddar, Munster (One that I randomly selected at the end and was just awful, nearly inedible).  If you’re serving an Omnivore, I had the thought as well that you can go the extra mile with this pizza and top it with a combination of diced bacon and cooked chicken fingers.  The dough is also super easy and only takes a mixer and a little bit of time to make.  The crust even tastes like curly fries.

Results of the Taste Test:
1. Pepper Jack

2. Swiss

3. Velveta

4. Cheddar

5. Munster (Don’t use Munster)

Curly Fry Pizza

For the Crust:

1 Pound Russet Potatoes, peeled and diced

1 ½ Cups Flour Plus more for rolling out dough

1 Teaspoon Baking Powder

1 Large Egg

1 Teaspoon Garlic Powder

1 Teaspoon Onion Powder

1 Teaspoon Paprika

2 Teaspoons Salt

For The Sauce:

1-16 Ounce Lager

2 Tablespoons Butter

1 Tablespoon Flour

4 Cloves Garlic Finely Minced

¼ Cup Vegetable Stock

Toppings:

8 ounces Shredded Cheese of your Choice

14 ounces Cooked Curly fries

Optional Meats of your choice: Bacon/Chicken Tenders

Preheat the oven to 375 Degrees

For the crust, boil the potatoes until  tender.  Drain add to the bowl of a stand mixer.

Using the paddle attachment.  Mix the potatoes until they are in small pieces.

Turn the mixer off and add all the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated.

Add the egg and stir briefly until the dough comes together

Roll the dough out onto parchment paper and bake for 15 minutes

With the garlic, and beer in a medium saucepan cook until reduced in half

Add the stock and simmer.  In a separate pan whisk together the butter and flour mixture

Whisk the flour and butter mixture into the beer

Top your pizza with the sauce and curly fries and bake until the cheese is melted.  I know you’re going to want to eat this pizza immediately, but wait.  Let it cool for about 10 minutes for a perfect taste and texture.

The Drink

Electric Raspberry Lemonade

So I read somewhere that Iggy Pop liked Blue Raspberry Vodka and Lemonade.  I couldn’t find blue raspberry vodka anywhere so here’s my best effort.  This is a sneaky drink because it is amazingly potent despite not tasting of liquor much.

4.5 ounces Raspberry Vodka

3 Ounces Raspberry Lemonade

.75 Ounces Strawberry Liqueur (This can be skipped but I picked some up because it looked interesting.)

Shake all the ingredients and serve over ice.

1001: Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours

Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours

First Listen: While Driving, Car Audio Speakers via Bluetooth

Second Listen: At Home, Bose Lifestyle 15 Audio via Chromecast.

Third Listen: Coffee Shop, Samsung stock headphones with Galaxy Note Three while reading lyrics.

I’m pretty familiar with Frank Sinatra, as I sure most people are, but to be honest, when I heard this album, I don’t think I ever heard any of these songs before.  The songs on this album haven’t quite reached the level of popularity as such tracks as Come Fly With Me, which is incredibly popular.  For what it’s worth, the album itself is extremely melancholy.  The songs themselves are short and direct to the point.

The Music

Favorite tracks:

-I Get Along Very Well: This is a perfect break up song.  I love the overall sarcasm of the song. 

-Can’t We Be Friends: It’s the start of this song that I love more than anything.  It hits you as pure storytelling.  There is something pure to the vocal quality that Frank has that is further showcased by the limited number of instruments in the beginning.  For the first few moments of that song it is just you and Frank with a few simple notes on a piano.

Unfavorite tracks:

To be clear, I don’t really dislike any of the tracks on this album, here are just the three I like least of all.

-Last Night When We Were Young: Call me crazy but I don’t care for the dramatic buildup of the song.  When you measure the lyrical content of the song against the slightly overproduced orchestral music in the background, the lyrics almost come across as an afterthought, and are the most unmemorable of the album.

-I’ll Be Around: Sweet or Creepy? Though this song doesn’t particularly drift into the sheer stalky nature of say Sting’s Every Breath You Take, still even though it isn’t quite as creepy, it sort of flirts on the edge of that territory.  Then again, that may just be a quality of there being no hopelessness to my romanticism.  Unrequited love is quite foolish.

Overall Listing

1. Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours

The Food

Completely unnecessary but I did make fresh pasta for this.
Recipe is not included because I don't know how much of anything I used
and I ended up making like 3 pounds of pasta.

It was rather difficult to track down food of the 1950’s era that I found appealing.  I did do some digging in order to see what were Sinatra’s favorite food and drinks were.  He loved Italian as well as Whiskey and Water.  I wanted to take some of the popular dishes of the era and adapt it into something tasty with a bit of a fresh twist that is a departure from the overuse of canned products during the era.

Menu:

-Italian Style Gougeres with Sun Dried Tomatoes:  A slight bit of French/Italian fusion into this easy appetizer that combines salty Parmesan with tart sun dried tomatoes to make this near perfect puff of pastry that is reminiscent of a nice pizza.

-Chicken A La King: Not Italian again, but it was wildly popular in the 1950’s.  I also wanted to do a versatile dish, because Dylan was there.  This dish allowed me to share the sauce that I built that was pretty tasty between the two proteins that I used Chicken and tofu, to make a omnivorous dish for me and a vegetarian one for him with just one more pan.

-Creamed Asparagus:  This was a very simple dish.  I used the water that I had on for the pasta to quickly blanch the asparagus before pairing it with a simple roux based white wine and cream sauce.

-Classic Sidecar:  Whisky and water was a bit to simplistic of a drink for me so I went with something traditional and tasty.  This version is one of the few sweeter drinks that I really enjoy and has a nice tartness from the lemon.

Italian Style Gougeres

1 cup water

1-1/2 cups flour

½ Cup Grated Parmasean Cheese

¾ Cup Butter

½ Teaspoon Salt

Four Eggs

¼ Cup Sun Dried Tomatoes Diced

Preheat Oven to 425F

Bring Butter, Water and Salt to a boil.

Adding flour and stir until dough starts to form and then add Cheese and tomatoes.  Stir until you are left with a dough ball

Add to the bowl of a stand mixer, and let cool for a couple minutes.  Start the mixer on low speed.  Add the eggs.

Pipe out onto a parchment lined baking sheet and dot each with a bit of water before baking.

Bake at 425F for 10 mins and then at 350F for another 10 mins.

Chicken A La King

8 Ounces Mushrooms

3 Red Peppers

1 Sweet Onion

2 Cloves Garlic

3 Bay Leaves

1 Cup Sherry

½ Cup Stock

½ Cup Cream

2 Tablespoons Butter

½ Tablespoon Dried Herb de Provence

1 Pound Protein (I used Chicken thighs for the chicken dish and firm tofu)

Roast red peppers, they take the longest so you should start with this.  I roast the peppers  on my stove by placing the peppers over high heat directly over the flame of my gas stove.  This can also be done under a broiler.  I then transfer them to a covered bowl and leave them until they’re cooled, then I remove the skin under running water and slice the peppers.

Sweat the onions with the bay leafs and season with salt and pepper.  When the onions start to become translucent, add the mushrooms sherry and stock cover and simmer.

If you’re doing the chicken, season it with the salt pepper and herb de Provence and brown it on both sides.  Once the chicken is done browning add the sauce and simmer until cooked through.  Finish the sauce with the cream.

If you’re doing the tofu, once your liquid has reduced by about half brown the tofu and add the tofu and cream to the sauce.

Serve all this tossed in cooked egg noodles.

Creamed Asparagus

½ Pound Asparagus

¼ Cup Dry white wine

1 Tablespoon Butter

1 Tablespoon Flour

¼ Cup Cream

¼ Cup grated Parmesan Cheese

Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Combine the butter and flower in a small sauce pan over medium heat.

Whisk in the white wine and parmesan cheese.

Add cream and continue whisking

Serve sauce over blanched asparagus woody ends removed.

The Drink: 

Sidecar

3 Ounces Whiskey

½ Ounce Triple Sec

Juice of Half a Lemon

1 Teaspoon Sugar

Shake all the ingredients together and serve in a rocks glass with a lemon twist.