Rock stars who write cookbooks
Rock stars might be the last people you’d call on for advice in the kitchen – and yet there are cookbooks by everyone from Sheryl Crow and rapper Action Bronson to Kelis
MY FRIEND is wearing a curious expression – a slightly strained smile that does its best to conceal a look of disappointment.
It’s unmistakably the face of a woman trying to spare someone’s feelings by pretending to enjoy a black bean quesadilla she really isn’t enjoying much.
“No, it’s nice,” she says, clearly in no great rush to eat any more.
Besides, I know it isn’t nice because I’ve tried one myself.
The reason I’m cooking black bean quesadillas is because they come with a recommendation from acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist.
They’re one of the recipes in a book she co-authored with chef Adrienne Amato called Pleasures, detailing what she and her band ate during the making of her 2017 album of the same name. Every track on it has a lunch, dinner and dessert attached to it. And the reason I’m cooking a recipe from Pleasures is because I’m investigating cookbooks written by rock and pop stars. There’s been a constant stream of them over the past few years. Rappers, indie musicians, country music legends and R&B divas alike have shared their culinary secrets with the world. What can a fan and cook of limited abilities learn from them? The first thing is that their authors have quite a mix of cooking skills. They range from artists who’ve trained as chefs – R&B star Kelis is a graduate of the prestigious Cordon Bleu cookery school – to artists who’ve buddied up with chefs to co-write their books. And then there are artists whose interest seems slightly question- able. Something about the cover of Cookin’ with Coolio – a badly-Photoshopped shot of the rapper apparently flambéing bacon and eggs – suggests his enthusiasm for the kitchen might have more to do with prolonging his reality TV career than a lifelong passion for cuisine.
There are books that claim they’ll improve your wellbeing (Sheryl Crow’s If it Makes You Healthy) and books that look as if they could kill you.
Rapper Action Bronson’s F**k, That’s Delicious is the best-written and most entertaining cookbook I’ve come across, full of knowledge and enthusiasm.
But its author is visibly not a man at home to the health-giving delights of, say, brown basmati rice with soysage sausage.
Put it this way, there’s a photo of him in Japan, shirtless beside some sumo wrestlers and by comparison the sumo wrestlers look like the “after” photo in a Special K advert.
His recipe for “a butcher sandwich the way a guy like me would eat it” contains half a pound of rib-eye steak and involves both buttering the bread and frying it in steak fat. His method for making “the chicken of all f**king chickens” requires three litres of oil. And one of his “incredible pairings” reads simply “ten tubs of ice cream and depression”.
Keen to avoid both a physique like Action Bronson’s or a visit to the cardiology department, I opt for something lighter.
He claims his two-minute tomato sauce is “the best I ever had”. It’s certainly easy to make – garlic, chillies, basil, tinned tomatoes, salt and pepper – and the end result is fine.
If it doesn’t live up to its advance billing, perhaps that’s to do with rappers’ inbuilt capacity for over-the-top bragging.
For the purposes of comparison, I make Frank Sinatra’s marinara sauce from The Sinatra Celebrity Cookbook and it’s definitely an improvement on that; more garlicky, more flavoursome.
IAPPROACH Feist’s book with caution, partly because when I open it I’m confronted by a recipe that involves a soup containing halloumi cheese, and partly because many of the meals are vegan and veganism and I have history. tried a plant-based diet last year, lured by its health benefits, and abandoned it almost immediately after an illstarred dalliance with the cookbooks of blogger Deliciously Ella.
The taste of one of her dishes in particular, involving roast sweet potato and tahini-dressed avocado, haunted me for weeks. Every time I thought of it, I went off the idea of eating full stop.
Keen to avoid a rerun, I opt for the black bean quesadillas in the hope that Mexican spicing will override the lack of dairy.
They’re easy enough to knock together but the end result is about as far away from the juiciness of a non-vegan quesadilla as you can get: the only lubrication is a spritz of lime juice.
I have better luck on the vegan front the following day with a recipe from Sheryl Crow’s book written by the singer and her chef Chuck White after she beat breast cancer.
The book is filled with testimony to the antioxidant and immune system-boosting qualities of the meals within. I make the hot and sour miso soup with tofu and bok choi considerably less healthy by frying the tofu rather than boiling it and slathering it with hot sauce. The result is a decent midweek supper.
More successful still is Kelis’ recipe for butternut squash soup. My Life on a Plate is a genuinely interesting cookbook and there are a lot of intriguing recipes from Puerto Rico and Colombia.
I opt for something more familiar. The soup is a doddle to make, heavy on the herbs, and the raisin garnish I initially balk at adding is actually really good.
IHAVE my greatest success with Twenty Dinners, a book co-authored by Chris Taylor, bass player with New York art-rockers Grizzly Bear. Some of the food is very chef-y, involving raw scallops and lavender-infused olive oil-poached cod. But there’s less complex stuff too. Even I can manage the slow-roast lamb, which involves nothing more complex than poking the meat with garlic, rosemary and anchovies and sticking it in the oven.
There was a time when a rock star would be the last person you’d call on for cookery advice but the mass of cookbooks they’re producing tells you our attitude to cooking has changed.
The earliest book in my selection is the Sinatra one, which speaks loud and long about an era before Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver, before superstar chefs were photographed looking like, well, rock stars.
The contributors are all of advanced years, the meals are either old-fashioned stodge or the province of stuffy formal dinner parties and the male stars who have contributed all write about cooking in a way that suggests they only ever go near a kitchen if their wife is ill.
It seems a different world entirely from that depicted in Twenty Dinners, a book that couldn’t be hipper if it tried.
You’re never far from a photo of a vinyl collection on some distressed furniture, or an informal lunch party filled with twenty- and early-thirty-somethings with hipster beards and arty tattoos.
Perhaps these days a musician knowing how to cook carries a similar air of rarefied cool as knowing about obscure music or literature or art did in the past.
Or perhaps I’m overthinking it. Either way, the slow-roast lamb is a minor triumph. I can’t be bothered with the suggested accompaniment, which involves something I’ve never heard of called rutabaga, but I dish it up with salad and it’s still a hit – moist, delicious and as good an argument for rock musicians writing cookbooks as any.