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HILLSBOROUGH, Calif. — Live from his home kitchen in the Bay Area, Martin Yan flashed a smile, raised his cleaver and chanted the catchphrase that the 150 or so people watching him online were clamoring to hear: “If Yan can cook, so can you!” More
The chef and owner of Noma, the acclaimed Copenhagen restaurant, wants to engage all the senses.René Redzepi is the chef and owner of the acclaimed restaurant Noma in Copenhagen. His menus are heavy on local, seasonal, foraged ingredients, as well as the use of fermentation to make things like pine cones edible.For a conversation with him based around an exchange of pieces of music, I chose the “Water Cadenza” from Tan Dun’s “Water Passion” as an amuse-bouche, followed by the first movement of “Cantus Arcticus” by Einojuhani Rautavaara. Redzepi chose Philip Glass’s “Floe,” from “Glassworks.” Here are edited excerpts from the discussion.I wanted to pick pieces that speak to your sense of adventure when it comes to using ingredients that people haven’t considered edible before.There is something so spontaneous and simple about the “Water Cadenza” that I truly enjoyed. I felt it was something we could actually listen to in the test kitchen. I came to work and had it on my headphones, and it was really upbeat — a positive, energetic song.What made me think of you in these sounds of water being slapped and poured and decanted is also the quality of synesthesia, of engaging multiple senses. When I ate at Noma, the first course was a broth contained inside a pot of living herbs, with a hidden straw. In order to drink it, I had to bury my face in the living plant and there was the enveloping sense of smell and the leaves tickling my face.It’s a way of shaking people and saying: Stop everything else, be here. This is the natural world right now as we see it; please take it in. Some come here and are already attuned to being curious. But other people? It’s the same with music. People eat and listen to the same seven or eight things all of their lives.The second piece I picked for you is the beginning of the “Cantus Arcticus” by Rautavaara, a Finnish composer who died in 2016. It includes field recordings from a bog near the Arctic Circle so that the birdsong mixes with the orchestra. I thought there was an analogy to your cooking in the wild and the cultivated sounds, the foraged “found” sounds from the field and the composed ones.First of all, I loved the piece. I thought it was incredibly dramatic, like I was waking up in a jungle somewhere.Many things that I enjoy in art and design and crafts is when those two fuse: something raw and wild with something ultrarefined and very polished. When those two can meet I generally think that’s the future of our society. Becoming a little more wild and listening a little more to the wilderness so that we can be more attuned to it.The other thing is that it’s very local. The birdsong ties it to a specific place and a specific season. And that made me want to ask you about seasons. Music is the art of change over time, and I think you are making an argument for returning food to that context.It could also connect, as you said, to variety. We need to be better at using it. Eating variety. Listening to variety. And not having everything be the same all the time. It’s incredibly boring and it makes us lazy people.My childhood was spent partly in Denmark and partly in Yugoslavia. When we decided that Denmark would be our permanent home, I was very rootless for many years. As soon as I entered cooking I found myself with something I loved. I fell in love with flavor immediately. But I was still not 100 percent sure if I actually belonged here. I didn’t have a sense of belonging anywhere.When Noma opened in 2003 nobody foraged. I mean, they had done so out of desperation, but not for flavor or any exquisite texture. And we found ourselves on the shorelines and in the forest. And that’s when I found my sense of belonging, with my feet in some rotten seaweed or my hands deep in a bed of ramps. And I’d like to pass that along to anyone who is rootless: Go out and learn the seasons. See what’s edible. See what changes week by week. See how an ingredient is not that one thing you think it is. It can be five different ingredients as it grows from a little shoot to a berry.I guess another part of that is fermentation, which is another way of making time work on ingredients. It has its own logic and span that you can’t hurry.It’s an antidote to the world where everything is so fast; on-demand; lightning speed. To actually have things that you have to wait for and then something magic happens, I love that. The happiest people I know are people who are in nature all the time: foragers, bakers, fermentation experts. Sometimes I envy that focus. My job is to be at the center of everything that is going on.Speaking of a lot of things going on, let’s talk about the Philip Glass piece you picked, “Floe.”The first time I heard it I thought maybe it was techno, and then I thought: No, it’s something completely different. I got pulled into the rhythm and the way it just keeps building and building. A lot of our staff listen to it. There’s something about the energy in that beehive of sounds that resonates with us when we’re just about to get very busy.Listening, I was actually picturing a busy kitchen as well. It’s a demonstration of how much richness you can get out of changing just one variable, because the harmonic progression is the same over and over. So there are no surprises there. But there are constant surprises in how he changes the texture. He plays with these simple ingredients, but they’re quite weird put together: flutes, French horns, and synthesizers and saxophones. So you have airy, mellow and brash and — I don’t know what I would call a synthesizer. Sharp?People get focused by listening to this song. If you play it loud enough, no matter what’s going on you’ll think: I need to focus. A lot of cooks have Glass on their playlist now. There’s something about his music that really works in the kitchen.It doesn’t impose a story on you the way maybe the Rautavaara does. The Glass is very abstract. And to me, it’s fermentation: I picture things fizzing and bubbling.Maybe we should play it in our fermentation room. Do you know Mort Garson’s “Plantasia”? It’s an electronic album that was meant for plants. And we play that in our greenhouse for our plants. I know there are quirky farmers who play music to their animals.When you said “Plantasia” I thought it might be the amplified sounds of plants growing. John Cage wrote a piece for amplified cactus. And you can laugh or roll your eyes at that, but ultimately it comes down to the same thing you are doing — expanding people’s awareness of what’s audible and what’s edible.I think our senses are the biggest gift we have, and we use them poorly. We don’t eat well, we don’t listen well, we don’t see well. And our senses could be like ninjas. More
The new Netflix series tapped years of scholarship and the life experience of its creators to chart how African Americans have shaped the country’s cuisine.There is a breathtaking moment near the end of the first episode of “High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America,” a new four-part Netflix documentary based on the 2011 book by the scholar Jessica B. Harris. More
While your travel plans may be on hold, you can pretend you’re somewhere new for the night. Around the World at Home invites you to channel the spirit of a new place each week with recommendations on how to explore the culture, all from the comfort of your home.Over the course of the decade since I first visited, I have often imagined myself at home in New Orleans. I think of the syncopated shuffle of a snare drum, the simple pleasure of an afternoon walk with a to-go beer in hand and the candy-colored shotgun houses that sink into the ground at odd angles. And so it wasn’t a huge surprise when, at the beginning of 2021, I found myself packing up my life and moving to the Crescent City for a few months. Why not be somewhere I love at this difficult time, I thought? Why not live in my daydreams for a little while?From left: Bike paraders on Frenchmen Street the week before Mardi Gras; a shotgun house; the Pete Fountain jazz funeral second line paraded during Jazz Fest in 2016.From left: Emily Kask for The New York Times; Sebastian Modak; Bryan Tarnowski for The New York TimesNew Orleans is above all else resilient. Mardi Gras parades were canceled this year, though it didn’t stop New Orleanians from finding ways to celebrate (nothing ever will). In recent months, brass bands have taken to street corners in front of masked, socially distant spectators instead of packed night clubs. Strangers still chat you up about the Saints from their front porches. My visions of this city may still be filtered through the fuzzy lens of a visitor, but I know I’ll be pretending I’m still there long after I’m gone. Here are a few ways you can, too.A brass band plays on Frenchman Street the week before Mardi Gras.Emily Kask for The New York TimesTurn up that radioNew Orleans music is a collage of sounds: it’s the birthplace of jazz, of the frenetic dance music known as bounce, popularized by superstars like Big Freedia, the call-and-response songs of Mardi Gras Indians, and so much more. For an overview of the sounds of this loud, percussive city there is no better place to start than the wonderfully eclectic WWOZ, a community-supported radio station that has been on the air since 1980. Luckily, you can listen to it from anywhere online. It’s only a matter of time before you start getting to know the various D.J.s and tuning in for your favorites.From left: musicians Big Freedia, Rebirth Brass Band and Kermit RuffinsFrom left: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images; Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times; L. Kasimu Harris for The New York TimesPut on a curated playlist“New Orleans is not a periphery music scene,” Soul Sister, who has hosted a show on WWOZ for more than 25 years, told me. “New Orleans is the reason for it all.” Soul Sister was one of a handful of local experts I consulted in putting together a playlist that will send you straight to New Orleans. Among her recommendations are a bounce classic by DJ Jubilee and the music of Rebirth Brass Band, which brings her back to afternoons spent celebrating on the street: “It reminds me of the energy and freedom of being at the second line parades on Sundays, dancing through all the neighborhoods nonstop for three or four hours,” she said.On this playlist, you will also find some classics — the rollicking piano of Professor Longhair, for example, starts it off — recommended by Keith Spera who writes about music for the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. By the end of the playlist, you will undoubtedly agree with Mr. Spera’s assessment of New Orleans music: “There is no singular style of ‘New Orleans music’ — is it jazz? Rhythm & blues? Funk? Bounce? — but you know it when you hear it.”The Mosquito Supper Club is a Cajun restaurant in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Denny CulbertExpand your cookbook collectionJust like its music, New Orleans food contains multitudes: Creole, Cajun, African, Vietnamese and other flavors collide like nowhere else. A fine place to start is with the Dooky Chase Cookbook, the collected recipes of Leah Chase, who died in 2019, of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, an institution that has hosted civil rights leaders, presidents and countless regulars at its location in Treme, the neighborhood where jazz was born. Next, tap into the Cajun influence on the city with “Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou,” by Melissa M. Martin who oversees a restaurant of the same name in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Ms. Martin recommends making her grandmother’s oyster soup. “I can picture her stirring a pot on Bayou Petit Caillou and seasoning a broth with salty Louisiana oysters, Creole tomatoes and salted pork,” Ms. Martin said. “The marriage of three ingredients transports me to the tiny fishing village I call home, where salt was and still is always in the air.”From left: Velma Marie’s oyster soup; President George W. Bush with Leah Chase at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in 2007; Linda Green’s ya-ka-mein.From left: Denny Culbert; Evan Vucci/Associated Press; via Linda GreenCook up some noodle soup, Nola style“It is New Orleans’ best kept secret,” the chef Linda Green, better known as Ms. Linda, told me when I asked about her specialty. Festival and second line crowds come to her for ya-ka-mein, a salty beef noodle soup often eaten as a late-night snack or a next-morning cure (hence its “Old Sober” moniker). The dish’s origins are mysterious: a product of cultural exchange involving, depending on who you ask, Black soldiers returning from the Korean War or Chinese railroad workers arriving in the 1800s. Ms. Linda’s family recipe is also a mystery (she credits the globe-trotting chef Anthony Bourdain for encouraging her to keep it secret). But she has shared versions of her recipe, so you can try your hand at it at home. “That will get you pretty close to the real thing,” she said with a wink I could almost hear over the phone.First Street, in the Garden District, is lined with ornate mansions that are still lived in today. The pink Italianate mansion, above, is the Carroll-Crawford House.Sebastian ModakWalk it offNew Orleans is a city full of history and it can be hard to know what you are looking at without some guidance. You can feel like you are on your own personal walking tour thanks to Free Tours by Foot, which has transferred their expertise to YouTube. You can now stroll the grandiose Garden District, pull away the sensationalism around New Orleans’ Voodoo traditions and take a deep dive into jazz history in Treme. “New Orleans is full of painful history, and it’s also known as one of the most fun cities in the world,” Andrew Farrier, one of the tour guides, said. “I think it’s useful for all of us to know how those two things can live so close to each other.”From left: the Bywater, the Sazerac and the Brandy Crusta — all New Orleans inventions.From left: Drew Stubbs; Craig Lee for The New York Times; Melina Hammer for The New York TimesFix a drinkContrary to so many pop culture depictions of the city, New Orleans’ drinking scene extends far beyond the vortex of debauchery that is Bourbon Street. There are the classic New Orleans inventions, of course, like the Sazerac, but for something a little different, turn to one of the city’s most revered mixologists. Chris Hannah, of Jewel of the South, invented the Bywater as a New Orleanian spin on the Brooklyn. “Among the ingredient substitutions I swapped rum for rye as a cheeky nod to our age-old saying, ‘New Orleans is the northernmost tip of the Caribbean’,” Mr. Hannah said.Chris Hannah, making a cocktail behind the bar, is a revered mixologist and the co-owner of Jewel of the South. L. Kasimu Harris for The New York TimesHave a little partyWhile it’s impossible to fully channel the spirit of a New Orleans dive bar at home, combine the playlist above with your quarantine pod and a “set-up” and you might just get close. What is a set-up, you ask? It’s a staple dive bar order that will get you a half-pint of your liquor of choice, a mixer and a stack of plastic cups. It’s also an often-overlooked part of New Orleans drinking culture, according to Deniseea Taylor, a cocktail enthusiast who goes by the Cocktail Goddess. “When you find a bar with a set-up, you are truly in Nola,” Ms. Taylor said. “First time I experienced a set-up, it was paired with a $5 fish plate, a match made in heaven.”From left: a still from Lily Keber’s documentary “Buckjumping”; the cover of Sarah M. Broom’s book “The Yellow House”; Jurnee Smollett and Samuel L. Jackson in the 1997 film, “Eve’s Bayou.”Mairzy Doats Productions (far left); Trimark Pictures (far right)Wind down with a story or twoIt should come as no surprise that New Orleans, with its triumphant and tragic history, its syncretic culture and its pervasive love of fun, is a place of stories. There is a wide canon of literature to choose from. For something recent, pick up “The Yellow House,” a memoir by Sarah M. Broom, which the Times book critic Dwight Garner called “forceful, rolling and many-chambered.” Going further back in time, try “Coming Through Slaughter,” a fictionalized rendition of the life of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden by Michael Ondaatje.If you are in the mood for a documentary, Clint Bowie, artistic director of the New Orleans Film Festival, recommends Lily Keber’s “Buckjumping,” which spotlights the city’s dancers. For something fictional, Mr. Bowie points to “Eve’s Bayou” directed by Kasi Lemmons. It’s hard to forget New Orleans is a city built on a swamp when you feel the crushing humidity or lose your footing on ruptured streets, and this movie will take you farther into that ethereal environment. “Set in the Louisiana bayou country in the ’60s, we could think of no better film to spark Southern Gothic daydreams about a visit to the Spanish moss-draped Louisiana swamps,” Mr. Bowie said.Glimpses of south Louisiana’s swampy flora can be found in New Orleans’ Audubon Park.Sebastian ModakHow are you going to channel the spirit of New Orleans in your home? Share your ideas in the comments.To keep up with upcoming articles in this series, sign up for our At Home newsletter. More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusClassic Holiday MoviesHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesCredit…Noriko Hayashi for The New York TimesHow to Pretend You’re in TokyoThat Tokyo trip will have to wait for the millions of people who canceled flights and hotel bookings. But there are ways to bring you closer to this sometimes impenetrable, always fascinating, city.Credit…Noriko Hayashi for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyBy More
