Quinois with Potatoes

For the last few years, my simple, warped view of cooking gave me the idea that if I cooked some frozen veggies and threw that in with some grain and protein, I was cooking. One pretty simple recipe from Mark Bittman has disabused me of that notion. I've cooked Trader Joe's Potato Medley with Quinois before, but I always boiled the quinois into a mushy mess that was alright, but never actually good.

Bittman recommends roasting the quinios, and it makes a huge difference. It's a little bit crunchy and far more flavorful. Admittedly, I didn't follow the recipe exactly since I already had the TJ's Potato Medley bag around, I figured I might as well use it. Although this is one of the first times I've freelanced away from the recipe, it turned out pretty good. Here's the what I actually did (let me know if you want the actual recipe):

• Grease an 8 X 10 or 8 X 8 pan with olive oil.
• Put 3-4 peeled cloves of garlic along with Potato Medley into a pot with water and bring it to a boil. I added some salt, but probably didn't it any since there's probably already plenty in the bag.
• Pre-heat oven to 400.
  
• After the water's boiling, add 3/4 cup of quinois and turn the heat down a bit, but keep it rolling for 5 minutes.
  
• Drain enough so excess water is gone and pour into pan.
• Add another tablespoon or so of oil, ground pepper, salt if you want and toss.
  
• Bake for 15 minutes.
  
• Remove and scrape around the edges and toss again.
• Bake for 10 minutes.
• Add some chile powder and cheese of your choice. I used what I had around, some cheddar cheese slices I tore up and some grated parm.
  
• Bake another 5 minutes.

This turned out pretty darn good. The cheese helped of course and the crunchy, nuttiness of the quinois definitely made me appreciate the grain more than I ever have before. I don't know if the Potato Medley is a healthy choice or not, but it doesn't seem too bad.

My personal take away, is that roasted quinois is way better than boiled.

Wax Tailor - In the Mood for Life

Hip-hop may have started off as a distinctly American style of music, but some of its most innovative practitioners are coming out of Europe. Witness the French DJ Wax Tailor's latest album, In the Mood for Life, a classic hip-hop album chock full of excellent tracks from beginning to end. It has all the elements of the best of hip-hop: skits, obscure jazz and funk samples, expert cutting and scratching, tricky MC flows, sultry female vocals, and most importantly, dope beats.

Wax Tailor has put out some good tracks before, but with no qualifications, I can recommend this entire album. If you like Cut Chemist, RJD2, DJ Shadow or the Herbaliser, this album is not one to miss.

In The Mood For Life - Wax Tai...

Dragon Chasers is an eerie slow jam featuring vocalist Charlotte Savary. B-Boy on Wax is an old-school track featuring MC Speech Defect, who channels Fatlip and The Pharcyde. No Pity evokes Play-era Moby, with what sounds like a gospel vocal track, masterfully mixed with a slamming beat, strings, horns and subtle cuts and scratches. Until Heaven Stops the Rain is composed of the classic story-telling lyrics set over evocative strings. This track in particular reminds me of Soul Position, RJD2's project with the rapper Blueprint. Wax Tailor showcases his amazing range on Leave It, essentially a neo-soul track a la Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, interlacing Dionne Charles funky vocals with a honking baritone sax. This Train features MC Ali Harter, who reminds me of the rapper Jean Grae, and I think it includes an uncredited Beth Orton singing vocals in the background. On Sit & Listen, Wax Tailor shows off his DJ chops with an instrumental track overflowing with samples and beats that compete comfortably with Cut Chemist's best. Near the end of the album, I Own You takes the whole album to another level, serving as a sort of Wax Tailor anthem. It's a soaring soul track with vocals by Charlie Winston.

Rarely does an artist produce a great album in these days of the disposable single, but Wax Tailor comes pretty darn close. Check it out.

From the Vault: Morphine - Cure for Pain

From time to time, I'll take a break from highlighting new music to unearth a hidden gem many people may not be familiar with. In particular, I'll try to find albums or artists that stand up to the test of time.

Morphine was a Boston-based minimalist Jazz/Blues/Rock outfit. They featured just drums, bass and sax. Their sound is unique and unlike any other band that I've heard before or since. The music on Cure for Pain, their 1993 masterpiece, is deep and lush; Dana Colley's baritone sax is lower than you're used to and Mark Sandman's voice and two-string slide bass playing both thrum on subdued frequencies. Just as the Allman Brothers are known for their signature dual guitar licks, Colley and Sandman would often duck and dive around each other, roughly following the same melody. On several songs, Morphine thickened the sound with Colley playing double sax or Sandman adding an organ, piano, tritar (three-string guitar), dobro, or found sounds of various sorts.

Every single song on this album is strong. Each one has a fat groove and, like the Violent Femmes, after a few listens, you can sing along word for word. Lastly, I'm not a lyrics guy, as most people who've heard me talk about music know, but Morphine had great lyrics.

Unfortunately, the whole album isn't on Lala, and I do strongly recommend this album over their other material. So check out the tracks on iTunes or Amazon or Last or Pandora or YouTube or something, but listen to this album. You won't be sorry.

Cat Empire Live in NYC!!!

Loving a band that hails from Australia ain't easy. On the plus side, they can rhyme Karma with Armor, which an American band can't get away with. After being a huge fan of these guys for a couple years now, I finally had the opportunity to see them on this North American Tour, but NYC was the closest they came to DC, so I made the trip up. I convinced Alex and Jon to go with me. The venue is right in Times Square, which is pretty amazing on a Saturday night. It's not much bigger than 9:30 in terms of the floor, but then they have a huge back area with seats. I'm not good at estimating seats, but I'd guess a couple thousand were packed in there. It was sold out. Oddly, they ran out of room in the coat checks, which just seems like bad planning for a venue in Northeast after all.

The show took a little while to get going, but around the fourth or fifth song, they did a Middle Eastern flavored song called The Darkness, where they just killed it for what seemed like ten minutes. After that, each song was better than the last, and the sweaty intensity of the show just went through the roof. Even though they don't have a guitarist, they make up for it in terms of rhythm with a DJ scratching around and one of their lead vocalists plays percussion. As for solos, the keyboardist is pretty damn good, but their trumpet players are outta sight. The lead trumpet also sings lead vocals and he blazed on both.

In terms of comparisons, they most reminded my of Ozomatli in terms of their sound and their live show experience. There was a lot of jumping up and down, hand waving, clapping and singing along. The energy was fantastic and no one wanted the show to end. It was good times.

If you're into latin jazzy, reggae, hip-hop influenced, high energy jam band-ish music, definitely check out the Cat Empire. Two Shoes is the albums to start with.