It has been my joyful burden to be chef-dancer-mother-friend to the International Body Music Festival, which occurs here in the Bay Area every other year. Since its inception in 2008, I have been privileged, as head chef of the festival's hospitality committee, to feed body musicians: people who stomp, dance, clap and sing the rhythms of their native countries.
I have cooked for people from Bali, Brazil, Madrid, Mexico, Spain, Greece, Turkey, the northernmost reaches of Canada, and from the US with the idea in mind that the artists' bodies must be at maximum performance level: nourished, satisfied, yet with enough physical power to dance and move through strenuous 15 minute sets of their shows. As a performer myself, I know that too much food weighs you down and fogs your head and slows down muscles and motor skills. Too little and a performer is depleted by the time the adrenaline wears off.
So what are the right combinations of proteins, carbs and minerals that can help you sustain an army of physical performers? How do you feed a group of artists ranging from the lithest tap dancer to two fullback sized men? And how do you deal with food allergies? Foreign taste pallettes? Feelings of homesickness and lowered immunities? And how can you achieve all your goals under these circumstances for just a few dollars per capita?
More right underneath the official squiggly.
For the festival, food sensitivities have always been a primary concern. The festival director had diet limitations; no beef, no pork, no wheat, no cow's milk. No vinegar, peppers or any nightshade produce such as tomatoes or eggplant. No mushrooms. And here's a hard one: No onions. Allowed foods were rice, corn of any time like grits, polenta, tortillas, and thank God, garlic and ginger.
In the months prior to the festival, I spent time pouring over my editions of Saveur, Vegetarian Times, and international food websites to research, for this festival, the Balinese diet (rice based), the diets of Northern and central Southern Europe (for the Spaniards, Greeks and Turks), and traditional recipes from the American south that provided economical forms of nourishment and familiarity for our American brothers and sisters.
We were fortunate in getting some small donations, ranging from $20 - $50 dollars for food from Safeway, Berkeley Bowl and Trader Joe's. We were also very fortunate to be the recipient of three days worth of freshly grown greens and leeks from The Garden Project, a non-profit community garden program of the San Francisco County Jail, which supports job training for ex-offenders and at-risk youth. For the bread eaters, La Farine Bakery in Oakland gave us rations of four sourdough baguettes and one walnut loaf for each night on Friday and Saturday, and double that for Sunday, when we'd be feeding twice the number of artists -- young kids included.
With the $30 gift certificate from Berkeley Bowl, we raided the bargain produce bin at $1.00 a bag and were able to supply ourselves with fresh basil, mangoes, papaya, melons, potatoes, apples, pears, asian pears and bananas -- and had room to pick up enough red cabbage, carrots, zucchini, cauliflower and garlic for the three days we needed them. We also spurged and got coconut milk and ginger to give the Bainese a little taste of home. The $50 gift certificate at Trader Joe's got us tons of snack foods like nuts, dates, and cookies to satisfy sweet tooths, as well as creamer for teas and coffee, and tons of olive oil. We held onto the $20 for the last special treat we needed for the closing night party on Sunday.
With this as our base, we were able to provide 110 dinners over a three day period, with plenty enough to spare for the incredible parties and full meals afterwards.
Here's the menu I came up with:
Roasted chicken (forget about purchasing a raw chicken and cooking it yourself -- Costco does it for under $5 a chicken and does a damn good job)
golden mung bean soup
basa gede (a Balinese sauce base)
steamed rice - brown and white
Tortilla Espanola
quesadillas
frittatas
congee
carrots braised with butter and ginger
braised cabbage with roasted cauliflower and garlic
braised collard greens
Aioli (plain and pimenton agridolce)
pesto and brushetta mix (for the bread lovers in the crowd)
And here are the recipes, with some words of wisdom:
MUNG BEANS ARE FOR THE SOUL:
Those who are familiar with my WFD diaries already know what my mung bean soup recipe is: boil peeled golden mung beans with whole ginger root and salt until soft and finish with garlic browned in some olive oil.
Aside from the relative ease of making this dish, which takes all of an hour from start to finish, the non-reactive properties of mung beans makes it an ideal food for cooler weather and temperamental stomachs, and when served with rice, provides a tasty Asian-style vegan approach to the beans and rice protein combination. It also keeps your digestive system in balance.
As an immunity food, where over 70% of your body's immunity is based in your digestive tract, you can really keep the bad stomach bugs at bay with this soup. Quite handy when you're dealing with stomachs from across the international date line.
DON'T LEAVE THE SPANISH BEHIND:
The idea of Tortilla Espanola gripped me as a new and intriguing recipe challenge. It's inexpensive, versatile, can be serve warm or cold, is a meal and can be a snack, and it's very easy, with a simple list of ingredients:
6-8 yukon gold potatoes - cut into 1/8" rounds using a knife, a box grater or mandoline
6-8 eggs
3 TBS minced garlic -- sauteed until soft (reserve the oil!!)
two raw large zucchini, shredded coarsely
1.5 cups olive oil (don't worry, you can re-use it)
salt to taste
Using a 12" non-stick skillet, saute potatoes in olive oil until soft and transparent. Season with salt as you're cooking. Try not to let the potatoes brown, if for anything, to prevent the temptation of you picking them out and eating them straight from the pan. Turn off the heat and set aside. Pour off the excess oil and set aside.
Scramble the eggs with the sauteed garlic and zucchini. Mix well. Add the potatoes and mix again, incorporating all together well. Do a final seasoning check and add salt to taste.
Heat the skillet on high heat with enough oil to cover the bottom. Immediately pour in the egg-potato zucchini-garlic custard and cook for a minute on high heat to set the bottom. Turn heat down to medium and continue to cook until set. The first side is done when the jiggling of the scrambled eggs nearly stops and the sides release easily from the pan.
Here comes the tricky part -- flipping the tortilla: Using a plate or tray large enough to accommodate the pan with enough edges of space at the sides, put the plate on top of the pan and remove the pan from the heat. Firmly gripping the pan and the plate, flip the tortilla over onto the plate, and then slide it with the cooked side up back into the pan -- this helps finish the cooking. Once the tortilla slides with ease on the pan, its ready to move back onto the plate. Ease it gently (no need to flip it over) onto the plate. Serve at room temperature as a cake, or cut into squares using a toothpick to hold together for individual, appetizer-sized portions.
Tortillas can be served alone as wedges with a simple green salad, or served on bread for a filling sandwich with aioli, pesto, or other veggies as an condiment. You can add anything from zucchini to ham, to leftover chicken to "beef it up". It's up to you.
RED CABBAGE SAVES THE DAY:
One and a half heads of red cabbage was plenty to provide a slaw, a saute and a garnish over the three day period. For the slaw I used 1/2 head of red cabbage, six shredded carrots, four golden delicious apples cut into matchsticks, some olive oil, lemon juice, and agave nectar as a dressing. Delicious served with hot roasted chicken and some steamed rice.
The saute the next night was a feast of cruciferous vegetables: roasted green and orange cauliflower, and red cabbage shredded and sauteed until soft in garlic olive oil and salt to taste. The combination of soft, garlicky, salty and crisp was satisfying without the heaviness that can sabotage a performance. We had enough to use the leftovers the next day as a garnish for our next dish.
RICE, FOR THE BEST PART:
Even as we entertained a global crew of artists, we had our own international resources to draw from for meal ideas. In the San Francisco Bay Area, with a large Asian community from China, the Philippines and Southeast Asia, we've most of us become used to congee, or jook -- a rice porridge, for breakfast -- a part of a weekend dim sum meal that's satisfying and comforting, particularly in cool weather.
Because our Sunday show was a matinee and the last show of the festival, we hit upon the idea of international "breakfast" for the noon meal that would feed up to 50 performers, and use up what we had left in the larder. I cooked up the congee like this:
3 c. white rice, cooked until soft and fluffy.
16 c. water
1 large "hand" of ginger, smashed but not broken or minced
salt to taste
Boil the water, ginger and salt until you can smell the ginger flavoring the water. Add the cooked rice and cook over medium heat until the rice is well-incorporated into the broth and the porridge is white, soft and consistent (no loose kernels of rice floating about). Stir to keep the rice from settling at the bottom -- you don't want the rice to burn. 60 minutes total porridge cooking time.
We served the congee with bowls of garnishes for each to make their own flavor: garlic sauteed until brown, bits of chicken from leftovers picked off the bone, leftover sauteed greens, oven-roasted leeks with chili flakes, caramelized onions, sauteed red cabbage, leftover braised carrots and ginger, and basil pesto.
WHAT ELSE DO YOU DO WITH GREENS?
With all the greens we received from The Garden Project, we had a lovely problem of trying to figure out how many ways we could cook them aside from braising or boiling them to death. With an homage to our dancing brethren from Greece and Turkey, we came up with some quick oven-cooked frittatas, which is part of the many complex mezes popular in the Mediterranean. Relying on my handy steel sheet pans, we created this recipe:
3 lbs. raw greens, cleaned and cut into fine julienne
garlic, minced
one dozen eggs
feta cheese (sheep's milk cheese)
pecorino romano (sheep's milk cheese)
Oil a piece of parchment paper and line the sheet pan with it. Saute greens in olive oil and garlic until soft and reduced. Drain off pot liquor and set aside. Scramble the eggs with the cheese and season to taste. Add the greens and mix well. Pour into sheet pan and bake at 400 until custard is set. Cool and cut into squares. Serve at room temperature.
A LITTLE HEAT CAN HELP YOU FEEL WELL:
With the arrival of a six-man Balinese kecak troupe, I knew we would have special challenges feeding them the kind of food that would nourish them and make them feel comfortable so far from home. It was then I decided to go the extra mile and splurge, donating a bit of my money to make sure they got a taste of home.
The ingredients to make Basa gede, a paste of various flavoring rhizomes that includes ginger, galangal, kencur, tumeric root, lemongrass, garlic and shallot as well as shrimp paste, are available at Berkeley Bowl and Asian specialty groceries that dot the Bay Area. It was a bit intimidating for even an experienced cook like me to balance this grouping of ingredients to make the taste I've experienced at the various Thai and Indonesian restaurants I've been to through the years. But the appreciation received from making their basa gede krapok (Balinese sauce for chicken) for them the first night of the festival brought cheers of appreciation -- they felt at home and loved.
Basa gede:
2 "fingers" of fresh ginger
1 finger fresh turmeric
8 shallots
6 garlic cloves, peeled
1 "thumb-sized knob" of galangal
2 kencur roots
2 red Thai bird chilis, seeded and minced fine (please use gloves to handle -- these can burn your skin for hours)
1 stem of lemongrass, beaten until soft and tied into a knot
1 tsp. shrimp paste
4 tbs olive or peanut oil
2 cans coconut milk
2 tbs brown sugar
For Basa Gede Krapok: Combine the roots, shallots, garlic, oil and chilis in a food processor. Pulse until its a medium-fine paste. Set aside. Add some oil to a skillet and add shrimp paste, and the roots-shallot-garlic paste, cooking in oil until blended. Add coconut milk, sugar and lemongrass. Turn heat down to low and simmer until flavors are melded. Serve with chicken and rice.
There are little touches you can add to make these dishes go a long way to feeding and satisfying a hungry crowd, let alone artists on a mission to do their very best on stage. Because the festival is a project of a non-profit arts organization, a rara avis in these days of recession and want, it took a labor of love and devotion to make these artists feel welcomed, energized and loved. Aside from their airline tickets and a free place to stay, we really had little more to offer them than that piece of love and country in bowl or on a plate.
For those who are curious, the total we spent over those three days for over 100 meals came to $4 per meal. As the festival director, Keith Terry told me afterwards -- "Fe, everyone felt so well with your food -- you powered this festival onto it's feet."
As an artist and someone who cares about art, music, and what we as human beings nourish our bodies and souls with, that last bit of love was worth every last minute at the stove.
For a little taste of what kind of music this festival produces, here is a video from the first one held in 2008, and the second half of the piece here.
It's music so happy you can cook by it!!