Cooking With | Wampire

As members of Wampire, how do you deal with garlic?

‘I love garlic but I kind of gave up on it. It’s such a hassle to peel.’

So I heard that you guys have known each other since fifth grade. Do you have any food memories from those times? 

‘It never stops being fun to eat string cheese. When I was a kid I would just throw a whole string cheese log in a tortilla and microwave the hell out of it, roll it up and eat it, it was super ghetto. I also microwave CDs – if you haven’t done it before, you should try it. When I first met my step-brother he told me that he microwaved his cat. I instantly didn’t trust him, ha-ha.’

If you could invite anyone (dead or alive) to eat dinner with you, who would you invite?

‘I might invite that dude with the boat with all the animals on it – Noah. I would have him round with two of each animal and ask them what really happened. We wouldn’t eat the animals, because there would only be two of them, but we’d have some chicken. I cook this super good chicken, rice and kale recipe all the time. I cooked a lot when I was younger when I worked in restaurant kitchens and what I took away from that was the simpler the recipe, the better. My first cooking job was at an Italian restaurant in Salem, I really wanted a job so I looked through a phonebook and just called places that sounded interesting. I cold-called this Italian restaurant and got the owner, Rob Henry, on the phone and made this spiel about how cooking was what I wanted to do and that I wanted to learn and the guy just hired me after that call. I worked there for like two years and he taught me tons of things about cooking, like how to slice onions properly. I moved on to cook at Mexican, Creole, Thai, German places, even a crêperie.’

Wampire Chicken, Rice and Kale

 1 chicken breast
1 cup of brown rice
a few handfuls of green kale
3 tsp turmeric
salt & pepper
1 bouillon cube
handful of fennel seeds
 

• Brown the rice over medium heat in a pan, then pour 2 cups of cold water over it.

• Add a bouillon cube, a bunch of fennel seeds, a handful of slivered almonds, crushed walnuts and currents, and cook until the water evaporates. Do not stir!

• De=stem the kale, throw it in a pot of boiling water. Blanch for a few seconds and strain immediately.

• Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, a little bit of agave syrup, sesame oil and some salt and pepper.

 handful of slivered almonds
handful of crushed walnuts
handful of currants
splash of balsamic vinegar
1 tsp agave syrup
1tsp sesame oil

• Season the chicken with turmeric and brown it on both sides in a hot pan.

• Splash some hot water in the pan to de-glaze it, cover with a lid and cook for about 8 minutes.

• Remove the chicken from the pan and cut into cubes.

• Reduce the remaining sauce and pour it over the chicken. Pile the rice, kale and chicken on a plate and eat up!

Wampire’s new album, Curiosity, is out on Polyvinyl Records. They play MC Theater, Amsterdam on 21 June with SSION. The show’s free for Subbacultcha! members.