eat that chicken

I like to listen to jazz while I’m cooking. Mrs Dodman keeps out of the kitchen while I’m being creative with food, so I have free rein to play whatever appeals to me at the moment. The CD player is in the dining room which is open to the kitchen. Thus I can close the door to the rest of the house, turn up the volume a little, open a bottle of dry white wine and bounce around the place while chopping onion, squeezing garlic and calculating the calories.

Recently I had a moment of amazing self-discovery - my selection of music varies according to the type of dish I’m preparing. How have I never realised this assonance of tastes before?

Yesterday, for example, I cooked a sort of Remoska of fillet steak, sweet potato, asparagus, fine green beans and paprika stock. To accompany the preparation I listened to a compilation CD of jazz from the Chicago era. I bought it from the Sunday Times about 12 years ago and I resurrect it whenever the culinary mood takes me. Tucked in the middle of the tracks is The Eel by Bud Freeman. Actually, billing is given to Eddie Condon, but he rarely took centre stage, preferring to give the limelight to his sidemen. When I listen to numbers such as this, I find myself being forced to place the music in its chronological context. The track was recorded in 1933 and still sounds as fresh as last year’s wine. So how original and exhilarating did it sound when it was first released 75 years ago and jazz was yet to be seen as a somewhat pretentious and too often introspective art form? But I digress – that’s another debate.

A few days ago I cooked a prawn risotto. Then I listened to Art Blakey live at Birdland, when he had Lou Donaldson on alto (before he turned R&B) and Clifford Brown on trumpet (a couple of years before his premature death). Recorded in 1954, it features one of my all-time favourite dance tracks: Parker’s composition Now’s the Time. When I say ‘dance track’ I use the term in its broadest meaning. All sorts of jazz makes me want to dance, but it’s not the conventional granddad-at-the-disco style; mine usually involves no more than fingers, feet, shoulders, chins - and knives used as drum sticks on saucepan lids, a practice meeting with severe disapproval from Mrs Dodman.

When I cooked a chicken korma, I listened to Tijuana Moods. I think I first heard Los Mariachis in about 1963 soon after the album was released. For some reason it took 6 years to hit the shops but when it did, it jolted me out of my trad groove and sent my jazz preferences spinning in an entirely different direction. Charles Mingus gave me one of my first truly seminal musical moments in life.

For some reason ham, egg and chips goes perfectly with Wynton Marsalis and his Majesty of the Blues album. Chicken, couscous and salsa salad sits very agreeably with Gerry Mulligan’s West Coast sound, although I find that when I substitute pork for chicken his Concert Jazz Band actually aids digestion.

The Modern Jazz Quartet seems to suit cheese on toast, Georgie Fame and the Harry South Big Band sprinkles deliciously on potato and leek soup, and Dexter Gordon is a magnificent vegetarian pesto pasta, unless I’m listening to The Chase with Wardell Gray, in which case the dish turns into a bolognaise variant.

My top food is lamb chops, served with beetroot, tomato and fresh mint salad, caramelised balsamic carrots and pureed broad bean and potato mash with an optional side-dish of celeriac. That’s when I listen to recordings by Chris Barber before he was Big. Funnily enough, if for some reason I can’t find any fresh mint, I prefer to listen to Chico Hamilton. That’s weird isn’t it?