I’m Musician Dan Boeckner From Operators and Wolf Parade and This Is How I Eat

If you’re following new music, you probably know Dan Beckner of Operators , a dark and danceable synth-pop band that includes him, Electro Shock Devoik and drummer Sam Brown. (Check out their new album, Radiant Dawn, here and here , and their touring schedule here .) Most college listeners. But what you don’t exactly know about Beckner is that he worked a lot in restaurants before the whole theme of music hit the ground, and that he has both extensive knowledge and a lot of enthusiasm for a truly impressive array of cuisines. seasonings and really good potato chips.

Location: Quebec

Current concert: Singer and guitarist Operators and Wolf Parade

So in this interview, I’m going to move away from music and focus on food. Did you mention on Twitter that you used to be a chef?

Yes, I worked in the food industry from 17 to 20 years old in Victoria and Vancouver.

What kitchen did you work in?

I’ve only worked in a couple of decent restaurants. I ran a kitchen in a regional chain restaurant for about a year – it was probably one of the worst jobs of my life, and it made me give up cooking. But I worked for a long time in a really good Italian establishment in Victoria, which is now closed due to chronic mismanagement, like many other restaurants. And then I just worked in different places, managing kitchens, doing menu planning and everything else.

Do you cook a lot at home now?

I do. When I was working in the food industry, I hated as hell to cook at home. I ate very poorly when I worked in the food industry. I think this is a common thing.

Oh, this is very common. Are you currently preparing most of the food in your home?

I do. This is shared between me and my partner, but I usually cook.

It makes me sound like a stalker, but I saw you tweet a photo of a bag of MSG. What do you like to use monosodium glutamate for?

I like using MSG for fried rice and noodle dishes – quite a bit. Basically, it’s the same as kombu, or shiitake mushroom powder, which I like to use when making fried rice. I have a really great recipe from Mission – actually it is a Chinese Missionary recipe, I love to cook it, but it is fried rice with salted cod. I live in Quebec and salted cod is super cheap here because we have an Atlantic fishing industry and we have a huge Portuguese population in Montreal. So there really is a demand for it – mainly for bakalao . I started making this thing out of salted cod fried rice and would use very finely ground shiitake mushroom powder as a substitute for MSG. Take dried shiitake mushrooms and grill them in a food processor or coffee grinder with a couple of kombu pieces. You get that kind of umami-monosodium glutamate vibe , but it’s much easier to just add a little monosodium glutamate in there.

It’s easier. I have that one pound bag in my closet, so when I saw this photo I was very excited.

This is a secret hiding place in my kitchen. It’s mostly divided into Sichuan things like chili peppers, dried peppers, and then some random Japanese culinary stuff like dried salted plum ume , as well as a bunch of Burmese things I found while touring with Wolf Parade. We were playing in North Carolina and there was a burnt Burmese grocery store right on the street. I’m not going to name the store because I don’t want to publicly blame them for it, but it’s pretty cool: they sell all these great Burmese products like the particular chili they use, chili powder, but they also sell additives for betel nuts, a chewable stimulant. This is betel leaf, makroot lime leaf, and then real walnut and quicklime powder.

Oh my God.

Aha! So, I walked into the store and was damn it, it’s completely normal. They also sell really good Burmese curry powder. So I bought a huge bag and took it to the van and the whole van just stank like fermented chili and betel leaves for the rest of the tour.

I’ve always wondered how people manage to support themselves on tour in a healthy enough way. Do you deal with it?

You know, I try. I have come to the conclusion that this is almost impossible. You are constantly on the move, and you spend most of the day between major settlements, so if you stop and get food, it will be at a gas station. And your time is really limited – when you boot up and you have a soundcheck. To be honest, usually the first thing I do is just figure out where the good food is, around the venue, within walking distance, and then set aside some time for me to go eat, because food is one of the few things. which you can control while you are on tour. But it can also be very frustrating. If I’m at home, I go out and I don’t eat well, I usually say, “Oh shit, that was terrible food. Come on, that’s okay. But if you’re on a tour and find a Vietnamese restaurant, you think all day, “Vietnamese food. This is my reward. It will be the highlight of my day when I’m not on stage, ”is that bad? It looks like a crushing blow.

I feel the same way when I travel and waste food. It seems to me that if I choose the wrong place, I will fail in something. But I can imagine that this is compounded by the stress of touring.

This is exactly what it is. And it definitely depends on the region. If you are playing in coastal North American centers, chances are you can throw a stone and find the food you want to eat, or that suits your diet, or whatever. But once you start getting closer to the center of the country, it gets really hard to find food, and the food just gets shitty and shitty. Honestly, if you’re traveling the Midwest, Starbucks is your top choice for breakfast almost every day.

What are you getting?

I usually get a breakfast sandwich and a double espresso. Sounds shitty, but other options are to go to Pilot gas station and have a four-day old egg salad sandwich or something. When I was younger, I just ate trash – you know, hot dogs on rollers?

I do. Yes.

Or Tornado – they are mostly Chimichangs. I would eat this, or I would eat anything – many of these establishments have a fried food cabinet – for example, a bag of chicken nuggets. I would eat this and I would feel terrible and regret it, but now I usually buy a small can of tuna and some crackers. This is a win-win.

I will say that sometimes there are treasures with a fried food cabinet.

Oh yeah. Overall Europe is really good for food on tour. In fact, I’m going to free the United Kingdom from this because their food is shitty rubbish.

Don’t you like mashed peas?

It’s just a post-war ration kitchen. It was like they were on the rations during the Blitz and everyone was saying, “Well. Good enough for us. We like it. “

I mean, I know there is a whole world of “gourmet” food in the UK, but it costs a million dollars a plate. They do have jerky and really good Indian food. This is good. But in general, Europe is good for everything the promoter has to offer. If you are in Italy it is great to go out to eat before the concert.

But the Netherlands – in terms of fried food at gas stations – I mean, I’m generalizing, but the food there is perhaps inferior to the UK in terms of horror. Because there is a lot of boiled endive with flour sauce and a piece of warm ham. Like real Protestant food for suffering – like food for suffering . But since the Dutch colonized Indonesia and the entire area, they kind of introduced this food into their food culture to the point that if you stop at a Dutch dressing, you might notice these deep-fried cubes of mi gorengs , such as noodles or fried rice in perfect cube. This is amazing. These are real fried treats at a top quality gas station.

Sounds amazing. When I was in Copenhagen recently, I noticed that their 7-Elevens were just by leaps and bounds better than ours.

Oh, for sure. You can get Spaghetti Carbonara at 7-Eleven.

Did you mention on Twitter that you once changed your tour itinerary so you can cook in Sicily?

Yeah. I was with my whole band, Handsome Furs, and we ended this tour specifically in southern Europe so we could fly to Syracuse . There is an open, mostly fish market that has been in existence in one form or another for over 800 years. There has always been some kind of food trade. I think this is the southernmost point of Sicily. Feels like it’s almost North Africa. There is a lot of Moorish influence here. Apparently the Egyptians were there; there is a square – a city with a pond, around which papyrus grows, and the legend says that it was planted by Egyptian explorers who came to Syracuse . I went and rented an apartment there with a simple gas stove. At night I went out and ate in these restaurants and tried to figure out how to cook what I ate. Then I would get up in the morning, go to the market, buy food, cook dinner, and try to repeat what I ate the night before, except for lunch.

How successful have you been?

Not much at first, but I learned how to make sardé pasta , one of my favorites. It is a no-sauce pasta that includes bread crumbs, fennel, raisins, pine nuts, and sardines.

Sounds great. Well worth the trip. When you’re not traveling, what do you usually eat for breakfast at home?

I recently changed my breakfast. I used to eat a Scandinavian breakfast that included sliced ​​cucumbers, rye crackers, eggs, and pickled herring. I like it. I love this breakfast.

But isn’t that what you are eating right now?

Yes, that’s not what I’m eating right now. Since I’ve been so busy recording this record ( Radiant Dawn ) lately, I started making this one-pot Japanese breakfast. You get a can of mackerel, get some rice – usually sushi rice – and cook it all in a rice cooker. So, you put the umeboshi , the pickled plum in the rice cooker, along with the rice, mirin, a little sake, a little soy sauce, about half an inch of chopped ginger, and butter from a can of mackerel, because mackerel is a super fatty fish. You want the mackerel to be packaged – soybean oil works well – and you pour the mackerel into it, then add water to the liquid level and close the lid. Cook it. The oil prevents it from sticking to the bottom of the rice cooker, but it almost forms a crust during cooking, as if you are cooking really very good fried rice. And when it’s done, you beat it, put it in a bowl, and then I put Japanese pickles on it like a pickled beef steak. I forgot its Japanese name, but it’s kind of like purple pickles and then Japanese pickles. Top with really finely chopped green onions. And then you eat it, which is great. It’s a good breakfast because it has protein and mackerel has a lot of fat, but it’s not too heavy, you know? And this is the only pot.

These are all really wonderful things: one pan, you don’t have to look at it, you can do something else while it cooks.

This is usually my morning routine: I just pick my mackerel rice, answer my emails, have my coffee, the mackerel rice is ready, eat it, throw the rice cooker liner into the dishwasher and go to the studio.

What kind of coffee do you usually drink?

I am generally an espresso lover. My partner and I bought an espresso machine last year. I need to monitor my coffee consumption very closely because if I have it I will just drink it all day.

This breakfast sounds pretty satisfying. Do you usually feel like you need to have lunch, or does it keep you feeling hungry for a while?

It keeps me pretty full – I have an insanely high metabolism for some reason. I usually eat a sandwich, light salad, or something for lunch. Especially if I’m in the studio, just about something that I don’t have to think too much about.

And dinner is usually larger?

Unless I’m in the studio or rehearsing, one of my favorite things to do is just cook dinner in two or three hours. I find it really meditative. I don’t often do it, but I love to do it.

Do you have dishes that you come back to over and over again, or are you trying to cook dishes from different cookbooks?

Last year my partner and I went through Mamushka Oli Hercules’s cookbook . This is modern and old Ukrainian cuisine. I totally adore this. She also wrote a book on cooking from the Caucasus. I think it’s just called ” Kaukasis “, but there are a lot of great things in there, and I kind of put this cookbook together with that – it’s fun to combine a cookbook – just to contextualize it.

There is a cookbook that was published in pre-revolutionary Russia, in tsarist times, and, in fact, was a guide for housewives . I mean, it’s basically a title. So it covered everything from how to make butter to basic food safety things that are incredibly outdated and scary today. How to kill a chicken, shit like that, but you also know … Tsarist Russia. The cookbook itself is an interesting artifact in the sense that it truly inspires. There are recipes for simple things like hodgepodge , this basic soup with pickles, tomatoes and sausages, and it’s kind of like a throw-all-in-the-pan soup. But there are also elaborate recipes for what you associate with the Romanovs. Jellied meat dishes, like a whole perch in aspic, and inside it – eggs with spices.

So I have this, and I also have a cookbook that was published as a supplement to it during communism , which was kind of revolutionary. It was taken from that cookbook, but then put all these recipes in a kind of socialist light, and was strangely desirable because many of the recipes in the Soviet era cookbook contained ingredients that people couldn’t get in many places.

This is my shit.

This is really cool. When I returned to Montreal, I had to leave a bunch of things in California, and one of the things I left behind was the huge Time Life cookbook set my mom left me after she passed away. And I always come back to this set of cookbooks if I’m cooking something. I just sit and reread these books. I think this is Time Life Cooking of the World ? It’s like a set of 26 volumes, it was published in the late 60s, and it’s incredible. I think you bought it by subscription, and this is probably how many Americans interacted with other cultures, especially in the Eastern Bloc.

The volumes they had on Yugoslavian cuisine, Polish cuisine, Russian cuisine – they had unlimited access to these countries, which were supposedly simply closed to the West. Some of these volumes are almost a draft of the Socialist International. They debunk many myths about food shortages and a kind of vague idea that all of these countries lived in a gray, dismal food situation. I think Magnus Nilsson refers to these books in that edition of Scandinavian Cooking .

I like this internationalist approach to this because I feel that especially with Russian cuisine, you get this anti-communist rhetoric along with it.

O, sure. It’s the same with China. People’s cultural and racial prejudices are truly bizarre in the way they talk about food. Maybe not so much anymore, but even with Chinese cuisine, you know, there is this kind of misunderstanding.

Do you even watch Chef’s Table?

I do. I have not seen them, but I do.

Have you seen the Russian episode [with Vladimir Mukhin applying modern methods to pre-Soviet cuisine at White Rabbit in Moscow )?

Yes I did. I did. It was crazy.

What do you think about it?

I have many Russian friends and have been there many times to give concerts. But it seems to me that this whole scene represents a very small class of Russians, and the real Russian cuisine is several light years away from what was presented there. He used traditional Russian cuisine, I believe that it was “sublime”, but inaccessible to 99% of the population.

I think this is a really good way to express myself! You take something and “lift” it, but you do it in such a way that the people who invented it cannot access it.

Have you read any articles about ayvar that came out last year? Aivar is similar to the South Balkan variety of roasted peppers and garlic sauce.

I do not.

It is one of the staple foods of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. I often go there – my partner Devoika is Macedonian and many of her family members live there. We eat a lot of aivar and I was shocked to see these articles about aivar. I think it was a Vice food blog – this British chef basically said, “I’m going to make ayvar essentially cool, but very expensive and desirable,” which is a hell of a lot of fun because ayvar has almost no nutritional value, and it really is. super time consuming to manufacture. And it’s really just a delicious appetizer with rakia , the local hard liquor. It’s funny to see how largely peasant food is repackaged and sold to Westerners for hundreds of times its real value.

Yeah. And the same is happening in the West. That was years ago, but one day I saw SPAM on a $ 200 tasting menu. [Editor’s note: It was $ 135. ]

What the hell? Really?

Yeah. In a way, you are trying to say that this is a good ingredient, and it is . But there is so much to take for it ….

Was it presented in Hawaiian – was it spam nigiri or something?

I think it was fried rice. I wish I could remember more details, but that was about five years ago. The white guy did it.

It has always been that way. There is an almost macho quality about this shit that I really don’t like. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like “Yes, we have a great restaurant, but you fucking eat SPAM! Can you believe it ?? “It’s like the culinary equivalent of being a lord. It’s like a weird class division. You take what was created out of necessity for poor people and make it inaccessible to them.

This is wild. Shift type here: do you have any studio or workout snacks?

This is a good question. I ate a lot of these very expensive and delicious potato chips. Speaking of increased food.

Which brand?

Truffle chips from Torres. They also have Mediterranean herb flavored potato chips and they are just darn delicious.

Are they made with truffle oil or with truffle specks? Describe truffle chips for me.

They contain truffle oil. I mean they are not that spendy. This is not an eight dollar bag of chips. But yes, they taste very truffle. I think they are cooked in olive oil, so they really taste good. I’ll make an egg salad sandwich, then put a layer of these potato chips and pickle on top of it. This is a good sandwich.

How to make egg salad?

Boil eggs, chop them, add mayonnaise, pickles – very important – green onions and dill.

Do you have a brand of mayonnaise that you like?

Yes. This is Tomi’s mayonnaise . It is sold in a tube and I think it is a Balkan product, but it might be an Austrian product that is very popular in the Balkans. But every time my partner and I go there, we try to bring Tomi’s mayonnaise back , because it’s just … there’s something about it. Okay. This is something like an egg, which I like. I’m not entirely sure if this is technically a “good” mayonnaise, you know? I mean, it’s delicious. It does its job. I never really looked at the ingredients, but I love it as hell.

What other condiments do you have?

I have dongzhang, a fermented bean paste that I like to use with stews like Chinese broccoli or bok choi, teaspoon or tablespoon at a time. You cook it very quickly, set it aside, then add a little oil to the wok, melt the dyeongjang in the oil, and then just stir the vegetables lightly and it’s a good snack.

Are you a hot sauce lover?

I’m not crazy about hot – I mean, I love good hot sauce, but I’m pretty good at the classics. I really like Cholula. It’s a little spicy. But I really like the Sichuan hot sauces and chili oil. I use a lot of chili oil.

Sichuan sauces give them the same tingling sensation, don’t they?

Yes, they have Sichuan peppercorns that have some kind of overwhelming taste. This is my default. If I am leaving for a city in North America and I have a day off, I will try to find either a Serbian restaurant or a Sichuan establishment.

I suppose it will be harder to find if you like the middle of the country?

I think that over the last half decade, the food options in the Midwest have gotten a lot better. There are some true old school classics in the Midwest though. I’m a fan of Culver butter burgers. This is good shit. If I need to eat fast food in the Midwest, that’s fine. But you can find weird Amish restaurants. I have been with a couple in Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana. You know, some old school Amish cooking is mostly German home cooking, but in a buffet style and it’s always fun.

As for fast food, I have nowhere to judge. I eat McDonald’s because I’m trash, but these buttered patties are really good.

They are really good. And A&W in Canada is a permanent touring restaurant if we go to Canada. The stretch of road between Montreal and Toronto is arguably one of the bleakest thoroughfares. It’s so boring. It’s kind of like a reworked Hanna-Barbera background. You kind of go into a trance because it’s so monotonous and shitty. They have sort of tourist centers along the way and they all tend to have the same restaurants. They will be Tim Horton from Starbucks and A&W. A&W in Canada is great; Buddy Burger is a great burger.

Is it different from A&W in the US?

Yes, this is it. I’m not really sure how, but it tastes different. Vegetables are better.

Sounds about right. Do you have frozen or convenience foods in case you can’t cook?

Yes I know. I don’t have a microwave at home, so … but there is a really great Polish restaurant in Montreal that is near my studio called Batory and they have been making homemade granny style dumplings for a long time. they were open. You can eat them at a restaurant or buy huge frozen bags. They are incredible.

Spicy cod roe is another quick and easy way. Asian supermarkets usually have it – mentaiko . You will receive these bags with cod caviar and butter and some spaghetti. Place the cod roe in a saucepan with butter and cream. You can add garlic, but this is not necessary. Add some water for the pasta to thicken the sauce at the end. Then toss the pasta with the cod roe cream, put some green onions on top, and it’s delicious. Have you ever tried bottarga before ? This is similar to the Japanese version of a very simple bottarga paste. It is in an uncooled, prepackaged purse. I ate this last night.

Can we take a look at your refrigerator?

The refrigerator is pretty grim, Claire.

Do you have any favorite hangover foods?

If I’m really hungover, I’ll make my own version of budae-jigae , a Korean army stew with hot dogs and SPAM. This food is absolutely delicious. Or I’ll make a Japanese curry from the Gleico brand – just throw everything in the pot. But … If I’m really hungover, I’ll just use whatever is in the fridge and make a giant pot of budae-jigae , homemade food . I always have chicken broth at home, so I start with chicken broth and Korean chili powder flakes and just start adding something to it until I get something good. Then I cook the ramen and add poached eggs on top. This is good. I think eggs are a panacea.

Are you a cocktail or beer lover?

I really love wine. Yes, I’m a wine guy. I kind of had to stop drinking beer after music and touring became my profession, and then after I turned 30, because if I’m on tour for two months and drink an average of four to six bottles beer per night, I’m just bloated. It’s not cool to talk about it, but after 30 I just said: “Okay, I have to quit drinking beer.”

It happened to me too, but not for the same reasons, but after I turned 30 and started sneezing every time I drank beer.

Weird! What do you think it was?

I do not know. I even tried to track because it didn’t seem like everything that made me sneeze, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. So I just switched to gin.

I love gin.

Jin is so good!

So I have to say that Operators Devoyka is another thing of hers – she trained with all the Attaboy guys in New York . It looks like an underground game. This is probably my favorite bar in New York. She ended up training with them from time to time for the past couple of years and learned how to make cocktails. They have a drinks app and some of her drinks have been added to the app. She hosted these Pink Panther parties in her apartment. So I’m totally spoiled for cocktails.

My favorite cocktail is Gibson, which is a dry gin martini with pickled onions. She has mastered it completely, but has mastered many other, more complex cocktails as well. This is dangerous because we were under pressure every night. This is basically what happened during the writing of Radiant Dawn , the new Operators record. We were working on something, and then when we got back to the apartment, Dev said, “Okay, I’m working on a new menu for Pink Panther. Try it. Now try this. Try this. ”And then, you know, I would be absolutely doomed.

Do you have a specific brand of gin that you like?

I think the Botanist. really good. I grew up in a small rural town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, a large island off the coast of the mainland. The province recently lifted restrictions on distillation lines so all these private distilleries are running and most of the Vancouver Island gin is really great. I would say that it can compete with international gins. Ampersand is one of them.

Some of them are clearly, like, too “kicked out”, like “handicraft”. Too much infusion. I really like one gin from Canada – this is Defender Island . It comes in dark, almost like a fifth bottle, like a mickey. I think it is from British Columbia and it is made with juniper and rosemary, but burnt juniper and burnt rosemary. It’s like smoky gin.

If you could only choose one source of salt, one source of fat, and one source of acid, what would you choose for each category?

Salt – I would prefer unrefined sea salt. Fat – I would prefer lard like lard because it tastes great. I am a big fan of chwarzi . It’s like the little fried lard you eat as a snack. And I would just call the acid lemon. I like lemon juice with medium astringency.