“Music and food is where the cultural mixing happens in a positive way. It’s where people come together naturally, it’s where you can see it in a way that’s not threatening, you can tell the story of how people mix in a way that doesn’t threaten socioeconomic and sociopolitical hobby horses, and so that’s one of the reasons why we do what we do, musically speaking.” — Rhiannon Giddens
“In Italian, we say all’occhio, which means, ‘with your eye.’ You see with your eye. And it’s like, of course you see with your eye, but if you’ve done it twenty times, you know with your eye what it’s supposed to look like.” — Francesco Turrisi
When we first started Food with Mark Bittman, one of my goals was to (at least sometimes) have guests who were not food people, but interesting people who were interested in food — that includes a large swath of humanity, but it’s great to have people who I admire and who want to talk about food and their professions. So one of my first dream guests was Rhiannon Giddens, who is one of my favorite musicians, a fantastic singer, and literally a genius—she won a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. Her mission is to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased or ignored and to work toward a more accurate understanding of America’s musical origins. I’m giddy about Giddens’ music (sorry).
Giddens now collaborates a great deal with the wildly talented multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi (he is also her life partner), who was called a “musical alchemist” by the Irish Times. He left his native home in Italy more than twenty years ago to study jazz piano and early music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He currently performs on piano, accordion, harpsichord, organ, various lutes, cello banjo, frame- and goblet drums. (And, as you’ll see, it sounds like he’s an amazing cook.)
So, here you go, dreams do come true: On this week’s episode, I’m joined by both Giddens and Turrisi. (If you haven’t listened to their music, I encourage you to hit pause here and do so; you might want to start with their latest album, They’re Calling Me Home. And once you do that, you’ll want to see them live; lucky for you, you can do that!)
The recipes featured in the episode—Couscous Salad with Fennel and Raisins, and Buttermilk Biscuits—are here and here.
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