I cooked this one solo. The reason being the neighbors of my friend who hosted us decided to have a photo shoot in their shared backyard. The worst part is that when we finished up everything in her living room (we made an audible to host inside), they hadn’t even taken a single photo, so basically they’re awful hipsters/human beings. Being inside, with the bands loading in and soundchecking, made filming the cooking portion unrealistic, so to save time I just did everything myself.
A month or so prior, I came back to my apartment one Saturday afternoon after some morning errands and decided to cook something. The problem was that I didn’t have much. What I did find was a can of chickpeas and sweet plantains. Inspired by mofongo, I thought to myself, what if I mashed them together and pan fried the mush in a skillet. The result was a bizarre yet tasty sweet and savory patty that was far from complete, but something I knew I’d want to experiment with and use for the show.
Now back to the day of. I had Philly’s The Lawsuits come up especially for a session and got Field Mouse last minute after another band pulled out. Field Mouse sound like Beach House and My Bloody Valentine together. Lawsuits sound like an indie version of traditional folk meets rhythm & blues. But you can hear a song from their sets below.
As for the food, I made some changes to the initial on the fly recipe. The below recipe makes 5-8 patties depending on how big you want them.
- 1 can of garbanzo beans aka chickpeas
- 3 plantains
- 1 avocado
- 1/4 cup unbleached white flour
- 4 cloves of garlic
- salt and pepper to taste
- oil for frying
- 1 tbsp butter
The process is as follows:
- Add chickpeas, plantains, and avocado to a bowl
- Mash them together with a potato masher until all the individual ingredients are indiscernible
- Add shopped garlic cloves, flour, salt, and pepper to the mush and continue to mash
- Heat pan to medium (I used cast iron skillet)
- Add oil and butter
- Once oil is heated, scoop out 1/2 cup size portions of the mush and place in pan
- Once the first side has a nice crispy brown color, flip
- When it’s cooked through and crispy on both sides, add the sauce (see below)
Some people HATE cilantro, so I made two different yogurt sauces, which consisted of
- Greek yogurt (roughly 16 oz)
- lime juice (2 oz)
- 1/2 diced onion
- Either mint or cilantro
Mix everything together in a bowl then pile a heaping spoonful on top of your patty for a delicious meal.
The Lawsuits were up first. They offered up a fun mix of rock, honky tonk, folk, and r&b.
The highlight for me though was Long Drive Home, which I wished they included in their focus tracks for us to film. Well…so it goes. You can still listen to it below.
Finishing things up for the afternoon was Field Mouse. As mentioned earlier, guitarist Andrew hurt his finger. Throughout the set, you could see that it was getting to him, but he was a trooper, powered through it, and delivered an amazing set. It was loud. Quite loud. Louder than any other BBS to date.
Photos by Steve Alexandre. Audio by Jonas Blank.
