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Author InterviewsBob BlumerDave Weich, Powells.com
Blumer's new book, Off the Eaten Path, is the most creative cookbook I've seen in ages, but to pigeonhole it as a cookbook is to miss what makes it special. A talented artist (his work has been commissioned by The Salvador Dali Museum, among others), Blumer managed the career of acclaimed singer-songwriter Jane Siberry for ten years before creating his first book, The Surreal Gourmet: Real Food for Pretend Chefs. Yes, Off the Eaten Path presents dozens of delicious recipes, but more important, it reminds us that cooking and entertaining should be fun. "I think of these books really as guides to better living," Blumer explained before his Portland event, "not as cookbooks. I'm just someone who had a knack for living well. If you read between the lines, I hope that's what you get." Extreme Cuisine, Cinematic Suppers, Not Luck Dinner Parties...Portland marked the end of Blumer's 30-city tour. Powell's hosted the toastermobile's last official stop.
Dave: Are you preparing different dishes in each city? Blumer: We have two or three different menus for the dinner parties, and we pull from about a dozen that we cook on the road. We've changed it here in the Northwest; we've been doing some salmon dishes and corn's in season now, so we've been using fresh corn. As we went along, laws of the road dictated certain recipes. Some became favorites. Dave: Last weekend, we had some people over and we made the Slammin' Salmon Extravaganza. We prepared the whole meal: the pepper-crusted maple-glazed Salmon; the gee, your beet smells terrific; the (i can't believe it's not) creamed corn; and the stilton & pear dessertwich. It was fantastic. Blumer: As advertised? Dave: Completely. The food was amazing - I've already turned a few more friends on to the salmon. But it was a lot of fun, too. Miel and David even brought over their Morcheeba CD, your recommended Music to Dine By for that meal. Blumer: Guests feed off your energy as much as your food, I think that's always an important thing to remember. Sometimes people spend so much time worrying about making recipes or following recipes that they forget the vibe is really what makes or breaks the evening. Good food ups the ante on that - they'll have that much more fun - but it's really energy that people should be feeding off. At a good party, it is. Dave: We had a great time. I should thank you especially for suggesting complementary drinks. I had to improvise a bit on the Raspberry Martini - I couldn't get Chambord because the liquor stores were closed, but that's where my bartending experience paid off. Blumer: Drinks make a lot of things much better. Dave: Have the people who've come to see you on this tour cooked from your books before or are they meeting you and your recipes for the first time? Blumer: Both. But I get a lot of feedback through my web site about people using the book and enjoying it. And that's the highest compliment I can get, people like yourself saying they made something and it turned out just as I'd promised. My sole objective is to make people culinary heroes amongst their friends and family, so when I know that things turn out I feel like I've succeeded. Dave: You were in the music industry, managing Jane Siberry, then what happened? All of a sudden, you decided, I'm going to write a cookbook? Blumer: I've always been a jack-of-all-trades and a master at none, and I've always lived well beyond my means. Food was always a vehicle for me to live that way, a way to experience instant gratification three times a day. I decided to write a book strictly on a whim, but it allowed me to use all the things I did well in life - though not necessarily well enough to do as a vocation. I think of these books really as guides to better living, not as cookbooks. I'm just someone who had a knack for living well. If you read between the lines, I hope that's what you get. Dave: This is the first time I've interviewed the author of a cookbook - and hopefully not the last (no pressure on you, of course) - but part of the reason is that your book is so much fun. I'm not a cook, but I was immediately drawn to it and I started showing it around the office almost immediately. The recipes are great, but as books go, it just seemed more creative than most of what's in our Cooking section. It takes more chances, and as a result, I think, there's a bigger payoff. Blumer: I'm not a cook. I'm a layman, like yourself, and now I've carved out this niche for myself where I have the time to develop recipes. The underlying secret to every one of my recipes is that I've combined fresh
ingredients in a way that the combinations provide very bold flavors. But
the ingredients do the hard work. It's not technique or any kind of fancy-schmancy
chef stuff. Most cookbooks demand a lot of ingredients, technique, or a lot
of time. My knack is finding stuff you can do quickly; once again, it goes
back to instant gratification.
Dave: You include suggested running orders, you estimate advance prep time, you suggest music to cook, dine, and wash by. Everything is spelled out so clearly, the advance preparation and so forth. It's user-friendly. Blumer: Well, I'd never owned a cookbook before I wrote my first one. It's Bob-logic, really. I just think, What would everyone want to know? Everything you're picking up on, these are things I labored over for a long time. I mean, it's only a cookbook, but there are many layers below the whimsical surface. When I managed Jane Siberry...are you familiar with her? Dave: I am. You can't go to school in Canada without becoming aware of every homegrown artist and thinker. Canadians take it upon themselves to inform you. I don't know how many times I was told that Peter Jennings is Canadian. I saw Jane perform in Boulder, Colorado, a few years ago. Around 1994 probably. Blumer: I remember that show. That was the "It Ain't a Concert Concert Tour." There are so many levels to what she does. I think of what I do in the same way. You can look at it and say, "Oh, pretty pictures." Or, "Here's a recipe I can use." Or, if you delve in deeper you can find things that will really improve your quality of life, things that won't cost money or time - it's really a perspective. Something that's not in the book, for instance, but something I do: I call it The $25 Upgrade. On long-distance flights, I bring my own dinner, a take-out Chinese dinner or something like that. And I bring fresh squeezed orange juice to mix with vodka - because vodka and fresh squeezed orange juice is the best cocktail in the world. I bring my own tea bag, so I can have whatever kind of tea I love. And I bring a fruit smoothie, which I have them put on ice for me so I can have it for breakfast. For $25, I have all the creature comforts in economy class, and I haven't paid the extra $1000. Things like that. It's now my job to think of these things, and I write about them for people who don't have time. Dave: You've clearly put a lot of effort into making sure the new book speaks to people who may not have a lot of cooking skills, people who appreciate good books and enjoy great food. Are there other cookbooks like yours? Blumer: There are very few cooks, actually, who fall into my category. There's a guy called The Naked Chef, a British kid. There's an old marketing saying, "The best place to put a shoe store is on a street full of other shoe stores." I've always wanted to align myself with other chefs, but there really aren't many that do what I do, which is make things fun and light, at least to this degree. I can't get arrested in any of the serious food magazines, even though my food is serious. That's the downside to being fun and accessible. You can't please all the people. One thing I really learned from Jane is, whatever you're making, you have to make it for yourself. You may be able to sell a lot of books or music if you make it for a target audience, but to be happy, she always said, you have to make it for yourself. There are a few books I'd recommend. Ralph Steadman, the gonzo artist, has written a wine book and a Scotch book that are amazing. If I had to recommend some interesting reads those would be the ones: Grapes of Ralph and Still Life with Bottle. And also Jeffrey Steingarten wrote a book called The Man Who Ate Everything. Amazing guy, and really interesting stories. They're my two culinary writing heroes. Dave: I saw in your bio that you grew up in Montreal. What part of the city? Blumer: We lived on the West Island, which was the English ghetto when I was a kid. Now it's much more integrated. I lived there until I was twenty. Dave: What made you leave? Blumer: I went to Western [The University of Western Ontario], then I lived in Toronto for about eight years, managing Jane at the time. Jane's attorney said, "Listen, son, if you ever want to make it in managing, you have to go to New York or L.A." I was looking for an excuse to go someplace warm anyway, so that's when I moved to L.A. Dave: And now you're making all sorts of t.v. appearances. Blumer: Well, it wasn't enough that musicians had to write music and play instruments; all of a sudden they had to make videos. The same thing is true - as soon as you write a cookbook, the obvious way to present it is on television. I'm the last person in the world I'd have said should be on television, but on this tour I'm on television every day. I remember cringing when I had to say my lines in Peter Pan in elementary school. I was never a natural actor. I even tried taking an improv course, and I left before they threw me out. Have you ever been in England and watched British television? They're just real people. That's what I love. Their newscasters are real, regular people. Jane used to exaggerate the mistakes in her songs; I like to do that. I think you can do a better job being a real person. The only thing I can do is just be myself. Dave: Do you watch Iron Chef? Blumer: I don't have a television, but I have seen bits of it. I'm always proud of not having a t.v., but you get me into a hotel room and you have to wrestle the changer out of my hand. Dave: I was going to ask which chef you'd like to face. The popularity of that show, and the whole Food Network, really, is fascinating to me. I guess it's just another case of targeting niche markets, but it still seems amazing to me that people in my office - including myself - are anxiously awaiting the next episode of a cooking show. Blumer: The thing with Iron Chef...because I'm self-taught, I'm not as well-rounded as others. In the world of cooking, I've carved out this one little niche, combining fresh local ingredients. But hand me some New Zealand mussels or soft shell crabs and I'd be totally at a loss in a game like that. It is amazing. It's like the new sport. I've been told that gardening is the nation's biggest hobby, but I bet that cooking is right after it. Dave: We all eat. Blumer: Right. Cooking and entertaining. We do live to eat. And the whole world of wine, too... I think it's great. Going back to what I said at the beginning, food is a great way to elevate your quality of life. For not much more than the price of a Big Mac meal, you can make yourself something really satisfying. Dave: The book is well-organized. One section is dedicated to Extreme Cuisine, meals you can prepare under the hood of your car or in your dishwasher. There's a section of 4- and 5-course Winner Dinners and another presenting meals to accompany great movies about food. I especially like the idea of The Not Luck Dinner Parties. Everyone spends about ten dollars and brings their particular set of ingredients. Again, it's about getting everyone involved and having fun, and it doesn't put all the pressure, or the bill, on the host. Blumer: That's an example of my book imitating my life. I just came up with a clever name for it and quantified what I'd been doing. That phenomena, me picking a meal and assigning individual elements of it to the guests, I still do it. But it was born of necessity - there was no way I could feed all my hungry friends. Also, people get vested in the evening. They've brought something, and they know it's part of what's made. I like that. They feel that much more a part of the dinner. Dave: There's a good primer to wine in the back of the book, too. Blumer: I've gotten totally sucked into that. I trade work for wine. But I could pour a glass of fancy-schmancy wine for two people, and the guy who hasn't had much wine, or hasn't focused on it, will say, "Oh, that's nice." The other person will do back flips. If you decide you're into it, and you want to chase the grape, you can get so much more pleasure out of that glass of wine. It's just a matter of focus. Dave: Tell me about the marathon you ran in France from vineyard to vineyard. Blumer: It's the Médoc marathon in Bordeaux, where all the biggest, fanciest wineries are based. It's also a costume marathon. When I ran, there were nine thousand runners. You run on a country road, then up the long winding pathways to the wineries - that distance is all calculated into the total - and each one puts out glasses of wine on tables for the runners, just as they'd put out water in a regular marathon. The guys in the front just run right past the wine. The guys in the middle stop and have a little sip and maybe spit it out. The guys at the end drink at all of them. It was so much fun that I got to the end before I was tired. There were so many distractions. Dave: How long did it take you to finish? Blumer: 3:42, or something like that. Dave: What was your costume? Blumer: I didn't wear one. I was too nervous. I hadn't run a marathon in ten years. But my time, even stopping to take pictures, was faster than ten years before when I'd been in better shape, so go figure. To me, it's all about adventure. I chase culinary adventures. The idea of running a marathon like that, you couldn't keep me away. I'm actually going to France right after this tour to be a migrant farm worker and pick grapes at a legendary Burgundy winery. Dave: Are you going to write about that? Blumer: I'll see. It's a very fabled winery. I had to lobby to be let on the grape-picking team, so I'll have to ask their permission. But it's not my reason for going. Dave: I wondered because I saw that you do interviews for WineX magazine. What is Tori Amos drinking? That sounds like a lot of fun. Blumer: I have a column in WineX, but my other mission is to find people for cover stories. I hear about them or I read something. For instance, Jason Priestly is the co-owner of a restaurant. Or, do you know the band The Devlins? A guy in the band is a friend of a friend of mine, and he ended up crashing at my house. I'm always staying at people's houses on the road; it's couch karma. But The Devlins were opening for Tori, and he was telling me about all this wine she was ordering one night. It turns out she's way into wine. People usually come to my house and I make dinner for them, then they raid my wine cellar. It was interesting with Tori
Amos because the whole conversation was about wine, but she would tell
me really interesting rock 'n' roll stories that she never would have told
Rolling Stone because she never would have taken the path to get there,
using wine as the subject. It was an interesting way to learn about someone.
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Don't Miss
At six-thirty or so, 
But what they're doing is very clever. They're taking all these shows out
of the studio - that's the big trend now. "Door Knock Dinners," where
someone says, "I'm going to make a dinner out of what's in your cupboard."
