The repress of their fantastic debut LP "You & You" is currently at the press and you can pre-order a copy right now. Some of them come in a fancy reflective cover with alternate cover art. Go check it out.
And in the meantime, take a read about these dudes all working in the same kitchen together (at least they were last year..)
And if you like physical media there's a few copies of Translate #10 still around that features a linocut/letterpress cover. It's pretty cool.
How did you get into doing chef stuff? Was it more of an easy-to-come-back-to-between tours sort of thing, or did you pursue it professionally?
Growing up I really didn’t cook much. I didn’t very good either. I’d always go and get McDonald’s and shit, or pick the vegetables out of my food. I don’t really know when the change occurred, but it was probably once I moved out on my own. And I would have roommates who would cook their own food, so I would sometimes pick up on what they were making. Slowly, but surely, I started to discover that I liked Asian food, or I liked Thai food. One of my homies worked at a Thai place in town, and I would tour a lot so it was tough holding down a job and I always would come back to some shithole job. I worked at a super Target for awhile and worked some other places that were shitty. Eventually I lost the job because they didn’t want to deal with me always being out on tour. So I thought, ‘what do I do?’ and this friend who worked at the Thai place asked if I wanted to be a server. He said I wouldn’t have to cook or anything and I thought ‘sure’. But he offered that if I did want to learn how to cook I could come in the back and do dishes and then they would show me how to make curries. So yeah, I gave it a try and sure enough I learned how to use a wok, learned how to make curry, how to make noodles, all that shit.
I started to realize that I really liked this stuff and knowing how to do it. Even though I learned a lot in that kitchen it wasn’t everything and found that there was a culinary school in town. So I went to culinary school and went for around a year. Most people who go there end up doing what’s called an externship, which is basically an internship for three months working in a restaurant. But I was already working in the field and stopped school for around two and a half years and then went back, finished, did my externship while I was at work so I got paid, and then I graduated in 2015, and since that time I’ve been going from job to job in different cities, as well as my hometown.
A friend from my old band I was in asked me to help run his food truck for awhile, so I did that. And after that is when my partner and I began traveling a lot so I began taking on cooking jobs all over the country after that.
So now, more than anything, cooking is associated with traveling. Honestly, that’s making it hard for me now to figure what to do since traveling is more difficult. So that is why I’ve begun to considering the idea of doing a cooking show. Did I tell you about that?
No, tell me about that.
So I’m going to do this cooking show with short stories based around foods I know, recipes from friends around the nation, dishes that I like that homies from my hometown can help me with. And, also, I’ve just got all these experiences from touring all over and having eaten at different places everywhere. So I’m going to go for it.
That’s awesome. So your training is a bit of both worlds- getting a formal education and also just diving right into it.
It’s part of the job. I never really thought about school before, but I think it’s a really fantastic foundation. I take that education with me to every job I’m in, but there’s also the experience, which goes along way too.
So you mentioned that you worked in a lot of kitchens all over the country. What spots do you prefer, or cuisines do you enjoy making the most?
For me, I love Thai food. But it can be tough. Most Thai food in Central Texas is not fucking good. (laughs)
(laughs) I can only imagine! I wonder why?
Where you live, in the Northwest, is the mecca for good Thai food in America. I had the best Pad Thai I’ve ever had in Seattle. But I would say that really interests me, I also have an interest in vegan and vegetarian food, just to see how it’s made. I learned stuff on how to cook with aminos, and how to make tofu tasty- like how to fry it, how to marinate it. I learned a bit on how to cook tempeh right.
It took me years. (laughs)
It’s tough. There’s also a lot of brands as well. Have you ever messed around with vital wheat gluten?
Yes, I use it to make seitan all the time. I have my own recipe too.
I fucked with it a long time ago and it was alright. I think I would still take a black bean burger over that, but I’m sure there’s ways to make it really good.
But anyway, right now as far as cuisines go, I’m super into new American fads, but more so Spanish-influenced, like from Spain, putting masa on a pedestal. So really, really fantastic Mexican food with a focus on really sick masa, which is nixtamilized heirloom corn. I love that stuff.
Are you saying ‘matzah’, like the Jewish bread?
Nah, ‘masa’. It’s Spanish for corn flour. It sounds similar. It’s whole kernel corn, and the hominy, which is nixtamilized in the process where you add a less abrasive lye in order to alkalize the water and it removes the hull from the corn and allows you to digest it, as well as grind it.
So I just learned something new! So how did it come to be that you were able to get the other guys in Pinko jobs in the same kitchen you worked in?
The place I was working had a guy in the running to operate the place, but he kind of freaked out right when the pandemic started and didn’t really handle it right and he just walked out. So I was approached to run the kitchen and I felt confident about it. It was another case of me just going for it, even though I actually did it. But I did it. And soon enough a couple of the cooks left as well and they needed some help. Right around then Jared (Flores, bass) got furloughed and wasn’t sure when he would be able to go back. So I said to him, “This is not really conducive this is to being in a band together, but do you want to work for me?” So he came on and quickly became an integral part of the team with a couple other people that kept things running for the first couple months. And then I was interviewing for another position and learned that Luke (Mitchell, drums) lost his job, and kind of left him out to dry. So I hit him up and, again, said, “This might not be best for the band dynamic, but maybe we can practice between shifts at the end of the day”. And I’ll tell you what, that kid is a natural. He had maybe a years experience with cooking and he’s a hard worker, so great.
It’s funny because we had this whole team going, and then a lockdown closure happened, and some people weeded themselves out, and afterwards it was just the Pinko dudes running this whole operation! It was really funny.
And you got to be their boss!
Right, and it’s fine. It’s sort of how we run Pinko. In many cases the band is sort of my baby, but honestly we’re all equal, and that’s sort of the way it was in the kitchen as well. I think that whole chef culture is fucking toxic, or can be. Some chefs take it too far with this whole, ‘I am above these peons’
When you were able to tour would you find yourself being the one to cook fancy meals when you all found a place to stay for the night, or was it more basic, like ‘we’re doing spaghetti every night’. Or has touring been more of an opportunity to eat at cool places in each town?
We almost never will get hotel rooms for ourselves. If we have any extra money we eat somewhere good. We will sleep the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot so we can have the money to go to sick Korean spot, or a good Thai place. We went to an incredible ramen spot when we played in NYC and it was so good. I guess I would be more open to cooking while on tour now, but it’s such a double-edged sword with bringing food on tour. It’s not a huge deal, but the idea of having food rotting in the van is just another thing I don’t want to worry about. In one of my old bands one of the members, who was also a cook, would bring a portable burner and rice and beans and have this whole set up. But you know how limited time is when you’re on tour. When we have cooked meals we cooked them on top of the van. It was rad when we did it, but some times cooking takes that time that you don’t always have on tour.
But if we were trying to run the most frugal tour, if we were dead broke, we would definitely get a big bag of rice, a bag of beans, some kind of protein and do it that way. There’s no more frugal way than eating rice and beans with some protein while on tour and just making it happen.
Check this recipe out:
Burned broccoli in hot raisin glaze with caramelized sun
chokes
3 large broccoli heads (stems peeled)
11 oz Thai sweet chili sauce (Mae ploy)
2 oz rice vinegar
4 oz fried garlic (find at an Asian market)
2 c tofu dressing
8 oz sunchoke (peeled)
1 tbsp evoo
1 tbsp maple syrup
3 oz picked cilantro
1 oz sesame seeds
Water for deglazing
Sub recipes
Tofu dressing
1/2 c silken tofu
1/4 c soy sauce
1T sugar
1T Sambal oelek
1T sherry vinegar
1 1/2 t sesame oil
1/2 c canola oil
-Peel broccoli stems and cut in half all the way down the stem and in half
again. (should be nice long broccoli, no florets)
-add all tofu dressing jngredients to your blender except for the canola and
run the machine while drizzling the canola oil in a small stream. It will end
up like a loose pudding
-in a pan on medium high heat set your evoo and your peeled sunchokes so they
caramelized gently, deglazing with water and maple syrup several times until a
brown caramel develops to coat the sunchokes until they are easy to pierce
(hold warm)
-to cook the broccoli get a pan as hot as it will go on high heat and add a
splash oh canola oil, and sear the broccoli on one side for 3 minutes and
finish I the oven at 425 for another 7 minutes.
-once the broccoli is al dente, toss it in a bowl with the thai chili sauce and
season with a pinch of salt and the rice vinegar
-plate a dollop of the tofu dressing on the plate, layer that glazed broccoli
stalks in a neat pile, and garnish with the caramelized sunchokes all around
the plate and finish with piles of fried garlic, sesame seeds, and cilantro
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