The Recipe Project: A Delectable Extravaganza of Food and Music

One Ring Zero (songs) has released nine albums including the acclaimed literary collaborationAs Smart As We Are. They've performed at Central Park Summer Stage, The Kennedy Center, and been featured onThis American Life, Fresh Air, and Morning Edition.

Interviews and Recipes: Mario Batali (Babbo, Eataly, Lupa, Iron Chef), John Besh (August), David Chang (Momofuku), Tom Colicchio (Craft, Gramercy Tavern,Top Chef), Chris Cosentino (Incanto, Boccalone, Food Network), Mark Kurlansky (authorCod, Salt), Isa Chandra Moskowitz (Post Punk Kitchen), Andrea Reusing (Lantern), Aaron Sanchez (Chefs vs. City), Michael Symon (Iron Chef, Lola)

Essays: John T. Edge (introduction New York Times, All Things Considered), Matthew Amster-Burton (Hungry Monkey), Melissa Clark (In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite), Jonathan Dixon (Beaten, Seared, and Sauced), Tanya Donelly (The Breeders, Belly), JJ Goode (Food & Wine), Emily Kaiser Thelin (Food & Wine), Christine Muhlke (Bon Appetit), Michael Harlan Turkell (The New Brooklyn Cookbook), Michelle Wildgen (Tin House), Kara Zuaro (I Like Food, Food Tastes Good)

Leigh Newman (editor) is the author of the memoir Still Points North (Dial/Random House). Her travel, food and culture articles have appeared inThe New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Travel Holiday, Conde Nast Concierge, Brides and elsewhere.

Michael Hearst (editor) is a founding member of the band One Ring Zero.

"Need fun stuff for the super-music-nerd-foodie who has everything? Here ya go!"
Ted Allen, host of Food Network's Chopped

The Recipe Project began as a simple idea: take the recipes of today s top chefs, set them to music, and sing them word for word. The result is a quirky, remarkably catchy cd-book combo that poses some timely questions about the glories of music and food. If chefs are the new rock stars, why not celebrate them as exactly that? And how loud can David Chang play The Kinks before his restaurant patrons walk out?

Here, in one totally unnecessary collection, you get it all: the album of songs, the brilliant recipes, plus personal interviews with the famed chefs about everything from childhood violin lessons to teenage Van Halen haircuts. Along the way, some of the most noteworthy culinary writers in the countryincluding Melissa Clark and John T. Edgeweigh in on how food and music have helped them survive screaming newborns, religious fundamentalism, and dinner with grandma.

The Recipe Project began as a lark. Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, co-founders of the band One Ring Zero, decided to turn Chris Cosentino s recipe for Brains and Eggs into a songword for word, phrase for phrase, including Remove the brains from the water with a perforated spoon and place on a plate. As if that wasn t trickyor bizarreenough, they asked Cosentino to recommend a music style. Beastie Boys, he replied. With an innocent grin.

The result was a fast, raucous ode to white-boy hip-hop jams and edible offal that, not surprisingly, caused a fair degree of uncontrollable laughter in the studio. The fact that the song also highlighted more serious culinary concerns of Cosentino sthe importance of cooking with all the parts of an animal and not just the pretty and palatable meatscame up only after the fact.

But it was enough to inspire Cosentino to call up a few of his chef friends like Aaron Sanchez and Michael Symon. They wanted recipe-songs too, Sanchez opting for traditional Mexican brass-band Banda. And Symon? Heavy metal, with a side of demon screaming.

By the time Hearst told his friend Leigh Newmana longtime writer for food and travel magazines who was just hatching plans for Black Balloon Publishing with co-founder Elizabeth Kochabout the project, One Ring Zero had six recipe-songs recorded. The two combined forces to recruit new chefs, as well as bring in some of best food writers in the country. The result: Listen, read, laugh, dance in the kitchen, and taste for yourself.