Fat Freddy's Drop and the music of food

Iain Gordon makes music and food with Fat Freddy's Drop. Photo / Nicola Edmonds

Iain Gordon plays keyboards - and cooks up a storm - for seminal New Zealand band Fat Freddy's Drop. As told to Lucy Corry.

"Making music or writing a song is very much like the cooking process. You have all the ingredients and it's about what you do with them to make a nice, seamless journey, with one thing flowing into the next.

I've always been into food and cooking. I grew up near Oxford, in north Canterbury, and I think my upbringing set the standard high for good food. My mum was from Bluff so we were used to having crayfish, blue cod and oysters. We grew our own lamb, Dad had a big vege garden and we got our milk from the neighbour's dairy farm.

Mum was a great cook and she used to take wontons to all the local do's as her great party trick. Us kids were her wonton-folders. When I moved to Wellington about 20 years ago I discovered pāua and putting it into the wontons seemed to be a logical thing to do. I'm pretty sure I didn't invent pāua wontons but I think I can take the credit for being the first person to make them in a music video.

Thanks to all the touring we do, I've stepped into kitchens with lots of different people all around the world. I've never had any professional training; I've just totally faked it. About five years ago I made pāua wontons for a Wellington On A Plate event at Prefab with Martin Bosley. All I had to do on the night was deep-fry them but I was so nervous, way more nervous than I would be on stage. I was in the kitchen with all these chefs who were just gunning it. The crowd came in and took their seats and it was like, "showtime". The guy next to me looked at me and said, "Is this your first time bro?" I said, "Yeah, is it that obvious?' He said, "Nah, just relax, you'll be sweet." Being able to cook something that people enjoy is a real buzz. It's a very similar kind of performance thing, pleasing people, giving them a sensory pleasure.

As a musician, the thing I really enjoy is making people dance. If I can create music that makes people jump around, then I know I've done my job. I guess you can make food that makes people feel the same way. I quite like events where I do a bit of both, but that can get quite hectic, going from one thing to the next. It's easy to stuff both things up, but I'm learning to get better at it.

I'm not the only cook in the band, I just take all the credit. Scott (Towers) is an amazing cook. He makes really good sausages and does a lot of preserving. I've got some roasted kamokamo and smoked kingfish that I made last night that I'll take to rehearsal today and we'll all eat that before we get into it. But Scott's probably got something on the go as well.

Are we an army that marches on its stomach? We certainly look like it! Yeah, food is really important to us. We always have great catering when we're touring. The Freddys are big on dumplings, too. All of us around a big table, yum char styles. We're pretty spoilt for them in Wellington, there are very good dumplings here. The family who run Majestic Cuisine, their dumplings are amazing. If we can get a good dumplings recommendation in any city, anywhere in the world, we'll hit it. We will detour quite a long way on the road if we've got a good dumplings tip. We're pretty dedicated in that way.

They're feeding you all the time when you're touring, there's food everywhere. Normally we've slept on the bus from the night before and we roll into the venue and there's a full buffet breakfast waiting. So you eat that, and then you sit on the internet in the green room, then lunch turns up and you might go for a walk or something, then it's soundcheck time. There's often dinner there, but generally we like to have something light about 4 or 5 o'clock. It's fantastic if we can organise to eat together afterwards, it's such a treat. More often than not though, we're on the bus and on to the next gig. You do burn a lot of energy when you're touring, so the best thing to do is to keep eating.

If I've got a couple of nights off when we're on tour, I go find a market and cook in my hotel room. I've just got a new JetBoil, which is a really awesome gas camping stove that compacts down to fit in my suitcase. Touring can be a bit crazy and I find cooking completely calming, because you can totally focus on what you're doing. It's not like it's boring on the road, but it's nice to have something to do when you've got a few spare hours than just watch Netflix. I love doing my laundry on tour for the same reason.

My go-to on the camp stove is a pot of white rice, with poached chicken wings in oyster sauce and ginger, then I'll just stir-fry some veges, Asian-style. I've always got a little bottle of soy sauce and oyster sauce. Those ingredients are easy to find in Europe now, except for rural France. That's the exception. But oh, all the other things you can find in French supermarkets. There's a specialist frozen foods place, Picard, that's just incredible. I'd happily cook anything from there.

All of Europe is great, but I really love going to Portugal. Their food is really rootsy and I don't really understand it, but it's completely delicious. Last time we were there I bought a cookbook by Maria de Lourdes Modesto and I can't cook anything in it. There's no ingredient in it that I can relate to. I mean, I could probably find some things but the types of beans, the types of meat, all the fish … it's just incredible. Their food heritage is so old.

At home in Paekakariki I do a lot of fishing and I'm always trying to emulate the way they grill fish in Portugal. They take sardines, or mullet, or bass or oilier fish like trevally and bone them, butterfly them, stick them between racks and cook them charcoal. That, with boiled potatoes and salad, is one of my favourite dishes when we go there. It's always super-fresh and delicious, it's just beautiful.

Fat Freddy's Drop tours New Zealand from Saturday, January 18 - Saturday, February 8. For info, visit ticketmaster.co.nz