Rufus Wainwright is grating parsnips.
Judging from the way he is making faces and the way the elegant ring Elton John gave the singer-songwriter as a gift is clanging against the box grater, it’s clear he doesn’t do this very often.
“I start to black out when I’m in the kitchen,” Wainwright jokes. “I get so scared.”
Wainwright is trying to make New York sauerkraut, a delicacy created by chef Sam Mason to go with rabbit schnitzel and Zebulon spaetzle for the new IFC show “Dinner With the Band,” which debuts tonight at 8:30.
For Wainwright, the appearance is part of the promotional tour for his new “All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu” album, and his new opera, “Prima Donna.”
It’s also part of a relatively new connection between musicians and chefs that IFC is tapping into with the series, but is starting to make its mark throughout the culture.
It goes beyond the longtime friendship of chef Mario Batali and R.E.M.’s frontman Michael Stipe or the way rockers the Bravery were recently judging food on “Top Chef Masters.” Mason says it’s the creative process that naturally brings chefs and musicians together.
“We both start with a final product in our heads,” he says. “As it starts to develop, it starts to take on its own organic identity, and it can end up being really different products.
“That goes for writing a song or cooking a meal. You create this thing that can be very intimate, and people could laugh at you. You set yourself up for criticism, and that brings a certain vulnerability.”
After hearing about the last meal Wainwright made — a combination, inspired by feeling homesick, of sausages, couscous, blue cheese and Brussels sprouts all mixed together — and a cooking segment on “The Martha Stewart Show” with his mother, Kate McGarrigle, and sister, Martha Wainwright, that was so disastrous, Stewart made him “abandon his station,” you would think Mason would take it easy on Wainwright.
It turns out, though, that watching Wainwright look uncomfortable is part of the fun.
“I’m a pro … musician,” Wainwright says playfully. “I know how to mix … an album.” And Mason doesn’t give up, having Wainwright pound some rabbit cutlets.
“Now, you have to crack four eggs,” Mason says.
“Oh, God,” Wainwright replies.
After all, the Brooklyn- based Mason says “Dinner With the Band” works whether the guests have any cooking experience or not.
“It’s about the interaction,” Mason says. “I just want it to feel like we’re kinda hanging out. It makes for better TV. … People aren’t sitting at home writing down this recipe. As long as whatever is happening behind that stove is making for good conversation, it works.”
And with Wainwright, there’s always good conversation.
Whether he was playfully flirting with Mason, dubbing him “a hot man with a hot pan” or joking how he never learned to cook because he was playing piano while his mother and sisters were in the kitchen — “I would play and, depending on how good I was, I would get fed” — Wainwright was as quick-witted as ever.
