Food

Be afraid, be very afraid. The food Nazis are on the hunt through suburban school lunch boxes. Food is no longer a private matter in our educational institutions; parents are quaking in their shoes, terrified that they will be judged on the efficacy of their social responsibility and parenting skills by the contents of the humble pail. 

The fallout of which means becoming social pariahs based on white bread, or the inclusion of a Tim Tam.

Teachers peer beneath the lids of the not so humble receptacles (very seldom now a simple plastic box – they’re now themed, decorated, iced, chilled, heated, layered, compartmentalised and sheathed) and “tut tut”, or shake their heads at a child’s humble peanut butter sandwich or limp carrot.

Continue reading "Food allergy fascists make peanuts of us all" »

Imagine my excitement when I discovered that a food and film festival was coming to the very suburb I live in.

Not merely a food festival. Or a film festival. But a food and film festival.

What’s more it wasn’t simply coming to my suburb. It was coming to a specific area in my suburb. According to the large glossy ad on the bus shelter it was coming to a place known to us locals as The Spot.

Continue reading "Marketing trick #253: hold an event, call it a festival" »

Much discussion has been had recently – mostly media engineered discussion to coincide with Australia Day and the launch of News Ltd’s new nationally syndicated Taste section – on the subject of Australia’s national dish.

In years past dinner meant a slab of charcoaled fatty steak and three kinds of over-microwaved veg. Food was once the subject of much inattention and is now our newest obsessive interest. However, no one is sure exactly what Australia’s national dish is – or if we even have one – and there has been an awful lot of to-ing and fro-ing about it.

Traditionally lacking in a food culture to call our own that doesn’t involve a well-done steak (and with the majority of the Australian population having little knowledge of indigenous eating habits beyond the witchetty grub) generations of immigrants to our shores have introduced stir-fries, pastas, curries and many more culinary masterpieces that make up the wonderful multicultural cuisines eaten across Australia.

Continue reading "Our national dish: a big pile of meat" »

The signature dish at the Prairie Hotel , in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, is its Road Kill Grill ($30), a mix of kangaroo and emu fillet on mash, with a camel sausage tossed in for good measure.

I can recommend the kangaroo tail soup too.

Reflecting on what it means to be Australian inevitably leads to a debate about our national dish. The Daily Telegraph asked the question on Australia Day, with Masterchef’s Poh Ling Yeow telling the Tele salt-and-pepper squid has taken over from fish and chips as our top tucker. It follows on from a major survey in The Sunday Telegraph where people said Australia’s national dish is the meat pie (37 per cent), followed by roast lamb (28 per cent), lamingtons (12 per cent) and pavlova (11 per cent).

Continue reading "For a truly Australian dish, first insert tinnie in bum" »

We live in a society where almost everything can be purchased single serve, individually wrapped and stuffed with enough preservatives to last a life-time – a very short life-time for most of us if we don’t pick up some slack.

A simple fact of life is that some things just come in packets. Bread, even from a bakery, comes in a plastic bag. We don’t go the butcher to be handed a handful of mince meat, and a carton of milk wouldn’t be much chop without the carton.

Beyond that simple carton of milk, it is easy to cut corners with pre-packaged ingredients: garlic from a jar, powdered stock, instant noodles, canned vegetables and packet mixes. I too am guilty of pre-prepared ingredients in times of need. It seems easy to buy a packet mix, add meat and pre-chopped vegetables and microwave some pre-boiled vacuum packed rice than cook from scratch – but it’s not real food. We are sacrificing our health, and the environment, to eat food that brings instant gratification but no satisfaction - the idea that it takes a long time to make something from scratch is a myth.

Continue reading "The nine biggest sins of packaged food" »

It was one of the more disgusting experiences of my life and one which could only have been approached with the support of strong liquor to dull the palate and senses.

About 10 years ago while working as a journalist in Indonesia I spent a largely blissful week in the city of Manado, the capital of the strange, starfish-shaped island of Sulawesi.

Manado is about the closest thing to paradise on earth. It’s surrounded by pristine ocean, a haven for snorkelers and divers, populated by beautiful fish of every hue, and the air is scented with vanilla and clove from the trees that grow everywhere in this part of the spice islands. Manado, however, is let down badly by its restaurants.

Continue reading "Weird stuff I’ve eaten" »

If the legislation for the Orwellian­-sounding Australian National Preventive Health Agency passes, then expect an avalanche of make­-work exercises by the Agency all for the cause of making us healthier.

Armed with a budget of $133 million of your money over four years, the agency would get to work advising commonwealth and state health ministers about health issues surrounding alcohol and tobacco consumption and obesity.

It will look to create new policies about interventions in settings such as schools, workplaces and communities.

Continue reading "The perils of a fat tax" »

The gourmet burger is now mainstream.

Even Hungry Jacks has its own salt and fat packed version dragging down the reputation of Angus beef.

It’s the latest trend in food, knowing the provenance of your ingredients - with Maccas being the first mainstream brand to name Angus beef as a selling point back in August.

Continue reading "Building the ultimate burger" »

To avoid some traps for young players I feel compelled to offer some advice observed from way too many hours in the rough and tumble of professional kitchens. Call it Chefs, and how to spot them in their natural habitat.

Points are given (out of ten) for each species that you may have inhabiting your kitchen, a low score is excellent, a high score should have the alarm bells ringing.

The Pedigreed Slouch, also known as the Know–all, or Mr Europe: First thing that you notice is its casual air of superiority. Its CV is long and littered with all the right names. Once working it makes repeated and ill-timed references to previous methods in other, better kitchens. Like some sort of defense mechanism, the Slouch will, when under the pump, start a frenzied monologue of how things were done at Le Manoir Quat Saisons whilst getting deeper and deeper in the shit. Usually this ends with the Slouch being rescued by an apprentice and then promptly walking out shamefaced.
Score 8

Continue reading "A field companion to various species of chef" »

With struggling Aussie families paying consistently more for their food and groceries than other developed countries we need to take a long hard look at what’s causing the problem.

First, compare Australia to other OECD countries and there is one fact that jumps out. Australia has one of the most highly concentrated grocery sectors in the developed world.

Just two players – Coles and Woolworths – control 87% of supermarkets over 2000 square metres. They are increasing their share of fresh food, liquor, petrol and now hardware. Their tentacles spread to mobile phones, banking services and electronics. They own enough poker machines to put Las Vegas Casinos to shame.

Continue reading "We need action not excuses from the supermarket duopoly" »

The journey started a few years back when a tomato and pumpkin self seeded in the mulch in our backyard.

And it’s culminated now with me doing my best to avoid the supermarket for fruit, vegetables and meat by producing my own.

And in between - while I profess no inside knowledge about trends in food shopping - I have concluded that when blokes like me start talking about self sufficiency, the retail supermarket giants have to lift their game.

Continue reading "My goats say a lot about supermarkets" »

It’s easy to lay the blame of rising food prices at the feet of the large retailers and it also makes for a sexy, albeit misguided, headline. The easy target is often the large target, but if you strip the emotion out of this debate and look at the facts, its clear there isn’t much of a story in it at all.

It is true food costs more than it did 10 years ago. Like other products and services including education, healthcare, the cost of living increases over time, but so do wages. Australian private sector earnings have risen by nearly 51 per cent since 2000.

Australia’s real growth in wages is the second highest of 10 developed nations. But you won’t see critics talk about this when they talk about food prices. It ruins the hot headline.

Continue reading "The real facts about food prices spoil a good yarn" »

David Penberthy’s health sandwich is laden with a generous helping of cynicism and a pinch of exaggeration.

By calling for a reduction of the harmful fats in our food, Bob Carr is not seeking to ban fast food outlets. Instead, he is highlighting how easy it would be to make our takeaway foods substantially healthier.

Australians love to eat out - nearly one in three of us do so almost every day, which adds up to a massive 3.8 billion meals eaten out every year.

Continue reading "Big fat exaggeration" »

Our supposedly classless society is showing signs of being divided into two camps where people’s private choices as individuals and their behaviour as families are regulated on the basis of their affluence.

And it’s in the area of nutrition, preventative health and exercise where the working class, for want of a better term, is increasingly being treated like a bunch of babies, while the more affluent members of society continue to live as they please.

It’s only a small thing but it’s a signifier for the times, a demonstration of a mindset which holds that working class people are unable to modify their behaviour, while the gentry can be trusted to keep its conduct in check. But get along to the SCG, that great people’s arena, where our knockabout, egalitarian society lets the members drink as much full-strength beer as they want and limits the great unwashed to light beer.

Continue reading "A bourgeois recipe for working class palates" »

Beach house barbecues are risky business. Apparently, tucking into a bit of medium-rare Angus rump while watching the tide roll away could lead to your little coastal retreat collapsing into the sea in the not-too-distant future.

After a parliamentary report issued some depressing warnings about the effects of climate change-driven sea level rises on Australian coasts, one of the world’s leading environmental economists has now declared vegetarianism the way to go to save the planet.

It’s enough to make you cry into your T-bone.

Continue reading "Run for the hills, or at least become a vegetarian" »

Only the other night gazing out at the opera house from Quay restaurant in Sydney I had the good fortune to sit at dinner with the new, improved, much, much larger than life Matt Preston. Not only was I subject to his advice on all things Myf Warhurst, his pony skin R.M. Williams boots and dressing-up box chic but his stagey sexy looks.

The look that stuck in my mind is when his sultry eyes gaze towards what should be a camera and while he sucked A-list chocolate off his index finger. What I can only imagine is a lot of practice in the mirror had paid off. Although I can’t say the earth moved for me, Matt later may have retired for a cigarette.

And it made me realise how we got to this point that food isn’t food on TV without some sort of sexual imagery. Two decades (and more) ago food writing and TV was left to the stuffy, recipe writers and cookbook authors, dry enough to pucker the mouth up like a plain Carrs Water biscuit.

Continue reading "Finger-licking good: a brief history of food sex" »

This week parliament will debate a bill to establish a national Preventive Health Agency, reminding of that classic Mark Twain observation: nobody is safe while the legislature is in session.

On The Punch Federal health minister Nicola Roxon insisted that she was no nanny statist, and that the purpose of the Agency was about saving lives and reducing health costs.

Most modern governments understand the follies of outright bans, such as the failed US Prohibition movement from 1919 to 1933. However, the Agency plans what it sees as the next best thing.

Continue reading "Counterpunch: The nanny state will nag you to death" »

My parents never taught me how to cook, they just taught me how not to.

My 50-something father still burns fish fingers, and has done since I was three. Probably earlier.

My mother micro-waved all of the nutrients out of anything I ever ate.

Continue reading "The way to good cooking may be learning what not to do" »

Next week Parliament is set to consider legislation that is another first from the Rudd Government – Australia’s first agency dedicated to Preventative Health. 

Currently the media abounds with stories about our obesity epidemic, rising rates of chronic disease and problems with alcohol and tobacco.  This Agency will help us do something about those problems. 

As much as some media outlets find the labels irresistible, this isn’t about creating a nanny state, or nagging people into being ‘good’.  This Agency will be staffed with experts who will work hard to find the best possible ways to help us be healthier – and reduce our health bill as a result.

Continue reading "I’m no nanny, it’s about saving lives and the system" »

The Gourmet Top 100, the Weekend Australian’s Top 50 Restaurants, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food Guide.

If this year’s restaurant awards silly season illuminated anything, it was the fact that dining standards are on the up, and that the general public has a high level of awareness about what constitutes a quality dining experience.

How could we not, with the media (figuratively) pushing food down our throats every day?

Continue reading "The What Waiters Really Think Of You Awards 2009" »

Restaurant award season is finally over. But I’m wondering if anybody really cares outside those who won gongs from the Sydney Morning Good Food Guide this week, The Age version last week and Gourmet Traveller the week before.

Certainly, there has barely been a blip in the blogger or Twitter sphere.

Once again, the old-media appointed arbiters of taste have taken one for the team by eating the finest foods known to Aussies with the usual predictable conclusions: plenty of excellent but very very expensive restaurants in Sydney; only two of these in Melbourne plus lots of very good moderately priced restaurants; not much else in Australia. Forget Tasmania.

Continue reading "Restaurant awards are the nation’s silliest private party" »

Queensland is many ways a much more reasonable facsimile of civilisation than it used to be.

However I recently discovered a glaring deficiency that rubbed away all veneer of cosmopolitan credit.

The coffee was bad. Sometimes it was bad multiplied by awful.

Continue reading "Beautiful one day, decaffeinated the next" »

MasterChef has a lot to answer for, and not just because my work colleagues have been spending their weekends at home teaching their 10-year-olds how to make croquembouche.

And it’s not over yet. The MasterChef season two cattle-call is closing this week, so it’s only a matter of time before it all starts again.

Now, while I missed out on watching the first season of MasterChef (it’s a long story) what I did watch was the rest of Australia watching MasterChef. And you all went a little crazy.

Continue reading "MasterChef created a nation of know-nothing food tossers" »

Fine dining fans will be thrilled to hear that the world’s most famous restaurant – McDonalds – has just made a bold pitch for the haute cuisine end of the market with the release of two new burgers made with prime export-quality Australian Angus beef.

“Served on a sourdough bun and with gourmet trimmings for $6.45 and $6.75 respectively, the burgers represent a premium option for cost-conscious diners” a Maccas spokesman said this week.

Many people will think this latest marketing ploy is a disgrace. And I agree with them.

Continue reading "Take your kids to Maccas with pride" »

OK, so the headline’s a bit cruel - you wouldn’t use this material in the front bar unless you enjoy a public humiliation, but it’s a good potted guide to beer tasting and matching a brew with steak.

It comes from BigThink.com and springs off Obama’s beer summit, offering advice on etiquette next time you’re settling a major national issue over a drink. Enjoy.

If you’re a beer enthusiast, check out our own Matt Kirkegaard, The Punch’s resident lager-and-stout expert.

Julie and Poh know what to do with century eggs, tempered chocolate and rabbit hindquarters, but even they might struggle with these ingredients: 1 x 425g tin of crushed pineapple, 1 cup of coconut and 1 x 250g container of sour cream.

Do you know what it makes?  Here’s a hint: ‘Mix together and leave for a couple of hours.  Serve on lettuce leaves.’

If you answered ‘Pineapple Salad’, then perhaps your childhood, like mine, included neighbourhood pool parties at which the adults downed shandies and Coolabah cask wine while nibbling on devils-on-horseback (prunes wrapped in bacon). 

Continue reading "Well read-head: Julie and Poh inspire a cookbook trip" »

As a farmer it is my duty to let backyard chook fanciers in on a secret. No chook ever died in credit. That’s why the only chooks that have ever been on our farm have been dead, plucked and ready to cook.

Chooks as pets are the flavour of the month. They are small, they eat leftovers and the eggs they lay are delicious, making them ideal pets for inner-city backyards.

But if you look at the economics, each egg will cost many times more than the amount you pay for a barn-laid dozen and food producers don’t provide homes for poultry or livestock that doesn’t earn its keep.

Continue reading "Chooks lull us into false sense of food security" »

Last night was a let down.

The cupboards were bare, the kitchen bereft of yummy smells and for the first time in two months no-one really cared who had the remote at 7pm.

Sunday night’s MasterChef finale celebrations were a distant memory, and all we were left with was an empty feeling.

Continue reading "How to cope with post-MasterChef depression" »

There’s a simple reason why some three million Australians watched the Masterchef final last night - instead of making heroes out of people you would do anything to avoid, it celebrated people you’d be happy to have as friends, or proud to have as part of your family.

On paper it was merely the latest phase in the reality television format, another game-based cooking program, similar in theory to so many others which now infect the Lifestyle Food channel, not even an original idea but the re-heated antipodean version of the British program of the same name.

As such, many Australians were slow to respond to the program, assuming it was formulaic fluff, cooked up by the marketing people in a cynical bid for ratings and targeted advertising.

Continue reading "Australia’s best TV show of all time?" »

Julie Goodwin was crowned the winner of the first series of the highly popular MasterChef Australia. She comprehensively beat South Australian artist Poh Ling Yeow after completing the three challenges they had been set.

It was a slightly controversial win of the ‘home cook’ beating the more inventive Poh who was prepared to take risks to produce some unusual and well plated dishes mainly based on her Malaysian heritage. However Julie’s cooking would probably appeal more to the masses, as she was renowned for her roast lamb and comfort food style.
MasterChef Australia has been massively successful for Channel Ten, who will be following it with a Celebrity version in October, and applications are already open for series two which will be screened next year. So what did we learn from this show?

Continue reading "Six things I learnt watching MasterChef" »

“You girls are in the final of Australia’s first Masterchef,” exclaimed Judge George. Hooray! It was an unexpected result as Julie’s unfinished offerings didn’t look a chance against the polished presentation of Chris and Poh.

Of course, the problem with a Chris / Poh playoff was that their cooking joie de vivre appeals to a niche market – a fabulous, colourful, creative and sometimes crazy place – but still a niche market.

Two million viewers probably won’t cook stinky century eggs or glutinous pigs trotters. It’s a bit like chicken feet, which while delicious, are usually left on the yum cha trolley, at least by most non-Asian diners.

Continue reading "Masterchef: I told you the girls were going to win" »

My name is Yvette and I am a Masterchef addict. Not since Charlene married Scott on Neighbours have I looked forward so eagerly to my nightly fix of commercial TV.

Masterchef has been a revelation. With gripping culinary challenges, genuine emotion and insightful tips on cooking techniques it has become must watch TV. The prospect of its conclusion on Sunday night fills me with despair.

The show has also changed my mind about the culinary industry which up ‘til now I believed was full of offensive, egotistical, sexist chefs who thought it was OK for women to cook as long as they weren’t paid for it.

Continue reading "Macho-man chefs are now stuffed and skewered" »

I have always had a fair deal of respect for nutritionist Rosemary Stanton but realised yesterday that this is only because I haven’t been paying attention.

Not sure if the rest of you caught it, but Mrs Stanton has launched a pretty out-there tirade against Bindy Irwin’s new commercial deal as the public face of a particularly sinister company.

Not Union Carbide or Exxon or British Aerospace but the baking products conglomerate Greens General Foods, one of the shadiest players in the evil cake trade.

Continue reading "Kiddies everywhere at risk from Bindi’s cake habit" »

Restaurants are defensive of their hygene in the same way that newspapers are defensive of the accuracy of their reporting. Phone up and complain and the last thing either will do is admit liability. And nowadays when people are treated shabbily they turn to the internet. Or me.

What surprises me is the number of emails and comments that come my way from diners who’ve returned home from some of Australia’s top restaurants only to fall ill. I have become, you might say, shit-central - and vomit-central - of the blog world.

The truth is for what I see is there is a good chance you may become ill eating out although not always is it the restaurant’s fault.

Apart from the food authorities in NSW, the food inspection Stasi can’t really be bothered to help diners.

Continue reading "Eaaaarggh…what really made you sick last night" »

Enforcing a blanket ban on advertising certain foods to children is not the answer to solving Australia’s obesity problem.

Activists and some politicians bleating for a ban on advertising high fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) foods on all media before 9pm need to get real.

Arguing that television adverts for HFSS foods are almost totally responsible for making people overweight, especially children, is an extraordinary leap of logic.

Continue reading "Changing ads on TV won’t tackle the obesity epidemic" »

It’s a fairly common experience for the beer drinker. Visiting a nice restaurant and being handed an impressive leather-bound volume with “beverage list” in gold lettering outlining a vast selection of wines from Australia and around the world.

Champagnes costing up to and over $700-a-bottle headlining a studied offering of dozens of styles and varietals with the cheapest – or should that be least expensive – hovering above the $40 mark. Then there follows an array of dessert wines, ports, fortifieds and other dauntingly-named types of grape juice provided for the discerning diner’s post-prandial enjoyment.

But if you want a beer it’s nowhere to be seen in the beverage list.

Continue reading "Waiter, bring me the beer list" »

UPDATE 6.50pm: Grimshaw kicked off ACA with a massive spray at Ramsay, saying she was having a go because “bullies thrive when no-one takes them on”, calling him an “arrogant narcissist”, and denying they have any “great relationship”. She added:

Truly I wonder how many people would laugh if they were effectively described as an old, ugly pig. How is that funny exactly? And worse, it’s not even witty.

... Gordon Ramsay made me promise not to ask on Friday about his private life. He then got on stage on Saturday, and made some very clear and uninformed insinuations about mine. Obviously Gordon thinks that any woman who doesn’t find him attractive must be gay. For the record, I don’t; and I’m not.

I still think she could have used the approach in the video below though.

**

It’ll be a pity if, as is being reported , Tracy Grimshaw doesn’t confront Gordon Ramsay tonight on ACA over his insults towards her.

Because here’s one way she could deal with him. I particularly like that Ramsay looks shocked after being force-fed a leg-ham-sized portion of his own medicine:

Continue reading "What Tracy Grimshaw could say to Gordon Ramsay" »

Typical. Just as the world peaked Paul Levi, the man who had no small part in bringing us the slightly dubious word “Foodie”, launches the Gastrosexual, a man with more dazzling kitchen tools than penile length.

I’ve never had much truck for foodies (although a few of you are okay). I’ve met too many who know nothing whatsoever about food.

If you would like to see this variety you only have to watch Masterchef which is packed full of wannabes who mostly have no idea how to shop (cottage cheese with sun dried tomatoes) or cook (raw chicken, insipid tarte tatin) for that matter.

Continue reading "Watch out gastrosexuals: 11 ways to spot a food tosser" »