Adrian and Tony come to town

Both Adrian Anthony Gill and Anthony Bourdain were in Sydney this month for the Sydney Writer's Festival. Any of  the writers who were in town must have thought they had died and gone to heaven - the weather was perfect, gentle autumn sunshine everyday, the venue (down by the harbour, in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge) is gorgeous and there were huge crowds of people milling around ready to hang on their every word and buy their books. For me the Festival is an opportunity to put a person to the face you've only seen on television or to the voice you've heard on the radio or perhaps just in your head. And there seem to be precious few opportunities to hear interesting people talk about food so I was a presence at several of the  Gill and/or Bourdain sessions.
Adrian was just as eloquent and angry in the flesh as he is in print, although perhaps even more arrogant and uncompromising and dare I say it somewhat rude and ungenerous, both to his interviewers and his audience. I know his raison d'être is to be provocative but constantly playing for the laughs and the boos wears a bit thin after a while. They both appeared relaxed and confident but Adrian seemed more like a clever school boy compared to Bourdain who was suave, urbane, patient and polite. Both of them were however very honest and Gill spoke quite freely about his alcoholism and his dyslexia while Anthony certainly has made no secret of his past.
As is nearly always the case with interviews the interviewer rarely asks the questions you might want to hear answered and you can't help but feel sorry for 'celebrities' who have to come up with some sort of answer never mind how inane the question, however there were one or two exchanges which were at least worth thinking about.

1. One of Gill's criticisms of Britain is that it is a nostalgic country, that there is a general feeling that the best is in the past and therefore that the past has to be preserved. So the modern is just a reworking of what has worked before which is debilitating in contrast to countries like Australia where there is a general sense of optimism and looking outward rather than inward and backward. It struck me that this is exactly the contrast between what say Blumenthal is doing at the Fat Duck, and more particularly his London restaurant Dinner, and Redzepi is doing at Noma. The food that Blumenthal presents is often grounded in some historical precedent, as though it needs some sort of justification, although it uses modern techniques, whereas Redzepi and Adrià don't appear concern themselves with the past at all.
Both Gill and Bourdain think Adrià is a genius but at the same time they were scathing about interminable degustation menus, restaurants serving food which has to be explained and the notion of a landscape on the plate. Would that someone had asked how they reconcile what appear to be opposing views - the menu at elBulli is interminable, many of the dishes need to be explained and the appearance of the food on the plate is highly contrived. The answer I expect lies in the notion that Adrià knows/understands what he is doing whereas lesser mortals don't and are just being pretentious, but I'm not so convinced myself. However I can't claim to have actually eaten at elBulli so herewith an excerpt from Gill's review which appeared in The Sunday Times on September 28, 2008 (which you can access here)

This is just very, very good cooking: intense, and obtusely original, in the sense that it’s not rooted in history or region or culinary orthodoxy or fashion. It certainly isn’t Spanish. It manipulates a worldwide variety of ingredients. We were given 38 courses that came without fuss or fanfare, at intervals dictated by how fast we ate, not how slowly the kitchen could cook. Most of it was eaten with fingers in a mouthful or two. The combinations of flavours and textures and methods are challenging, but never overpowering, and often astonishing. I’m loath to describe the ingredients: they sound comical or disgusting. Food on paper is only ever an approximation of food in the mouth, and it relies on a shared experience, and if you haven’t eaten here, you haven’t had the experience.

2. Both men were asked on more than one occasion to comment on organic food. There was a consensus that the 'movement' was more of a marketing campaign than anything else since 'organic' does  not necessarily have much at all to do with quality but  has everything to to with creating feelings of guilt and promoting a two tier food system. Whilst a general concern about food politics and food policies, about the provenance of our food, should lead to improvements (more options, more variety) for all (food consumers and food producers)  anything which promotes elitism and snobbery ('farm to table' for example is a bit of a nonsense since all food comes from some sort of farm) is antithetical  to good eating.  Bourdain  in particular argued that the chef is not in the business of politics but the business of pleasure, his concern is deliciousness so, for example, he wouldn't use animals which had been mistreated because said animals wouldn't taste good.

3. On the ethics of eating or at least on the ethics of eating meat it appears that the current criterion is whether or not you would be prepared to eat human flesh. Well it goes without saying that Adrian would and Tony seemed to think that it made sense in the right circumstances, given that both of them had to admit that there wasn't much that was edible that they hadn't  already tried at some time. But Gill went on further to suggest that food is all about eating other people, that is their fresh air, their labour, their water, their land and their culture. Is this a profound statement or just more Gill-speak?  He also said that he didn't much care if animals did suffer, reasoning that we should be giving our time and attention to human rights -his example being that most Ghanaian dishwashers are treated far worse than the geese force fed to make foie gras. We should be more concerned about the welfare of people who work in kitchens (and by extension the people who produce our food at all levels) before we started worrying about animals.

4. Both also agreed that eating is less about what we eat and more about who we eat with. Gill makes the point that humans are the only animals who can make eye contact while they eat signifying that we can eat together without being competitive. Which might be true (more Gill-speak?) but humans do use food to demonstrate status - both intellectual, cultural and social - so eating is to some extent competitive albeit on a more sophisticated level that actually snatching the food off someone else's plate.

5. Adrian Gill also had some thought provoking things to say about electronic media. Not surprisingly he remains a staunch advocate of the free press, by which he means printed newspapers.(He does work for Rupert Murdoch.) He spoke particularly about the discipline involved with print, the editing and peer review, the attention to quality which was, in his opinion, not evident in most of the material churned out on the internet (in particular by bloggers whose opinions are worthless  - he called the internet a virtuous circle of self-satisfaction!). More particularly, and this from someone who is regularly in trouble for his caustic comments, he doesn't like the tone of the internet, the indiscriminate anger evident in the anonymous comments people make, going so far as to say that anonymity is offensive to humanity.

So I wouldn't invite A. A. Gill home for dinner (well he wouldn't come anyway because he doesn't go to dinner parties - not since he sent the food back at the last one he was invited to) but he certainly isn't afraid of being controversial and contrary. He might be a bit smug and self-satisfied but you could never call him boring or predictable. The world would certainly be a poorer place if we didn't have people like him to make us think and question, to justify our own stance on food issues and face up to our prejudices, preconceptions and pretensions. Anthony Bourdain on the other hand could come round for dinner anytime, he would be much too polite to refuse the food on offer, but I doubt the conversation would be as lively.

The Food Fighters panel,  Gill and Bourdain 'moderated' by a hapless Tony Bilson (recorded live at the Sydney Town Hall on 19 May) can be accessed here

The Bocuse d'Or 2011

 The Bocuse what? you might ask - although you would know all about it if you had read this post from 2009 (which discusses a film about the Spanish 2007 bid and also explains the workings of the competition). While at home Queenslanders have been a bit preoccupied with floods over in France one of their number has been flying the Australian flag at the Bocuse d'Or in Lyon, France. You wouldn't know much about this event if you relied on the Australian press  (I could only find one recent reference here) but it seems to be taken pretty seriously in Europe and increasingly so in the USA.
 This year the 24 contestants had to prepare a meat platter, using two saddles of lamb, including the kidneys, and one shoulder, and a seafood platter using two monkfish, twenty langoustines and four crabs. The end results are presented on huge platters and paraded before the 24 judges, 12 of who sample the meat dishes and the other 12 taste the fish.
 What remains a bit of a mystery  is what the judges are looking for. The Americans were very disappointed with their performance, coming 10th, and attribute their lack of success to not understanding the 'game', 'the defined game in the way that the food should be presented'. Given that any bid doesn't come cheaply it would seem fundamental to understand what is expected before competing. Obviously all the chefs who enter know how to cook so is the competition less to do with execution and more about style?  Apparently the winning platter needs to demonstrate passion and originality and be a true expression of the chef.
The winning team from Denmark scored 1014 points; only six other teams scored more than 900; the Americans scored 864. Of the thirteen competitions held since 1987 France has won six times and Norway four times. The place getters have always been European or Scandinavian teams with the exception of Singapore who scored a bronze in 1989. Clearly some contestants have a better idea of what the judges are looking for than others in particular Rasmus Kofoed who won gold for Denmark this year, silver in 2007 and bronze in 2005!
This clip sums up his approach to the 'game'


What I don't really understand is what the chefs gain from this sort of contest. As Grant Achatz points out competition cooking has little or nothing to do with restaurant cooking and, despite the fact that he was a judge of the Bocuse d'Or USA which chose the team to go on to Lyon this year, he quite bluntly says

'Historically, most chefs in the U.S. could not see the benefit of devoting time and energy to train for a competition that would not further their careers, even if they did win.'

Our local boy was Russell Clarke, senior sous chef at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. Perhaps one of the reasons why there hasn't been much publicity of the event here has something to do with the result - the Australians came in at number 20 with a score of 711.

For information about the Bocuse d'Or see here
For Grant Achatz on the Bocuse d"or USA see here
For Michael Ruhlman's coverage of the 2011 event see here, here and here
For another first hand report on the US bid see here, and for a report on how the British team fared see here


And if anyone can tell me how to embed a YouTube video so that it doesn't take over the whole page I would be forever grateful.

What to eat on Australia Day.

The celebration of Australia Day (26th January) always leads to discussions around issues of national identity such as the flag - when are we going to get rid of the colonial connotations of the Union Jack - or the national anthem - when are we going to get a decent one -or even perhaps when is Australia going to become a republic. The Prime Minister however is never asked what she (or he) is going to do about a national dish, about the lack of any defining Australian cuisine. I'm not suggesting that this is necessarily a matter of great national importance and don't intend to get into a discussion of the whys and wherefores of traditional cuisines (fascinating though that might be) but I am intrigued with the idea of what might be, and indeed is being, promoted as the most appropriate meal to consume on Australia Day.

To begin with the notion of a national day. Australia Day commemorates the landing of Captain Arthur Phillip in Sydney Cove in 1788 and the beginning of European colonisation. The anniversary of that event has been officially marked, at least in New South Wales, one way or another since 1818. Not all states celebrated Australia Day, even after Federation (1st January 1901) and it wasn't until 1935 that the 26th January became a day of national celebration. When I was growing up Australia Day was just an excuse for a long weekend and Commonwealth Day seemed a more significant event because, as I remember, it involved a half-day off from school. Having a public holiday on the actual day - the 26th day of January - was only introduced in 1994 and it seems that it is only since then that there has been any significant promotion of Australia Day. Even so it seems that celebrations have less to do with nationalism and patriotism than they do with enjoying a day in the sun and the last of the summer holidays before the new school year commences.

Last year the Australia Day Council ran this advertisement

with the clear message that barbecuing on Australia Day is the right and patriotic thing to do. As the picture suggests in Australia barbecuing involves 'cooking meat on a metal grate directly over the heat source' be it glowing coals, an open gas flame or an electrical element. This however is the definition Harold McGee gives for 'grillling'. According to McGee in America 'barbecuing is the low-temperature, slow heating of meat in a closed chamber by means of hot air from smoldering wood coals. It's an outdoor cousin to the slow oven roast.'  Americans have a very clear idea of what constitutes barbecue and it usually involves smoke and sauces and cuts of meat which require slow cooking. It seems a bit odd then that  the initiation of the Australian enthusiasm for barbecuing should be attributed to American troops who came here during World War II, although it seems that  they probably did introduced the idea that cooking in the outdoors was both socially acceptable and socially desirable.

 Clearly the barbecue (neither the method of cooking nor the apparatus itself) is far from being uniquely Australian - in fact every culture must have some tradition of cooking food over hot coals predating modern kitchen gadgets and the use of gas and electricity as heat sources.
Barbecuing certainly suits our climate and is consistent with a general preference for casual entertaining and a relaxed eating environment. You could also argue that cooking over an open fire appeals to our pioneering instinct, to some sort of desire for simplicity and communing with nature and lets not even get started on the image of the rugged, Australian male wielding the barbecue tongs. (Surely the modern 'outdoor kitchen' has done away with any suggestion that the barbecue is a primitive and impromptu way of preparing a meal and the notion that there is something intrinsically manly about cooking food out of doors?) Even so there is nothing new or traditional or specific about the way Australians barbecue.

None the less lets say we are prepared to accept having some friends around for a barbie could be an appropriate way of celebrating Australia Day what would you actually cook on the grill? Some would argue that the completely charred 'snag' (sausage), which is often the result of over exuberant 'grilling',  is most representative of traditional Australian barbecuing. Certainly the 'sausage sizzle' is a quintessential phenomenon - no school fete or fundraiser, voting day or even trip to the hardware store is complete without the smell of hot fat and  frying onions. Most home barbecuers would opt for something a little more exotic but how many would opt for lamb?

Since 2005 Meat and Livestock Australia has been trying to convince us that it would be un-Australian not to eat lamb on Australia Day.

 Sheep of course are not  indigenous but  they have been here since 1788 and after all what we are celebrating on the 26th January is the arrival of the first Europeans. Kangaroos are an indigenous animal but eating them and more specifically promoting their consumption is always somewhat controversial - there are those who would consider that eating them was more un-Australian than not eating them.
The assumption in the Meat and Livestock advertisements is that the meat is destined to be barbecued. Lamb is a good choice for the barbecue be it cutlets, chops or a butterflied leg and, although the price fluctuates a bit, good lamb seems to be available here all year round. What's more eating lamb, as distinct from pork or beef, is acceptable to a large percentage of the population, vegetarians excepted of course.  Lamb figures in many of the traditional cuisines of the 25% of the Australian population who were born overseas to say nothing of the household traditions of the 20% of Australians who have at least one parent who was born overseas. So whether you can trace your ancestors to the First Fleet or you arived here yesterday chances are you could celebrate Australia Day by barbecuing something lamby which would both suit your cultural tastes and demonstrate your Aussiness.

Overall then, as Sam Kekovich so eloquently puts it, it does make sense. But as Mark Thomson points out, barbecuing in Australia is not so much a style of cuisine as a form of behaviour. It might well be possible to suggest a tradition of barbecuing lamb on Australia Day, and  some of these advertisements do state explicitly that there is a 'custom' of eating lamb on Australia Day, but it would indeed be un-Australian to try to proscribe how that lamb should be prepared - this year it might be a butterflied leg spiced up with chermoula and then maybe next year souvlaki or kefta or perhaps cutlets marinated in a spicy tandoori paste.

The Meat and Livestock campaign might be clever and entertaining but I think perhaps it might be advertising eating lamb on Australia Day which becomes more traditional than the actual practise.
And finally, I can't resist this image from the newspaper

The young man in the photograph was fined $800 for careless riding.

To read more about the history of the celebration of Australia Day see here

To see the 2011 Meat and Livestock Australia Australia Day advertisement see here
To read more about careless riding see here
For more on Australian barbecues read Mark Thomson's Meat, Metal and Fire (Harper Collins, 1999)
The quotes are from Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking.

Foraging Frenzy



Luis Melendez, Still Life with Gherkins and Tomatoes

 October is Food Festival month in Sydney which means an orgy of chefs and restaurants strutting their stuff. This year the highlights included a presentation by René Redzepi at the Sydney Opera House. Over the preceding weeks and indeed subsequently there has been much written about Mr Redzepi, his restaurant and his food philosophies. So although I haven't actually met the man I would have to say that I feel reasonably well acquainted with him. He is a pleasant enough young man, he speaks well, he has some interesting things to say and he has a sense of humour, something which few others appear to have noticed.
How else would you explain the fact that he gets away with foraging for bits and pieces in the forests, fiddles with them in the kitchen, charges a fortune for them and gets called the greatest chef in the world? I had thought that I was perhaps the only person who had seen the irony in taking wild raw materials, torturing them a bit (quite literally in the case of the live shrimp he dishes up), serving it on a warm rock and then suggesting to the consumer that they were in some way communing with nature. Many of his dishes take hours if not days to prepare, how can he suggest that he is keeping the link from origin to plate as unbroken as possible? Can he be serious in suggesting that anything you eat in a restaurant  is likely to bring you close to the forces of nature? So it was with a sense of joy and relief that I read Keith Austin's piece on his experience sitting at the feet of the great man - here.
Don't get me wrong - I find the Redzepi approach fascinating and I wish the man well but doesn't it  make you stop and ask  'Que?'
The big disappointment is that Mr. Redzepi's visit does not seem to have engendered any on-going interest in some of the bigger questions about our fascination with restaurants (why we go out to eat, what we expect from the experience ) and with celebrity. The media has however taken up the cause of indigenous ingredients and why we don't use them or even appreciate them (see Carli Ratcliff here) which gets us back to the old problem of culture and cuisine. If, as Mr. Redzepi affirms, cuisine is 'a palatable experience of your culture' then what do our palatable experiences tell us about our culture?

Fearlessly eating at Sunnybrae

Over the weekend of 13th and 14th March, George Biron hosted the Fearless Vampire Killers lunches at Sunnybrae as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

Sunnybrae is about my most favouritest place to eat and the chance to sample a menu featuring garlic in every course – except dessert – was too good to miss. There was nothing about our lunch on the Saturday which wasn't glorious – five courses spread over an afternoon of magnificent autumn weather with a 'Fearless Cookquiz' thrown in to provide a bit of cerebral stimulation.

(Tomatillo guacamole, smoked beetroot relish, tarama, smoked ricotta with samphire-cured ocean trout)

For me the most memorable dishes were the snapper broth with prawns flavoured with sesame and cumin seeds; the tomatillos – crunchy and surprisingly citrus-y; the watermelon and garlic salad with pomegranate dressing – another surprise of texture and flavours; and the amazing verbena-poached figs with liquorice labna and vanilla ice-cream. Lunch started with a 'Gartini' and the rest of the meal was washed down with some very tasty local wines 2006 Bannockburn Saignee, 2004 Barwon Valley Pinot Noir and 2007 Pinnochio Moscato to go with dessert.

Eating at Sunnybrae confounds my recent rant about the differences between eating in someone's home and eating in a restaurant. For most of us eating at Sunnybrae is as close as we will get to eating at home with George and Diane. The atmosphere is relaxed and home-like – Diane's artwork on the walls next to George's library of books, the warm and friendly greetings from them both, the cheerful and relaxed service, being able to wander around the garden and admire the vegetables – see where the tomatillos came from – and sip a glass of wine on the verandah between courses. There is a real sense that everyone involved in the occasion is enjoying themselves - the guests want to be there and the chef and his staff want to feed you and share their food with you – which makes for a very different sort of restaurant experience.

George is an intelligent and thoughtful chef and his wide ranging interests were well represented in the Cookquiz which was great fun. And thanks to some arcane knowledge and lots of judicious guess work we managed to come away with the consolation prize – one of Diane's Sunnybrae aprons and enough garlic to keep the vampires away for some time. (We toasted our success with 2008 Leura Park Bubbles.)

On the Sunday, flushed with success and seduced by the wonderful weather I had to make some purchases at the Lorne bookshop (while waiting for breakfast to be served next door) - Nigel Slater's Real Fast Puddings because I hadn't seen it before and I am a Slaterite, Jane Grigson's English Food because I didn't already have it and Lindsey Bareham's A Celebration of Soup just because it was only $10.

Long live the cook!

Found time last week to sit down and watch the last episode of ‘The Cook and the Chef’. Whilst not entirely a Simon Bryant fan – you can only hear him say ‘I love it’ so many times – Maggie Beer’s enthusiasm for food is intoxicating. And how inspiring to see a real person cooking food in what at least appears to be a real domestic kitchen. Obituaries and tributes to Keith Floyd made reference to the way he reduced the distance between the ‘chef’ and his audience. In Floyd’s case it usually involved him consuming large quantities of alcohol resulting in what the Guardian described as ‘cheerful mayhem’. All of which led me to think that what we need, and not just on television, is more cook and less chef. Although that would seem to be out of step with what is actually happening with a series of ‘Celebrity Masterchef' about to be foisted upon us.
Thanks to a friend I have just finished reading through The Food Life. Inside the world of food with the grocer extraordinaire at Fairway by Steven Jenkins – the grocer extraordinaire.(Harper Collins, New York, 2008) .Fairway ("Like no other Market") for those who don’t know is a grocery store, well now five stores, in New York which claims to be the busiest food store in the world. Jenkins is a food enthusiast extraordinaire with the motto that ‘no edible is so precious that it should be cloistered as if one needs an appointment to regard it’. His whole adult life has been devoted to sourcing wonderful ingredients starting with cheese and working through just about everything else in the deli section. He believes we should spend less time and money in restaurants and more time entertaining at home using the old tools and the old recipes. He is against food fads and believes that ‘the more somebody messes with a foodstuff, refines and improves it, the less good its going to be. The recipes in his book are provided by Mitchel London who runs restaurants of his own and for Fairway. His motto is ‘very simple, very fresh and very delicious'. How soon can I be on a plane to New York?
Which brings me to the programme for the Sydney International Food Festival due to roll out next month. The number and range of events is very impressive and there should be something here for anyone with even a passing interest in food and eating. What concerns me a little is that there is a big emphasis on eating out with restaurant dinners of one sort or another and brunch and lunch deals (which do represent very good value and the opportunity to eat at places you might not be able to afford otherwise). The highlight of the month is the World Chef Showcase which is meant to ‘give serious food lovers an insight into the best from the global food scene’. I am prepared to be proved wrong but it sounds more like this event will give serious restaurant goers insights into the global restaurant scene and what chefs think we should be eating. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t very much like to hear what Fuchsia Dunlop and Sergi Arola and Sebastien Bras might have to say I just can’t justify spending $285 for the day and risk being disappointed.
I had hoped to go to the Food Blogger’ Secret Dinner but that was booked out before you could blink! With luck we will get to the 100 mile meal at Mamre Homestead and I have booked myself in to hear Stephanie Alexander talk about her new book Kitchen Garden Companion. My putative vegetable garden is still a pile of rubble which covers the area between the back door and the garage but one day it will be, well, at least productive. My inspiration is Lolo Houbein’s One Magic Square (Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2008) – no one could read this and not want to rush out and grab a shovel. And I was interested to read extracts from Nigel Slater’s new book Tender: A cook and his vegetable garden - can’t wait to actually be growing something again rather than just reading bout it!