Thursday, October 16, 2014

This week's compost



Gourmet Food and Drink Quiz Question
When swearing an oath, ancient Egyptians would place their hands on what?

Restaurant Australia
‘In response to the growing demand globally for food and wine as part of the travel experience Tourism Australia has evolved our ‘There’s nothing like Australia’ campaign to put the spotlight on Australia’s finest array of produce served in the most stunning locations in the world. If your business provides food, wine and beverages experiences that international visitors will enjoy you are encouraged to share it through our Restaurant Australia campaign.’

Following up the ort in the last Compost, it turns out (ta Barbara Santich and Helen Greenwood) that the Aussie food truck in Paris was an initiative of Tourism Australia as part of its Restaurant Australia program. There’s one of those awful ad co films that’s big on slo mo of young, rich, couple on beaches, in the outback, at MONA who do by the end of the film actually get served some food tho it’s pretty much all seafood or mod-Oz-fusion – no pho in Cabra, no saleep in Auburn, no BBQ duck from Chinatown – set to a meaningless moaned song from some obscure Oz bloke. Gees, all it needs is Laura Bingle. The accompanying film that explains the strategy compounds the view that ‘Restaurant’ in Restaurant Australia means fine wining and dining on mod Oz. Kylie is the only one in there who uses the word ‘multiculturalism’ and there is one clip of something in a balti, but the rest of it goes back to the predictable. I guess it’s all based on research about what tourists with money want to spend it on but it does quite kibosh a promotion of the greater feast Australia offers. Oh, also, no bush tucker of course – a corroborree around a fire, sure, but please, no roo, goanna or witchetty grub.


I can’t believe it’s not meat: scientists create vegie burger patty that bleeds
‘But the latest in vego-burger innovation takes mock-meat patties to whole new level. American company Impossible Foods has created a realistic-looking faux-patty that can be grilled to blushing-pink medium rare, leaches a red juice when cooked and develops a charred crust.’

Why would anyone think a vego or a vegan would want their burger to bleed?



Has Britain’s street food revolution run out of road
‘As if to prove that street food is reaching saturation point, even KFC now runs a truck, and the street food vendor is a trope of romcoms (see Chef, The Five-Year Engagement, etc)’.

Curse the Brits. First they take a probably Tamilian word of much contested meaning and transform it into ‘curry’ and foist it on us to homogenise South Asia’s abundance of regional cuisines, and now they have corrupted the term ‘street food’ to mean hipsters in vans turning out over fiddled fussy on trend edibles. No, no, no...some thing’s are not forgivable, as Blanche Dubois said, and this, to me is one of them. Street food remains for me a foodway that is characterised by its informality, its simplicity, generally family (broadly defined) run, often generations deep, within a cash economy outside of the regulated food markets. It certainly is nothing that can have a system of national awards built around it and there sure ain’t any venture capital invested.


I Eat, Therefore I Think. Food and Philosophy. Raymond D Boisvert
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2014-10-11

I mentioned this book in the last Compost. Not about food so much as the stomach and eating, it’s a plea for move away from a spectator/autonomous/mind focussed philosophy to a stomach-sensitive philosophy that favours ‘a philosophical orientation emphasizing relations, or, stated grammatically, prepositions’, significantly the preposition ‘with’ as ‘the stomach forces us not only to engage with our surroundings, with those who grow food, with those who store, transport and prepare it (but) also to mix different food with each other’. It’s a philosophy that emphasizes the ‘importance of combinations’, that ‘inclines toward thinking in terms of an original multiplicity’. It’s a philosophy through which neediness and dependence are not a defective state but represent occasions for enhancing good’, and a good life becomes defined as one ‘having a healthy nexus of interdependencies’. You can see why this book and its stomach-sensitive philosophy would appeal to me as it deals with hosting strangers at the meal, the communal table, and multiculturalism.

Banquet
Some of you who know me know I am not averse to singing from time to time. So I thought from time to time in Compost I thought it would be fun to post a food related song, both for the pleasure but also to keep expanding our notions of what food writing is.

This week, I thought I would give you link to a lesser known Joni Mitchell song, one from the album I think that marked her transition to a different level of musicianship – For the Roses. When I first heard it I was knocked out by its use of a banquet as a way of singing about her concern with inequality – derrr, you might say, but to a young me, well, an early 20’s me, this song was revelatory of the way a ‘pop’ song could also do what folk songs did.




What happens when Second Graders are treated to a 7 course, USD220 meal?

‘One Saturday afternoon last month, six second graders from P.S. 295 in Brooklyn got a head start on the fine-dining life when they visited the acclaimed French restaurant Daniel. There, five waiters presented them with a seven-course tasting menu (after the trio of canapés and an amuse-bouche, naturellement).’

I like the kid who early on asks ‘When’s dessert?’ and the one at the end who toasts ‘To Vampires’. I’m not sure what the point of it was other than a promo for the restaurant but the kids have fun and do eat some of what’s offered. I would have loved them to have had a discussion about the experience afterward because they don’t get to voice their views on the whole process of the restaurant meal and let’s face it for most of us the theatre or fine dining is as much a part of the eating.


Rise and shine. What kids around the world eat for breakfast.

‘Americans tend to lack imagination when it comes to breakfast. The vast majority of us, surveys say, start our days with cold cereal — and those of us with children are more likely to buy the kinds with the most sugar. Children all over the world eat cornflakes and drink chocolate milk, of course, but in many places they also eat things that would strike the average American palate as strange, or worse.’

They same could of course be said for many Australian kids. I am trying to recall what I ate in Sri Lanka for breakfast; I’m pretty sure there were eggs and toast, porridge at times, often buffalo curd with kittul (palm syrup), porridge occasionally,  and on Sunday’s always hoppers with usually fish curry and some seeni sambol. When we hit Australia we did shift to the sacred trio of Aussie soggy sugary cereals  - Cornflakes, Rice Bubbles, and Weetbix. But somewhere along the line I stopped eating breakfast at all except when I travel when I revert to having eggs bacon and toast in Aus and invariably hit the hoppers and curry in Sri Lanka.


Is the ‘classic’ balti curry dying out?

Gees I hope so.



Quiz Answer:
An onion.

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