So, this year's crop of mangoes was looking pretty good before I went on hols...the possums had other ideas. However, waste not want not so the samplers bites will be cauterised and the rest mushed for a sorbet or such. At least they alerted me that the mangoes despite their green skin were indeed ready.
Seven
things in food to stay livid about in 2017
Barbara Santich sent me the
following in response to last Compost’s item on this.
Clean and green, local and
seasonal, are near to the top of my list of ‘things foodwise you will stay
furious about this year’ but what really annoys me, perhaps less often, are
menus that describe a dish in terms of its main ingredients, as if each had
equal weight: for example, a (hypothetical) dish of ‘cured kingfish, shaved
squid, quinoa, samphire’ that has a couple of slices of tuna plus one fine
shaving of squid, six puffed quinoa grains, and a shred of samphire. I’m sure
readers could add many real-life examples.
Second, another restaurant gripe: a dish described as (again, hypothetical) as ‘Seared lamb, roast tomatoes, carrot puree, French lentils’ that I order, and the waitperson asks would I like a side of vegetables. No, I say, there are vegetables with my dish. It’s not a lot, says the waitperson, I recommend a side of rosemary potatoes. So I order the side, and get a dish big enough to serve six. The carrot puree turns out to be a smear, the lentils form a random decoration on the rim of the plate, and there’s one miniscule tomato on top of the lamb. Why can’t the chef add the appropriate vegetable to the dish and charge an extra dollar? This one gets me hot under the collar every time.
Oh, and of course, the chestnuts that ignorant and lazy journalists come out with – for example, that Australia has the best cheese/fish/lamb etc. in the world; that it’s time Australians gave up hot roast turkey for Christmas (as if they have just invented the idea); that the European colonists in the eighteenth/nineteenth century emphatically rejected all indigenous foods (which usually precedes a congratulatory paen to the current generation of chefs).
I think I could add many more if I really got worked up!
Second, another restaurant gripe: a dish described as (again, hypothetical) as ‘Seared lamb, roast tomatoes, carrot puree, French lentils’ that I order, and the waitperson asks would I like a side of vegetables. No, I say, there are vegetables with my dish. It’s not a lot, says the waitperson, I recommend a side of rosemary potatoes. So I order the side, and get a dish big enough to serve six. The carrot puree turns out to be a smear, the lentils form a random decoration on the rim of the plate, and there’s one miniscule tomato on top of the lamb. Why can’t the chef add the appropriate vegetable to the dish and charge an extra dollar? This one gets me hot under the collar every time.
Oh, and of course, the chestnuts that ignorant and lazy journalists come out with – for example, that Australia has the best cheese/fish/lamb etc. in the world; that it’s time Australians gave up hot roast turkey for Christmas (as if they have just invented the idea); that the European colonists in the eighteenth/nineteenth century emphatically rejected all indigenous foods (which usually precedes a congratulatory paen to the current generation of chefs).
I think I could add many more if I really got worked up!
And Charmaine sent these comments:
Here's
to great year in challenging food orthodoxies (including historical ones!) and
neoliberal solutions. Perhaps if people thought about the fact that part of the
neoliberal agenda seems to be to deskill us as cooks so
that we spend more money having our meals prepared for us by others (nothing
against restaurants but we need to get a better perspective on our use of
these) we might not be wasting so much for out. Not only are we being deskilled
as cooks we apparently are not 'too busy' to actually go out and eat at the
restaurants we buy our meals for so we have to have them delivered ...so we can
sit in front of Netflix binge watching ...no wonder we are getting fat ..except
the food delivery people who are riding around the food non bikes!
In
regards to food wastage if one eats out. I love the thali concept in
restaurants in India (which I am sure you are familiar with). You are given a
modest amount of food to begin and then the waiters come around and offer you
more which you take as you need. It is socially frowned upon to take more than
you can eat so it seems people rarely waste food. Perhaps we need a bit more of
this in restaurants to prevent waste!
No
animal required, but would people be prepared to eat artificial meat?
‘Gender was the biggest
predicting factor, with men more likely on average to say they would try IVM,
whereas women were less sure. Men also had more positive views of its
benefits.’
Anyone care to speculate
why?
Recipes are to cooking as listicles are to journalism: they're
intrinsically flawed
‘All this is not to
say that I dislike recipes. After all, I’ve published thousands of the bloody
things over the years and most of them, I think, are really quite good – if I
do say so myself.
Recipes are flawed
by their very nature but those flaws are not fatal. Understanding the
limitations of recipes can make them very useful indeed. They’re often our first step in exploring new
dishes, new ingredients, new cuisines – and with them, new ways of living. They
are an arrow pointing the way, not the destination itself.’
I found this article intensely annoying and snobby. Apart from the smug
self-congratulation, I think it reeks of the kind of privileging of cooking by
chefs who have time and money and who write food porn recipes to earn even more
money.
The
Hunt for the Perfect Sugar
An interesting article on the commercial imperative and not the health
imperative behind the search for a low-calorie sweetener. But why do we need
sweet foods at all? Sure we have taste receptors for sweetness, but what of
what makes a food naturally sweet, like honey, do we need that we can’t get if
honey tasted umami?
Can
eating lead to understanding? In the case of Trump’s travel ban, some hope so.
I’m also not convinced that
just eating the other’s food leads is an adequate way to learn about the
culture. For example, while I am happy to tell people who ask me where to eat
good Sri Lankan in Sydney I know (a) depending on where I send them they will
get a different idea of Sri Lankan food and food practices and (b) they could
go somewhere and eat and have no deeper understanding of the whole of the
cultures in Sri Lanka (note the plural) nor how they have developed nor how
they are deployed within Sri Lanka as ways of entrenching power, conformity and
so on. Unless there is the opportunity
to ask questions about this in the restaurant or unless the diner’s interest is
piqued enough to ask these questions later, the food experience I think remains
just that.
That is not to say at all
that I don’t support people actively expressing support and solidarity with the
banned communities in whatever ways they can, choosing to eat in a
immigrant-owned restaurant among them. But it is to say that to expect too much
of a meal is problematic.
If you don’t frequent Ikea or kitchenware shops you might
have been unaware of the newest kitchen accessory - the tablet stand:
It’s a telling statement as to where people go for recipes!
As I confessed to Barbara, I
often have recourse to the web for recipes, particularly if I want to find
esoteric combinations of which there are usually several recipes more than I
have in my cookbook collection. I have yet to cross-over to tablet use, however,
and hauling the laptop from the office to the benchtop is tiresome so
inevitable print out what I find anyway…on recycled paper of course.
MOLD
Magazine goes print
Ta Colin for putting me on
to this. You may have noticed I have a growing interest in foodways of the future
- including where the growing is all in a petri dish - so I am looking forward
to this. Meanwhile the MOLD website is a great place to waste time…I mean
research food.
