Compost 29 July 2017

Food Workers Are at Risk in Today's Changing Economy

‘The gig economy is less likely to provide workers with salaries, benefits, or a consistent schedule. And it also often frees employers from any obligation to provide year-round income for their employees, and leaves workers’ livelihood in the hands of the customer.’

I am no Luddite, but I am a passionate supporter of fair wage and working conditions for all. This article echoes the concerns I and others of my cabal  - oh, okay, comrades – no, okay friends have of the ‘sharing economy’ which bares not a lot of resemblance to what we meant back in the day. I am not sure that the five solutions given in the article will work in Australia. It would be great to see what proposals there are for addressing the problems in situ.

http://bit.ly/2eNh1yJ

Michael Gove asked me to a meeting to share my expertise. I declined. Instead, I’ve given him a piece of my mind.

' If, as many fear, a bad deal is done for Britain resulting in huge tariffs and penalties on trade, food price inflation is going to be in double digits for years to come. That’s if we can get hold of food at all. The people who will suffer the most, of course, are those who already have the least. For them the buying of food will use up a massive proportion of their expendable income.

There are major implications for the nation’s health and therefore, over the long term, for educational attainment and class division. The state of our food supply post Brexit has within it the great potential to make Britain an even more unequal society than it already is.

I make no apologies for being a Remainer. The implications for this country of leaving the EU are appalling. It is a project which should be abandoned.’

Thanks to Helen Greenwood for forwarding this to Diggings. Jay Rayner pulls apart the impact of Brexit on food in the UK, offering some strategies for mitigation but remaining a staucnh Remianer. It’s an excellent follow on to the post in the last edition from Fiona Harvey, Andrew Wasley, Madlen Davies and David Child on the Rise of mega farms in the UK.

http://www.jayrayner.co.uk/news/

                             

Chlorinated chicken? Yes, we really can have too much trade

‘It is true to say that rates of foodborne illness are similar between the EU and North America. Remarkably, however, chlorine-washed chicken could be the least offensive of the US meat regulations a trade deal might force us to adopt. It has been pushed to the fore because it is less politically toxic than the issues hiding behind it. The European Union rules, which currently prevail in the UK, take a precautionary approach to food regulation, permitting only products and processes proved to be safe. In contrast, the US government uses a providential approach, permitting anything not yet proved to be dangerous. By limiting the budgets and powers of its regulators, it ensures that proof of danger is difficult to establish.’

George Monbiot segues from chickens to a game of chicken in trade agreements.

http://bit.ly/2v7BnIO

A Sandwich Shop’s Fake ‘Bullet Holes’ Cause Controversy in Brooklyn

‘But when Brennan admitted to Gothamist that the bullet holes were actually just cosmetic damage, and that she fabricated the location’s history as an illegal gun shop from an anonymous comment left on a community blog, the situation exploded. Anger and action were almost immediate, with Brennan and her restaurant called out online for “slum cosplay,” “tragedy porn,” and “faux-ghetto schtick.

I doubt this is the first time someone has fabricated a history for their restaurant, but this example is particularly reprehensible. But then, it’s the market stupid, and whatever will sell will.

http://bit.ly/2uSLpxR

Want to be happier, healthier, save money? It’s time to get cooking

‘In an Irish survey, over 1,000 adults were asked about their cooking skills, including cooking measures such as chopping, food skills like budgeting, cooking practices including food safety, cooking attitudes, diet quality and health. They were also asked when they learnt to cook and who taught them. Results showed adults who had learnt to cook as children or teenagers were significantly more confident, had a greater number of cooking skills and practices and mostly had better overall diet quality and health. Mothers had been the main person who taught them how to cook. Learning to cook from an early age is important. This means the health of the whole family could potentially be improved by helping the main carers to improve their cooking skills.’

So I guess Ireland doesn’t have Masterchef or any of the other cooking comp shows that are supposed to be leading to so many leanbh cooking.

http://bit.ly/2uwEw4m

The Toxic Saga of the World’s Greatest Fish Market

‘After an extended period of construction bidding, work began on the new space in 2012. Located in the ward of Koto, about a 20-minute train ride from Tsukiji, the initial renderings of the Toyosu site reflected an Epcot-like, futuristic vibe. It was to be a surgically sterile place for handling precious edible cargo, coupled with a distinctly separate area for tourists where the hungry and shutter-happy could enjoy snacks in a contained environment and soak in hot mineral baths. On a chilly autumn afternoon when I toured the site, the overcast sky and sprawling, boxy complex seemed to fuse together into one indistinguishable landscape that was 180 degrees of difference from Tsukiji. Grey and lifeless, the Toyosu market has an exterior — huge, polished and shiny — that could just as easily be found in Austin, Texas, as in Tokyo. Scraggly trees had been planted to give it some semblance of vibrancy, but the impact was minimal.’

Okay not the same but some resonances for me with the plans to move the Sydney Fish Market sort of around the side and out of the way of the really good prime harbourside land. For me, the best fish market I have been to in recent years was that in Negombo, Sri Lanka – blood and gore everywhere on the wharf where the fish came in. I also recall the Colomob fish market of my youth where we would go on Sundays post mass to buy mud crabs, wading through fish guts, scales, and unmentionable and undefinable fluids – now replaced by, yes, a white tile, neon light soulless space, but which on my last visit couldn’t contain its viscera and stench. But then I have never been a sanitised, hygienised approach to food marketing be it meat or fish or veg. I am one of the few who probably enjoys the seagulls swooping, the untidiness of the boats, the stench of fish and sea wrack at the current Syndey site.

http://bit.ly/2uAUDMO

Buried tools and pigments tell a new history of humans in Australia for 65,000 years

‘Among the artefacts in the lowest levels we found many pieces used for seed grinding and ochre “crayons” that were used to make pigments. Our large excavation area allowed us to pick up very rare items, such as the world’s oldest known edge-ground hatchets and world’s oldest known use of reflective pigment.’

Such exciting news for all Indigenous Australians, and particularly for those like Bruce Pascoe who have been re-writing the history of food in Australia and the first people’s management advanced food practices over millennia.

http://bit.ly/2uAJXjx

Former Josephine Pignolet Award winner returns volley

‘I agree that it would be a wonderful image, however imparting a quota for female finalists is unfair to all entrants. They are judged on their potential and talent, not by their gender. For the picture to change, a deeper adjustment within the industry is required. The media need to embrace a role in which they seek out and promote talented women in hospitality. To date, much of the promotion of successful female chefs seems to miss the point.’

This is a terrific article with which I could not agree more.

http://bit.ly/2uFmvBd

Top 10 Australian junk foods

‘Don't be fooled, a mille-feuille this ain't. Proudly less refined than other incarnations, the Aussie version touts a characteristic slab of gelatine-set vanilla custard, sandwiched between two pieces of flaky pastry, and topped with icing that varies in flavour and consistency between states. The slightly tart NSW version, spiked with passionfruit, ticks all boxes’

I have serious problems with lumping a vanilla slice, a Neenish tart, a pie and even a Golden Gaytime into the category of junk food. Hell, I’d even go in to defend the Chiko Roll as having several degrees of nutritional value above Shapes or Passiona. Beerden doesn’t bother to define junk food so I shouldn’t have expected much better.

http://www.goodfood.com.au/eat-out/news/top-10-australian-junk-foods-20170711-gx8udy

Will technology kill fine dining?

‘My guess is more fine-dining restaurant groups have decided home delivery is worth the risk. Americans now spend more on takeaway food and eating out than on groceries each week and the same would be true for many inner-city Australians. The prospect of celebrity chefs and restaurants licensing their intellectual property to third parties and getting a fee for each meal ordered – without the risk of storefront locations, hiring staff and the many challenges of restaurants – must appeal. Restaurateurs who follow creative-disruption lessons from other industry will know the online market is many times larger and that holding on to legacy businesses, which have low growth prospects, for too long, kills ventures in the long run.’

The creative-disruption lesson I would like to teach the first high-ender in Sydney who does this is that their cash flow will be seriously disrupted. This is a fascinating article from a non-food writer perspective and leads me to wonder if any fine dining establishments in Sydney are already doing this and if so with what success or otherwise.

http://bit.ly/2tJdQtv

Rise of mega farms: how the US model of intensive farming is invading the world

‘According to Defra, there are roughly 173 million poultry being raised at a time in the UK, amounting to more than one billion birds a year. If these birds were raised according to free range standards, they would take up an area twice the size of Copenhagen; to house these birds organically would require a space the size of Anglesey. Food prices have risen in recent years while wages have stagnated, meaning a larger proportion of the family budget is having to be spent on food, and people on low incomes face a choice between eating and other essentials such as heating and housing. In these circumstances, measures to keep food cheap have a political resonance far beyond farming communities.’

Depressing reading if not saying anything new about the Gordian knot that is the need to feed sustainably. It does raise interesting and worrying questions about the impact of Brexit on UK farm practices that I haven’t seen or heard discussed elsewhere.

http://bit.ly/2unbq5Q

Watch the Trailer for ‘Barbecue,’ a New Documentary About, Well, Barbecue

‘Director Matthew Salleh traveled to 12 countries to get a taste of different barbecue cultures around the world. Salleh says the doc isn’t limited to covering food, but it also examines how “something as basic as cooking over fire unites us across race, class, and culture in increasingly uncertain times.”

Gees, mate, it’s a barbie not a solution to race, class or culture wars – and no amount of new age music or blokes with cans in their hands telling us it’s about bringing people together is going to make it any more than that. Time food stopped having to bear the weight of being some kind of universal gluey leveller.

http://bit.ly/2uLiYlK

What So Many ‘Southern’ Restaurants Get Wrong, According to John T. Edge

‘There are dishonest, trend-surfing restaurants, Edge says, that intend to sell the mythos of the South. It’s a phenomenon that began in the late 1960s in Southern states, possibly in reaction to the Civil Rights movement, and is apparent today in restaurants outside of the region. “You see restaurants that would mount a confederate cannon on the awning and offer you steaks that are Lincoln-ized, or Sherman-ized, or Stonewalled,” Edge says. He refers to this as a “kind of pageantry of the Old South, repackaged for a more modern era.” To use the South as a theme in this way without acknowledging its past — a past obviously fraught with serious race and class issues — is, quite simply, wrong.’

I have to think about this article more for its resonances with the Australianising of native foods.

http://bit.ly/2vETMKd

Taste of the Silk Road

‘Chinese culture has also left its mark on Dungan cuisine. Ashlyanfu, a delicious noodle salad served in a spicy vinaigrette, is one of the Dungans’ most famous recipes, sold in many Central Asian cities. The dish is topped with grated starch in a jellylike consistency. The texture of this ingredient, also used in liangfen, a noodle dish from China’s Sichuan province, is mostly unfamiliar to the Western palate. While traces of the Dungans’ Chinese history still season their cuisine, there are few culinary hallmarks from their new home among the 40 dishes that Hamida has prepared. “The Kyrgyz culture doesn’t influence our cuisine so much,” says Karim. “We serve boorsok [fried pieces of bread that are surprisingly satisfying] and besh-barmak [boiled meat with noodles in an onion sauce], but that’s about it.”

This is the kind of food writing that I love – a combination of ethnography, politics and gastronomy that makes me want to catch the next flight to sit, eat, listen. And there’s a whole book in the differences in relations around food that comes with eating on the floor versus at the table, I reckon.

http://bit.ly/2uFfC2N

Plonk: a language lover’s guide to Australian drinking

‘Australian drinkers are known to have a bit of fun with French. Last year the new edition of the Australian National Dictionary (AND) welcomed chateau cardboard to its pages, a tongue-in-cheek reference to cask wine, using chateau for a wine-producing estate in an ironic way. Australians invented boxed wine and celebrate its invention through games (Goon of Fortune was another addition to the AND) and a rich array of words, including boxie, box monster, Dapto briefcase, Dubbo handbag, red handbag, goon, goonie, goon bag, goon juice and goon sack.

Goon is mostly likely a shortening of flagon, but might also be linked to the Australian English goom, itself linked to an indigenous word gun, meaning “water” in the south Queensland languages Gabi-gabi, Waga-waga and Gureng-gureng.’

And then of course there is what for me is the quintessential Kath and Kim moment where Kim, pissed off with being sent up for her mis-pronunciation hits back with ‘Alright then Chardonnay, Chardonnay, you pack of Chunts!’

http://bit.ly/2uhsWrT

Compost July 2017 2#

It's citrus season in the yard again and the lime tree is going gangbusters. Experimenting with a different way of pickling limes this year, without putting them out in the sun to dry first.
They will take a good few months to mature, so in the meantime...

The Australian palaeodiet: which native animals should we eat?

‘The archaeological record suggests Aboriginal Australians had varied diets prior to colonisation, with specific prey and butchery patterns in different parts of the country. For example, in Ice Age southwest Tasmania (between approximately 40,000 and 12,000 years ago) people hunted the medium-sized Bennett’s wallaby, focusing on its larger and “meatier” hindlimbs.’

Despite my cringing at the title of the article, this looks like a fantastic project adding to our knowledge of the foodways of the first people’s in Australia and the relevance it may have in these anxious post-millennium years.

http://bit.ly/2tZiaJj

Before Farm to Table: Early Modern Foodways and Cultures

 ‘“Before Farm to Table will use the pervasiveness of food in everyday life as a window into early modern culture,” notes Lynch. “In the course of this project, participants will investigate big questions about the way food participates in and actively shapes human knowledge, ethics, and imagination. They will explore such issues as the unevenness of food supply, the development and spread of tastes, and the socially cohesive rituals of eating together. With fresh understandings of a pre-industrial world, this project also gives the scholarly community purchase on some post-industrial assumptions, aspirations, and challenges….Grant funding will support the hire of three post-doctoral research fellows to work with the group leaders and an array of visiting distinguished scholars, residential fellows, graduate seminar participants, and leading farmers and restaunteurs. A dedicated project coordinator is also funded by the grant.’

A $1.5 million grant…the kind of financing so many food researchers could only dream about here in Oz, let alone our libraries. But will the research shake up our understanding (groan…I don’t often get the opportunity for puns so give me license)

http://www.folger.edu/press-release-folger-receives-mellon-grant

The Sad, Sexist Past of Bengali Cuisine

‘Though the life of a bidhobha, a woman without a husband, wasn’t a reality she prepared herself for, my great-grandmother accepted this new lifestyle dutifully. Without the ingredients she once used routinely at her disposal, she cultivated her vegetarian cooking into an art of its own, full of sensory charge. My mother would go crazy for her mochar ghonto, a dry curry made with banana flower, or echorer tarkari, a gravy prepared with jackfruit. To my mother, there was little better than didar hatther ranna, cooking from the hands of a grandmother. This food was bellied with comfort and tempered with pain.’

Mayukh Sen’s story is without a doubt one of the best pieces of food writing I have read in a very long time.

https://food52.com/blog/20010-the-sad-sexist-past-of-bengali-cuisine

Impossible Foods CEO: we want to eliminate all meat from human diets

‘It’s the veggie burger that bleeds. When eaten, it tastes and feels remarkably similar in your mouth to a burger made from animal meat.  After a blaze of publicity, the US-based company behind it, Impossible Foods, is scaling up production. A new facility in California will open before the end of the year with the ability to produce four million burgers a month.’

Why would anyone want to eat a vegie burger that bleeds? I have never actually understood the need to make vegetables or gluten or anything else taste like meat to get people to eat them, let alone bleed like meat. I am all for having red juice run down from my bun and stain my fingers and clothes, but a good slice or two of beetroot will do that just fine.

http://bit.ly/2v5nCbe

Compost July 10 2017

Gin with a twist: South Australian distilleries stir in native ingredients’

‘Carter reels off the produce he uses to make his gins: peppermint gum leaf, blood limes, finger limes, desert limes, sunrise limes, Kakadu plums, myrtle, cinnamon, apple plums, wild thyme and mountain pepper.’

No mention of what if any benefit flows to Indigenous Australians

http://bit.ly/2siOvu7

Orana Foundation and University of Adelaide Partner to Build Native Food Industry

‘Thanks to a $1.25 million South Australian Government grant, the two organisations will work together over a two year period with the aim of building the still fledgling Australian native food industry into an indispensable part of Australian culinary culture. Their hope is also to return the benefits of resulting research and potential industry to the hands of the Indigenous communities from which the produce and knowledge originally hails.’

Going right to the heart of my question of who benefits from the upsurge in interest in native food and the discussion of what constitutes appropriation and how to counter it, I am thoroughly looking forward to hearing of the progress of this venture.

http://bit.ly/2t8rMA9

A Passage to Chindia

‘One minute, Chindian was a kind of food your fancy, well-travelled aunt treated you to after you scored high in your final-year exams. Another, it was what you ate at an interstate highway dhaba in the dead of night, on a trip up north with your college friends. For those who made it, it was easy enough to learn, a quick and cheap option to sell. If you were creative enough, virtually anything could be Chindian.’

I have eaten Chindia once in Harris Park and was not taken with it. Some Indian men I know from Delhi and Banglaore tho say that when their parents visit eating Chindian is a must as it’s what they eat when they eat out back hoeme. When I dined families were not in evidence, but there were several tables of Indian men dressed to the nines and knocking back whiskies along with their momo.

http://bit.ly/2u2eVgI

First Look: Neil Perry’s Jade Temple

‘Lemon chicken and sweet-and-sour pork aren’t necessarily good examples of the cuisine, but Perry says he has to include them because they represent classic Australian-Chinese cuisine. “We had to do some of those classic dishes which are seen as gwai lo [white guy] cliches. I've had them in Hong Kong and they can be super delicious.”

And just the other day I was asking Asian Fber mates of mine if there was such a thing as Chinstralian as there is Chindian. Anyone want to suggest other Chistralian foods?

http://bit.ly/2sPMDrH

Fair Food Film

Fair Food- The Documentary, made by AFSA in collaboration with The Field Institute back in 2015, is now up online for free! The film looks at our flawed food system and the inspiring legends creating real change.

Meet the chef who’s debunking detox, diets and wellness

‘In an age of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, of “Deliciously Ella” Mills, and Hemsley and Hemsley, these somehow seem quite radical ideas. “A lot of the clean-eating people, I just think they have a broken relationship with the truth,” says Warner. “They’re selling something that is impossible to justify in the context of evidence-based medicine.

“I don’t think any of them are lying,” he goes on, “they are just stuck in this strange world of false belief, which is fascinating. How can you look at NHS guidelines on how to eat healthily and go, ‘Well, I know better than that’? Maybe if you were a professor of dietetics or nutrition, you might disagree with some stuff. But how as a 19-year-old blogger you can look at it and go, ‘No, that’s wrong. This is right,’ I don’t know.”

I’ve pre-ordered his book due out at end June  - I love the smell of iconoclasm in the morning. 😊

Social media and the great recipe explosion: does more mean better?

‘Earlier this year, Google launched an “advanced recipe search” for its mobile apps, confirming what many of us have long suspected, which is that the internet is really just a giant recipe swap. A person who searches for “chicken wings” on the Google mobile app is now given options such as “crispy”, “honey mustard” and “slow cooker”. The ideal internet recipe takes five minutes, uses only two “insanely simple” ingredients and gives you both comfort and a flat stomach.’

Thanks Jacqui for putting me on to this thought  provoking article by Bee Wilson. It leads me to reflect on my internet recipe swap practice which I have no shame in admitting to. I go to it when I wonder if anyone has come up with a dish that combines two unlikely ingredients I have impluse bought at the market or as a quick way to confirm what I suspect may be the basics of a dish I haven’t tried before mostly when it’s from a cuisine that I don’t have recipes for in the books on my shelf, but also to see how different home-cook-recipe-posters make a dish I am more familiar with  but want to rings some changes or for vegan alternatives or techniques for again ringing changes on familiar styles of dishes. I am in this outside the demographic that the article is about; not a five-minute-two-ingredient-kinda-guy. But I’m not going to dump on those who are, either if it means they don’t just go the Deliveroo route.

It's in smoothies, toothpaste and pizza – is charcoal the new black?

“Charcoal was an ingredient we started to see emerging in restaurants and food pop-ups last year. With its earthy, slightly smoky taste and dark colouring, it gives a premium feel to food and makes it a real talking point,” says Jonathan Moore, executive chef for Waitrose.’

At the vegan ravioi stall at Addison Road markets last week, the pasta guy was rolling out some black pasta. A customer asked if it was squid ink flavoured. He said it was charcoal. His response was that it had no particular flavour but people like the colour of it when it is cooked – the glossy black sheeniness. Me, I’ve had a charcoal bun and found it underwhelming from any angle.

http://bit.ly/2tx1lFh