The vegan and vegetarian lobbies obviously don’t have too much political clout in the land of the free. The Washington Times has a neat little article on the politics of food. It observes both that pollies can seem more likeable and ordinary or the opposite through their food choices – think Clinton’s chips and fried chicken habit on one hand, and Kerry’s request for Swiss cheese on the other. The article also notes that eating rather outre local cuisines is a campaign must in many states:
At Virginia’s Shad Planking every April, politicians and the press trek down to a patch of piney woods in Wakefield to eat bony fish, drink cold beer and listen to political stem-winders. The J. Millard Tawes Crab and Clam Bake — honoring the state’s 54th governor — is held in August on a smoking piece of asphalt on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Arkansas has the Coon Supper — yes, that is the official name — where raccoon and beer are on the menu along with politics each January. Attendees (who have included Clinton as well as former Democratic Sens. David Pryor and Dale Bumpers) collectively consume between 600 and 800 pounds of raccoon meat in the small town of Gillett in eastern Arkansas.
It’s hard to think of Australian equivalents – all that springs to mind is what we read about Kim Beazley and Peter Beattie’s weight loss efforts. Do we even have actual regional cuisines in Australia?
Well we have the marron over here in WA which is quite special. It’s a freshwater crayfish. Bigger than a yabby and without the muddy taste.
I also noticed that roadhouses didn’t have toasted ham and cheese sandwiches once I got east of Eucla, can anyone clarify this for me?
I’d be impressed with any politician that drank a warm can of Emu Export
How could one survive without toasted ham and cheese sandwiches? Not that I know where Eucla is.
Let’s not forget Moreton Bay Bugs!
We certainly do Kim.
Although not to the extent which the USA seems to have formalised it.
If you eat:
on a sheep station (with the shearers) in the merino belt through the middle of Qld;
on a cattle station in the channel country;
with locals on the west coast of Cape York;
at a race meeting in the gulf country;
with locals in the Torres Strait; or
at a beach gathering near Mackay;
You will notice hardly an ingredient in common, yet each cuisine style will be local, traditional, not eaten anywhere else in the state.
A well-travelled house guest of mine recently remarked on the very distinct and unique style of cooking at community events “west of the divide”, how it has several features in common no matter where she goes, & how it differs starkly from what is served up in coastal & eastern fall country.
She was being disparaging, considering people west of the divide to be neanderthal, (perhaps for failing to provide latte & mud cake) not realising that she was actually observing a previously unremarked piece of Qld culture.
There’s a genuine local cuisine of long standing in the Barossa Valley, where their vine-growing, wine-making, smallgoods-smoking and baking techniques are all handed down from the 1830s-1840s German settlers.
Adelaide is of course also the home of the legendary Haigh’s chocolates, which I think counts as local cuisine.
Yes, they’re very yummy, PC.
Is there much difference between the Barossa cuisine and what it was like when it’s originated?
Speaking of which, there’s a new German restaurant in Dutton Park which I must try. I’ve been to one up in Toowoomba, where there are a few, but I think Brissy was without one for a few years.
I promise I won’t say anything about shrimps and barbies. Or vegemite. Actually, Australian wines are enjoying a growing reputation over here… keep up the good work! (I especially like your viogniers.)
It’s gotta be true that there are unique regional cuisines all over Australia; it’s sort of approaching the impossible for there not to be.
btw, Kim’s initial “vote for me, I ate a raccoon” angle sheds a fascinating light on the genius of the Electoral College, believe it or not. (I am a firm believer in the importance of the Electoral College over a straight majority, btw.) But it might take a while to explain why. I leave it to you as a puzzle for the moment; see if you can guess.
So I gather Kim you’re not cognisant of the secret mens barbie business that goes on during The Wombat Trail in Australian election years.
Reminds me of the old joke about the two blokes hauled up in front of the local beak after being sprung roasting a protected species – a koala – on a spit over their campfire in a national park.
“It was already dead Yer Honour. Roadkill yeah? We just wanted to know what it tasted like.”
“Well OK, before I sentence you, you can satisfy my curiousity too. What does koala taste like?
“Umm…like a cross between lyrebird and platypus.”
You can’t get more aussie than witchetty grub jaffles JPZ. We send our kids off to school with ‘em so they grow up all squirmy and crusty.No doubt AnthonyWhoCooks can suggest whether to go with the poupon or wasabi moutards here if yer wanna take it uptown.
Incidentally Australia has the world’s tastiest coat of arms. Try a plate of sauteed emu and marinated kangaroo fillets garnished with wattle (which to used be served up and laid out appropriately in one Canberra restaurant in the early nineties). Very tasty – and much cheaper and more digestible than Lion and Unicorn (bits of the horn always got stuck in your teeth didn’t they?) or Bald Eagle (not much meat left on ‘em any more.)
kangaroo?
i like a bit of roo.
i buy it from coles, so it isn’t as exotic as beer ‘n’ coon.
Kangaroo is teh delish.
My favourite local recipe is one I have never tried but was sighted in a cookbook circa 1920 or something: Bandicoots Stewed in Milk.
one of the very finest meals I have had was kangaroo fillet at the Bridgewater Mill. Kangaroo is wonderful when cooked sensitively (ie rare).
And PC – Haigh’s is great chocolate. Feeling a bit homesick now, especially as the lovely Miss L has revealed that my love is unrequited …
Barra and chips at Karumba. Also in the north of the Northern Territory. Every time I go through Barcaldine I always buy a pie (the bakery as you leave town for Longreach) just to test once again that they are the worst pies in Australia.
Have to say, in this respect Australia looks more puritanical and abstemious than America, when our pollies are falling over themselves to diet (as opposed to America). I prefer the generous, unashamed approach to food!
One reason could be that we tend to disparage ‘traditional’ Australian cuisine, which hails mostly from Britain and possibly a little from Western Europe as well. Although as several English writers have noted (Orwell, for instance) there can be just as much variety in English food as in continental food.
There’s nothing so Australian as cold, sweet, tasteless, highly alcoholic lagers, though Pavlov’s Cat might appreciate my listing of Coopers’ Sparkling Ale (preferably poured straight from the longneck into a glass or mug, at lunch) as a national treasure.
And as for Australian wine, j_p_z, come down my way and I’ll introduce you to the delights of the 4L cask of Coolabah Dry White.
We all know that American politicians – even those that are Democrats – have to do all kinds of things to show what real blokes they are. It is practically de-riguer to be photographed with a gun during hunting season, for example. I imagine eating some animal that usually turns up as local roadkill (I saw that varmint first. Go and catch yr own) helps in this regard. In this land of compulsory voting Australian politicians are too busy trying to not to offend any possible voters to be associated with an act like eating the local wildlife, particularly anything that is too exotic. I can just imagine the local Animal Lib types if a pollie was to fess up to eating a bit of the coat of arms…
Cheers…
I’d have liked to the see pollies eat some tasmanian possum when they were down there campaigning at the last election.
I used to sell it in one of my previous jobs; gamey, and not a little boney, but I reckon it doesn’t get more aussie than that!!
Again, ‘roo.
Either steaks (delicious barbecued), in fusion dishes such as vindaroo, spaghetti rooanaise, or as sausages. Except I don’t really like the soss version – they tend to be a bit tough.
Roo seems quite difficult to find here in Sydney, but it’s plentiful in Canberra. Are Sydneysiders too squeamish?
Glad I am not the first person to think of ‘roo, but it is not ‘regional’ as such.
Plenty of people look aghast at me when I tell them how much I love it (also, it is $6.30 a kilo for minced roo meat at Coles supermarkets, which makes it about the cheapest lean red meat there is).
And it’s great (but needs to be cooked right, as it has very little fat and can get tough if cooked for too long)
And love the Coopers Sparkling Ale, too – my first choice in beer. Mind you, that is less and less ‘regional’ too – it’s very easy to find here in Brisbane now. And so is Farmers Union Iced Coffee (at least at Coles, not so much in snack bars).
Brisbane has a tradition (so I am told) of buying hot bread fresh from the bakery on the weekend and eating it straight away.
It seems very hard to find a Cornish pasty in Brisbane – are they only in Adelaide? I know there were a lot of Cornish miners in the Wallaroo area near Adelaide, maybe they brought the idea with them?
Potatoes are expensive (several dollars a kilo) in Brisbane – when I moved here I thought 99c a kilo was expensive. Tropical fruit is plentiful and cheap here – but bananas are overpriced right now, like everywhere else, thanks to Cyclone Larry.
Not a Cooper’s fan, TDD. The lad who threw up everywhere in my first-ever university tutorial (Politics) after having consumed way too much of it in a fit of Orientation Week excess put me off — not only Coopers, but politics, and indeed university in general.
However, for connoisseurs of Teh Drink I can recommend Fox Creek Winery between McLaren Vale and Willunga (themselves both legendary names on the SA culinary map, in the Southern Vales wine region just south of Adders): their Vixen (upscale sparkling red) and Verdelho are two of the most gorgeous wines ever to come out of Australia. There was also the 2003 (?4) Fox Creek Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc, which they described as ‘liquid lemon meringue pie’ and they were right. Also the winery is beautiful — 19th-century stone cottage, Rivendell-type tree plantings — and they have an adorable Border Collie, name of Shadow, who runs along the rows of vines on windy days chasing the singing in the wires.
Mark, re Barossa and German cuisine, that’s a very interesting question. I suppose there’s 170 years of the terroir thing happening, SA soils and climates growing the vines and feeding the pigs, and the native trees providing a certain kind of smoke, and all. If you drive up to Clare in the right month of the year you can get saltbush-fed hogget, which is as local as sheep ever gets.
Yes, Australian cuisine is regional….
Try and get a chicken parma at a pub in Sydney or Canberra, it’s damn near impossible. In Melbourne they’re ubquitous and the best are works of culinary art
Black Knight, my local Woolworths has plenty of roo available in the organic meat section. I’m very fond of it, but mr tog finds it gamey, so I buy small servings and have them for lunch sometimes when he’s off gadding about.
There is a fascinating regional variation between the pizzas served in Lygon Street, Carlton, and those served virtually anywhere in south-east Queensland and northern NSW.
The Lygon Street variety has cheese as a modest substrate underneath the other ingredients (spiced ham, anchovies, olives, mushrooms, onions, etc.) and the cooking process means that the uppermost ingredients are properly cooked in a way which enables them to each sing with their own voices, whilst the cheese is there but not dominant.
The typical SEQ/FNNSW pizza is prepared by distributing the ham, olives, etc., over the dough base, then applying copious quantities of cheese over the other ingredients, and then heating the pizza until the cheese has melted over the other ingredients which have remained largely uncooked. It is a much less pleasurable and more fattening dish than the Lygon Street pizza. This variety is also typically more expensive than the Lygon Street variety where market forces prevent price gouging.
As Kate said in another context, back off on the cheese!
My local inner west Sydney Woolies too. A year or so ago you couldn’t find it anywhere but suddenly foir whatever reason it’s more available.
Stir fried coat of arms. How Aussie can you get.
I’m very sorry to hear that, Pavlov’s Cat. It’s just as well, I suppose, that it was the sparkling ale your unfortunate colleague regurgitated, and not the other most famous Australian indigenous drink: Bundaberg’s Nasty Brown Overproof Rum (with the red lid). That stuff gets really aromatic when it’s mixed in the old oesophageal cocktail shaker.
On the subject of les vins australiens du sud, I do like a Coonawarra riesling while sitting on my infernal verandah. Those Lutherans! Is there anything they can’t do?
Chicken parma is disgusting. Some people might think that such a combination of unlikely elements – cheese, tomato paste, schnitzel and chips – would make for a new and exciting dish. But no, instead they combine to make an uniquely revolting and offputting meal that somehow makes ALL the ingredients taste bad. Why this is a shock to anyone is beyond me.
They sell plenty of roo down here at the local supermarket, and I have to say, I quite like it. Very tasty.
Is Alex Cordobes in Newtown still around? I think he does the best Sydney pizzas; from what I can recall, they’re based on the Lygon Street pizza method, outlined above.
If a politician said “Vote for me, I ate Bush” I’d think about it.
Ahhh, Alex Cordobe’s. Gods, I loved that place so much. Lamentably it shut down a few years back.
Recently a new store has opened up under the same name. It’ll be interesting to see if the new management has managed to maintain the quality and the inviting atmosphere I remember from the old place.
And as for finding chicken parma in Sydney – not only can you find it in just about any RSL club bistro west of Strathfield, but there’s a faux-Italian food court fixture franchise (which shall remain nameless) which carries a parma as a staple.
When you’re unintentionally alliterating you know it’s time to stop posting.
Wallaby is on the menu in Tassie, as well as Mutton Bird during their season.
Of course, we have plenty of scallops as well – I haven’t seen Scallop pie anywhere else in Australia.
The last time I was in Armidale, crocodile was on the menu at the New England Hotel. Quite tasty – a mixture of chicken, fish and pork.
Oh yeah, and continuing on the South Australian theme: where else in the world would people even think about eating pie floater in the summer?
Hot pie? Steaming mashed peas? 35°C and upwards in the shade?
They’re just different in Adelaide.
Turtle is, of course, highly prized by the indigenous peoples of Northern Australia, and the highest honour a visitor can be accorded by these communities is to be invited to partake of a giant turtle baked in the coals. This causes some angst to vegetarian and vegan guests, as to refuse such an invitation is a grave cultural insult.
Zoe, you’ll be voting for Howard.
I have never eaten a pie floater in my whole life.
That’s actually a bit of transplanted North of England regional cuisine, anyway: ‘pie and mushy peas’. (Though the splodge of Rosella’s finest is an Adelaide culinary intervention, I think.)
Ah. . . I’m out Burwood/Strathfield way, and we (well, the Black Queen at any rate) do occasionally find ‘roo (but in the ‘organic’ section??) at Woolies. I’m guessing that given the, ah, cultural lopsidedness of the area (which I find brilliant, by the way) there isn’t the market for it. Which is a shame because the ‘Good Luck Butchery’ (fantastic name for a meatmonger) has good quality, cheap everything else.
my listing of Coopers’ Sparkling Ale (preferably poured straight from the longneck into a glass or mug, at lunch) as a national treasure.
I heartily endorse the occasionally-released Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale. At $75 a carton it is a “sometimes beer”, but it’s definitely worth the money.
Mud crabs. They justify Queensland’s existence. Ambrosial.
Damn straight Atticus. The only thing I can compare it to is my cousin’s sublime homebrew ale.
The regional speciality of North Fitzroy (okay, my back yard):
500g kangaroo mince
250g pork mince
1/3 cup each chopped fresh mint, coriander and parsley
2T chopped fresh oregano
1T sumac
1T olive oil
1 egg
salt and pepper
Mix well, form little snags, BBQ on a high heat till *barely* cooked.
Serve with yoghurt and grilled haloumi.
J_P_Z, I think it’s time for your promised explanation.
Australia simply doesn’t have the cultural diversity that the US does.
Between places like New England, California, The Confederate South and mini-nations like New Orleans, you may as well be in a different country every time you cross state lines.
Whereas the only difference between the different states of Australia is the weather.
While I agree with Yobbo that Australian regions are more homogeneous than the US, there are more differences than weather and climate:
1. Political culture. Pauline Hanson made no headway at all in Victoria. NSW state politics seems to be endemically corrupt.
2. Media culture. Shock jocks don’t rate in Melbourne.
3. Sporting culture. AFL has quite different significations than Rugby League.
4. Adelaide has weird murders.
And really bad tap water.
[postulates wildly and broadly]
The sad fact is that Australia doesn’t really have any regional cuisine (and a national cuisine is arguable too). I’d suggest the following reasons
-just as we don’t have regional dialects, much of our post settlement history was done in an era of mass communication and nationwide trade. Contra Aboriginal regional identities.
-our food culture was transported here, rather than developed in situ so after 200 years we’re still talking about kangaroo like it’s an exotic meat.
-a relatively affluent history meant we never had to be particularly innovative in what and how we ate.
-there wasn’t the intersection of strong food cultures like in New Orleans
-artisanship was never particularly valued (apart from wine) so we don’t have specialist areas like in France. And agriculture has been geared more towards supplying the needs of mass food production and consumption.
-we haven’t cared enough about food to make it a source of any regional pride like in Japan where there’s a food you must eat for each place in the country.
-ethnic food was marginalised as something you’d eat at a restaurant e.g. Chinese food. Actually we haven’t really had much of a decent restaurant culture either with drinking and eating long being separate concerns.
That’ll do.
And Amanda, you should give that recipe a try. I’ve heard good reports of pork cooked in milk and an/the essential step of a classic ragu is to cook the mince in a little milk before adding the tomatoes.
… our food culture was transported here, rather than developed in situ so after 200 years we’re still talking about kangaroo like it’s an exotic meat.
-a relatively affluent history meant we never had to be particularly innovative in what and how we ate.
That’s true, but it’s true of just about any cultural group of people. Colonists are fairly conservative, they tend to transport the food and crops they know rather than those that they don’t. It doesn’t stop the food styles from changing and evolving over time.
Culture or no, I’m f*ing loving this bag of cheezels sitting in front of my computer …
Yeah it’s almost a truism that people prefer the food they know but I guess I was suggesting that an opportunity to develop a unique cuisine that responded to what was unique in the environment wasn’t taken up. So we had a cuisine which wouldn’t have been out of place in Yorkshire.
And I should add, almost everything I’ve argued has undergone huges changes in the last couple of decades (along with the price of abalone).
And garn gizzus a cheezel
Cheezels all gone, sorry mate!
I can, however, offer you some Burger Rings.
Speaking personally, I’m not hugely fussy about what I eat, so I don’t really mind one little bit that Aussies eat whacking great lumps of steaming Christmas pudding and hot little Fruit Mince pies, alongside gigantic servings of roast bird, right in the middle of summer. But it’s definitely a winter food. So yeah, there’s one of the sillier food traditions we’ve imported from England.
Burger rings rock my world so ta!
To be fair, the local meat wasn’t exactly the most reliable of food sources since you had to chase it and there wasn’t a rich abundance of natural carbs.
anthony: “…a relatively affluent history meant we never had to be particularly innovative in what and how we ate.”
Well worth reading w/r/t this is “How to Cook a Wolf” by the great MFK Fisher.
Regional cuisine? Well, semantically speaking, there’s a shedload:
NSW: peanut butter
Qld: peanut paste
NSW: Jatz
Vic: Savoys
NSW: cabanossi
Vic: cabana
NSW: devon
SA: fritz
NSW: lemon squash
Qld: sars (brown and yummy)
NSW: christmas party
(regional?) SA: christmas show
In Broken Hill five years ago, at a pub, I was asked if I wanted regular or “cheese” slaw. Cheese slaw is coleslaw but with shredded tasty in place of cabbage. I went the cheese.
Mark, if you are travelling east from Perth to Adelaide when you hit Eucla you are about to leave WA. I always thought it was in SA, but that’s because of my Eastern Stater’s perspective I guess.
Wikipedia gives its population as 50 but I daresay that on the Nullabor it is huge.
j-p-z I’m betting that you favour the electoral college system because it has a weighting favouring the smaller states. Or perhaps you believe that the people’s vote needs to be subject to review by sensible people to make sure that they get it right.
A third possibility is that it is a vote representing the will of the states as the components of the union, ie a union of states. If I have to guess I’d say it’s the combination of the first and third.
Can’t think of anything else.
Sorry Kim, as you were.
Anthony – regional dialects: all my Mexican mates say “elbum” and “belcony” to my New South Welsh “album” and “balcony”. It’s tops.
Also, Croweaters tend to refer to girls as “gewls”.
In Broken Hill five years ago, at a pub, I was asked if I wanted regular or “cheese� slaw. Cheese slaw is coleslaw but with shredded tasty in place of cabbage. I went the cheese.
Ewwww! And wow!
Then there’s that ‘cold pasta salad’ they sell in many country bars, basically cold macaroni with mayonnaise. Disgusting!
TimT,
Then you would love the “ham and salad sandwich” served at the roadhouse between Cobar and Broken Hill:
*2 slabs of white bread with a 2mm layer of full-fat marg (each slice)
*2cm SPAM
*2 micro-shreds of iceberg lettuce, frozen in the middle
And they charge a Chisholm for it!
Grimble Grumble
Thanks. I haven’t read it but I’ll keep an eye out for it.
Milly
Not to forget the whole slab/carton thing. Over here we call Devon Ham, polony (and I’ve got no idea where the word came from and only the slightest suspicion of where the meat comes from).
Anthony: Little Creatures. Do you rate it? Have been twice and had an excellent drink and terrific nosh.
Cycled down there on Sunday. Food has slipped a bit, boho atmosphere is still alive and well, beer is fantastic, and it gets ambience out of a big shed. Couldn’t think of a better place to spend a sunny arvo. Given the brewing tanks are just a few metres away, you get a real sense of place and that’s what regional food is about.
Anthony, your best bet for finding How to Cook a Wolf is in a sort of compendium publication of ‘her five most famous books in one volume’, called The Art of Eating. My edition has an introduction by W. H. Auden, who was a huge Fisher fan and was partly responsible for the breadth and endurance of her reputation, and that intro is a work of art all by itself: ‘Every tourist ought to be warned that, if he refuses to eat the typical food of the country he is visiting, he is doing more to create ill-will than if he stole it.’
The wolf, of course, was the one at everybody’s door in 1942:
Polony sounds italian to me, but I could be wrong.
I dont know about Christmas dinner, all my family ever seems to eat at Christmas are buckets upon buckets of Yabbies (handy because we have about 10 dams full of them). I don’t eat shellfish so I usually just have a christmas ham sandwich or something.
Food definitely takes a back seat to beer at Christmas.
Cheers PC, I’ll be putting our bookstores to the test.
Yobbo,
Yeah it’s Bologna sausage or ‘Baloney’ in the US.
Food doesn’t have to take a backseat to beer, since I’ve given up smoking I’ve been able to do a deft double act with a bit of timing and my left and right hand.
I knew I’d met Pavlov’s Cat before – I just hadn’t realised I was quite so young.
We don’t do regional diversity but we do terrific ethnic. KInd of a substitute.
No-one can do pizzas like Adelaide.
Penguin eggs apparently stay transparent as they cook. And smell of fish.
I rather like the bush tucker trick that Aborigines pull on politicians and filmmakers. One flyblown end of roo, rolled in the dirt, dropped in a fire, cooked enough to get the fur stinking, then pulled out and handed ceremonially to the fool in the clean trousers. With the suggestion that you stretch the sinews between your teeth.
That’s after the witchetty grub horses doovers.
My theory is that Aborigines have never, ever eaten any of this. Certainly not since the invention of spam.
When I was young on the farm we often went out in the bush and shot a wallaby, which you always carried home. I used to do this by myself from 10 years old.
We’d skin it and peg out the skin on the shed wall to dry because the skin was worth a few bob. My mother would make soup out of the tail and the hindquarters were made into wallaby stew. The rest was chucked over the fence for the dogs.
I’m told that visitors were sometimes given wallaby or kangaroo to eat by others in the district and then told what they had eaten. It was said that some threw up. My mum would never play a trick like that!
There was also a delicious sauce my mother used to make out of prickly pear fruit. And a sago desert.
There was other stuff, but that will do.
From Wikipedia:
“Polony is a contraction of “polymerase colony,” a small colony of DNA.”
I always assumed Polony was some region of Italy. I guess it’s a corruption of “Bologna” by Western Australians who couldn’t understand an Italian accent?
This is a great transnational pacific dish that I’d like to see more of on Australian menus.
Kokonda/Coconut Ceviche/Tahitian Fish Salad/Mata
For an entrée for 4 people, get:
400g fresh fish
½ cup lime or lemon juice
¼ cup thick coconut cream
¼ cup red onion
finely sliced spring onion or two
a green or red chilli (no seeds, no pith and finely chopped)
salt and ground black pepper
Cut the fish into small chunks or thin strips and mix through the lime juice. Leave it for at least an hour – up to four hours – in the fridge. The finer the fish is sliced, the quicker it will ‘cook’ in the citrus juice. Combine the remaining ingredients, drain it a bit and toss through the coconut mixture.
Plop into bowls, or for a classy touch, brandy balloons, and serve with salt and pepper to taste.
And forgot to mention, it goes well with a good unwooded white or several martini-focused aperitifs
Is raccoon tasty?