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Australian cuisine - variety is the spice of life

Anon

Rockpool Bar and Grill

As strange as it may sound, sometimes it is possible to be too creative. No where is this more evident than in modern Australian restaurants.

Chefs in the restaurants would rather create their own recipe than refine another chef's recipe that has proven itself to be liked by customers. As a consequence, odd recipes like pineapples in pepper sauce find their ways onto dinner tables when really they should find their ways into the bin.

In Australia, the chefs find it very easy to be creative for numerous reasons. Firstly, they have a huge range of materials to work with. Secondly, they are exposed to varied ideas of the world, and thirdly, they are not constrained by cultural norms that demand food be prepared in a specific style. Although the complete freedom opens the possibility to create dishes of pure genius, often the freedom is used to the dog's breakfast.

While Australian chefs have a wide range of ingredients to work with today, the past was a very different situation. For more than 150 years, a shortage of food resulted in very boring cuisine. In the colonial era, it was only basic vegetables that could be farmed with any reliability. The soils were just too poor and rainfall too variable to experinment. Furthermore, chefs had to rely upon a limited range of domesticated European animals for their protein supply. Although native animals existed in abundance, they couldn't be farmed because they couldn't be contained with wooden fences and wouldn't herd.

Aside from being shackled with a narrow range of meats, the lack of refrigeration forced Australian chefs to burn, salt or coat the meat in fat in order to reduce the risk of food poisoning. This resulted in Australian meat tasting like burnt shoe leather coated in a fat vanish.

Perhaps some flavour could have been achieved by making sausages, jerkies or salamis like many Mediterranean nations. Unfortunately, the menace of blowflies posed a significant risk of maggot infestation. Consequently, salamis and jerkies were rare in Australia.

Unless the colonists decided to live an Aboriginal style nomadic existence, the colonists had to rely upon unproductive foreign animals and plants that struggled in Australian conditions. Even then, the menace of droughts, fires, bushrangers, dingos and kangaroos made this produce unreliable.

With ingredients scarce, it was left to the ladies from charity organisations like the Salvation Army to save Australia's culinary soul. As part of their fund-raising drives, the ladies utilised two ingredients that were in abundance; wheat and eggs. They subsequently made pumpkin and mango scones, pavlovas, Anzac cookies, lamingtons and the humble slice. Till this day, the charitable recipes of Australia's culinary soldiers remain of the few that are recognised as Australian in origin and style.

After World War II, Australia underwent a culinary explosion. It is generally accepted that this explosion was due to the influx of Asian and European immigrants who subsequently expanded the Australian pallet. However, this explanation seems flawed as Australia also received massive migration from China, Germany, Italy, and France during the gold rushes of the 1850's yet the basic burnt meat and boiled potatoes prevailed. The only lingering change was the addition of the Chinese dim sim to the fish and chip shop. 

The more logical explanation for the culinary explosion is that the Snowy Mountains Scheme increased the productivity of the land. Furthermore, improvements in transportation and refrigeration allowed food to be transported over vast distances. As the great economist Adam Smith noted "specialisation is limited to market size." As refrigeration expanded the size of the farmer's market, the more they could grow niche products with confidence that they could be sold. As the range of produce in Australia increased, immigrants were able to access the ingredients necessary to continue their culinary traditions. Over time, they introduced Australian chefs to the great meals of the world. 

Today, the average Australian has a great deal of Mediterranean and Asian ingredients to work with when creating recipes, and these are being combined in some very imaginative ways. For example, a bachelor may host a party and buy some ham slices, sundried tomatoes, crackers, avocado, olives and cheeses to make some finger food. After the big night, he may wake up in the morning and wonder what he will eat for breakfast. In his pantry, he finds an old packet of Thai rice paper and sees the leftovers from the night before. Soon, the hung over bachelor is wrapping various combinations of leftover cheese, avocado, ham and olives in the rice paper. The result is some very imaginative recipes. (Of course, the food that appeals to a bachelor with a hangover doesn’t always appeal to the wider population.)

Australia’s café culture and “modern Australian” restaurants create recipes in much the same way. They creatively combine Asian and Mediterranean ingredients in a way that is very unique. Sometimes the combinations appeal to a wide variety of people. Sometimes they only appeal to bachelors with hangovers. Sometimes bachelors with hangovers prefer their own combinations. This diversity of tastes, diversity of ingredients, and diversity of recipes has made it difficult for modern Australian to be defined by a common style or common recipes. Furthermore, the diversity has made it difficult for modern Australian chefs to refine their recipes or create recipes that appeal to a broad audience.

While the Frankenstein recipes are generally coming from Australians with European heritage, Australians with Asian heritage are attaining more refinment by integrating different ideas into existing national cuisines. The most notable of these chefs is Tetsuya Wakuda; a Japanese migrant who blends French concepts with those of his homeland. Other Asian chefs have mixed recipes from different Asian countries to create Asian restaurants that are not indigenous to any Asian country. Such restaurants are highly prized because as well as serving extremely high quality food, they also serve in the Asian social style. Unlike European Modern Australian that serves food in the European style for individual consumption, the Asian Modern Australian serves food for group consumption; thus retaining the social element that is prized in social gatherings and business meetings.

A small minority of Australian chefs have also strived for a distinctly Australia cuisine via the use of native ingredients such as snake, witchetty grubs, crocodile and emu, which are all available in short supply. So far, most Australians have been reluctant to eat the native produce. Perhaps because the native produce still can't be supplied in sufficient quantities to generate a culture.

Reprinted with permission from ConvictCreations.com, the hidden story of Australia's missing links

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