All You Can Eat, Volume II
Tiffany Tsao • 2 September 2022
The banquet continues! Welcome to the second half of our double food issue, wherein we continue to sink our teeth into the subject of food.
Ange Seen Yang guides her mother through a fancy Italian meal – and observes sadly which cuisines are considered ‘fine dining’, and which aren’t. Nicole Melanson recounts falling apart during her father’s last days, and the strange comfort afforded by the hospitality industry’s unforgiving show-must-go-on ethos.
Ualarai Barkandji food writer Jody Orcher chats with Lee Tran Lam about her childhood, her passion for bush food and the exploitation of Aboriginal cultural knowledge sans meaningful engagement. Benito Di Fonzo reminisces fondly on the underground booze-making culture of his childhood in the Inner West.
Having a baby to repair a romantic relationship is probably a bad idea. But what about a sourdough baby? Read Emma Hardy’s piece to find out.
Some cookbooks end with a glossary, so we’ll wrap up with one too: an index of useful baking hacks from Hana Hoogedeure.
A (Very Fancy) Pasta Pit Stop
'This was fun,' she says, 'I haven’t been to a fancy restaurant with so many courses before.'
'We went out for banquet last week!' I exclaim. I think of steamed fish, sizzling pork and a seafood claypot rotating around the lazy Susan of the Chinese restaurant we were at, a collection of courses which dwarfed tonight’s three-course meal.
'It's not the same – you know what I mean.' She gestures dismissively.
It makes me pause.
(Notes: this piece won the written category in this year's SBS and Diversity in Food Media Australia Competition. Explore Diversity In Food Media Australia’s many cool projects and check out Yang's newsletter vegemite in my congee.)
Hospitality
Customers don’t care about your stellar reputation if their food is late or cold, or their order gets mixed up. So what if someone smashed your heart into a million tiny pieces? South end of the bar needs a vodka tonic and a frozen margarita stat. While my father was dying, the entire world was busy baking bread. Ovens everywhere, full of carby comfort. Challah knots. Cinnamon scrolls. Enough fucking sourdough to sink a thousand ships.
(Note: this piece was shortlisted for Island’s 2021 Nonfiction Prize.)
An Interview with Jody Orcher
Lee Tran Lam: There’s booming interest in native ingredients, but only one per cent of Australia’s bush food companies are Indigenous-owned.
Jody Orcher: It’s not about bush food, it’s about access to Country. It’s about rights to water. Bush food is another thing where Aboriginal people are being used for their cultural knowledge and not to have any benefits or any employment or anything. Where I come from, there’s heaps of kurrajong seeds, saltbush, kangaroo grasses. If we could have access to those things, we could harvest them. If we could harvest them, we could have access to land. If we had land, we’d be able to sell them, we’d have jobs.
Great Wog Boozes of the Inner West
Today when I see folks discussing their wine with sommelier-like crapulence I know I’d rather a Vegemite jar of Black Charlie poured from an old DA bottle, followed by Mrs Polluzzi’s duck egg linguine, all washed down with my father’s home-made limoncello or an espresso stained with his bespoke sambuca or amaretto.
Sourdough Baby
It started like all sourdough starters start: on a Saturday morning, boyfriend and I mixed one part flour with one part water and kissed, gently, hoping for the best. We were looking for anything to stop the fighting.
Bake-Down Breakdown
Below is a glossary of cake hacks in the format of a cookbook index. They are some tips and tricks from my cookbook scribbles to motivate and encourage fellow cake enthusiasts, and demystify the world of baking.