(Guest Blog-Australia) It’s two years since we decided to venture ‘Down Under’ for a new chapter in our lives, and all the experiences that this amazing island has to behold. For me, one of the biggest surprises Australia has shown me is how wrong we are about their cuisine!
As a caveat, I speak about our own little corner of the Sutherland Shire, south of Sydney, and this being such a vast country, this may not be the case way up north in Darwin. But the biggest fallacy I have come across is that so far I have only ever witnessed one person other than my husband throw any type of crustacean on a BBQ, and they don’t call them shrimps, they call them prawns!!!
Yes, it’s true the Aussies do love their barbies, but most of the time they hold “Sausage Sizzles”. No shrimp, steak, lamb chop, chicken drumstick, not even a burger in site, the sausage sizzle is a simple affair consisting of a BBQ, sausages, onions (if you’re lucky) and white bread. (Note: no hot dog rolls!) Just plain, cheaper than chips, white sliced bread. When we first arrived, we thought we’d turned up to an event where they had run out of proper hot dog rolls, but I have since learnt than if you offer rolls, they are left in favour of the sliced bread. The art is to rest your snag diagonally across the bread and fold the opposite corners up around the sausage. Unless you have been lucky enough to be given two pieces of bread, in which case you just make a sandwich. This, on the whole is my general experience of an Aussie BBQ.
The dichotomy, however, is that the nation seems gripped by exciting and diverse cuisines. The plethora of food programmes and TV competitions is overwhelming. The Australian Masterchef is a gruelling three months of TV four nights a week in a format which seems to be a marriage of the UK Masterchef with The Apprentice. The more reality TV version ‘My Kitchen Rules’ intensifies the fun of Come Dine With Me with the pressure of Masterchef and brings in huge audiences annually.
In the city (Sydney for me), the cultural diversity of such a country brings an exciting array of restaurants and, although I fail to find Indian or Chinese restaurants to my liking (maybe I’m looking for the Anglicised versions too much?) I have spent the past months investigating the wonders of Vietnamese, Japanese, Turkish, Italian, Thai and Peruvian eating houses, not to forget the ‘Contemporary Australian’ restaurants which, after my introduction, you might expect to serve nothing but snags! However, these offer dishes that are more what you would expect; similar to British classics of meat pies, steak, lamb shanks etc. with a hearty emphasis on the meat, but add the influence from the country’s other inhabitants and you get Wagyu beef in your pie and your trout soy-cured. Food evolution definitely in progress!
Thank you, Sydney, for a truly enjoyable culinary education. I guess with such exciting things on offer whilst dining out, the only thing you really need at home is to throw another snag on the Barbie...
Guest Blog by Vicci Forward
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