When MEGASTARS come to eat amongst us mortals

The first call came about two weeks before the party actually arrived. The breathless PR person could barely contain herself as she squealed down the phone line with excitement.
Really, Megastar name here wants to come here? I asked, not sure if this was a joke.
The babble at the end of the phone threatened to foam out from the earpiece & I held it away wincing. What I did hear from that chipmunk on crack message was that the one & only Megastar name here & I presume, his entourage would be dropping into the state & it appeared wanted to eat at our place. It had to be a yarn I concluded & thinking I’ll have to up the stakes for my next practical joke on the mate whom I suspected had concocted this ruse.
A week later something weird happened. Cleaning up one day I noticed through the window, a big black gangsta looking Chrysler 300 slide into our carpark. Curious I stopped & watched three of the biggest blokes stuffed into suits I have ever seen, disgorge themselves fro the confines of the car, the Chrysler visibly rising as they alighted. They made their way to the front of the building & their heavy feet crunched menacingly on the blue metal of the driveway, my stomach tightened with each step.
Who were they, I thought? What did they want? I watched as Harry the floor manager turned to answer the insistent tapping on the glass & startle as he regarded the three brutes peering inside.
Steve, they want to speak to the manager, he says nervously, retreating to the safety of strawberry sponge at the cake counter.
I approach & I am made aware that they represent the security for MNH & were here to ‘recon’ the premises. Relieved that they weren’t from Dept Homeland Securities or suchlike in response to a recent blogging indiscretion I had inadvertently made, they skulked around the place, opening & shutting doors, pointing to power conduits & enquiring where does this go etc etc. It took about 5 mins for me to replace my initial uneasiness with their appearance to a mild irritation when I heard all three of the dunnies being flushed, what were these guys again, Bad Ass security dudes or plumbing inspectors?
Thankfully they left after apparently deeming the place ‘Secure’ & I got back to the cleaning & considering of what I should put on the menu when MNH comes to dinner.

To be continued...

A sad goodbye

My mum fed me my first meal.
My mum loved to eat out.
She loved champers, oysters, seafood in general actually & particularly smoked salmon.
Tassie smoked salmon.
She loved to sit on our verandah supping Janz & hoovering Bruny Islands finest.
As a kid I noticed difference when we served rye bread, salamis, stinky cheeses, olives & pickles.
I always went for the savoury items rather than the saccharine when we visited as a result, the pavs & tarts were left unmolested.
We were as a family, a white bread anomaly
Is this what travel does to a person?
Taint them with eyes always to the horizon & twist their tastes into an unthinkable shape?
So they don’t fit in & make everyone else feel dumb, uncultured?
Some eating only the familiarity of the sliced ham, the platters’ one concession.
When I, triumphantly disgorged myself from the oppression of the apprenticeship
& show-ponied my new found skills full of puffed up bravado
Mum, loyal as ever, overlooked my inadequacies, my inflated self worth & my youthful arrogance & simply encouraged me to do better next time, rather than concentrate on my obvious shortcomings.
To see her, replete, Cheshire cat smiling after a meal I have cooked, is my hope to see every customer as well.
She has set the bar high, the reason perhaps I still cook for a living, trying to relive this moment again & again & the reason why I still take it all so very, very personally.

You either process customers or nurture them.I hope we do the latter.

Rest in peace Mum, Love forever, your son Steve.

A Twitter's got moy Baboy! spoken like Meryl Streep in 'Evil Angels'

I fear that Twitter has kidnapped all of the bloggers that I read as their posts have become more & more infrequent. Can someone help? Should the authorities be alerted? Where are they being held hostage?
My fear Twitter has used some sort of 'mind control' on them that only lets them communicate in 140 character or less! Many of them seem to be showing signs of that 'Stockholm Syndrome' that Ut Si told us about, where they fall in love with their captors.

Disclaimer-I know I have a twitter side bar, I'm experimenting, perhaps like having a harmless puff, who knows soon I might be injecting?

Will all interviews go like this?

I presumer EVERYBODY has already seen this video,but to me it represents a most authentic exchange that is extremely common today between young people & older people in the workplace, dispiritingly hilarious!

The way we were

I wrote this way back in 2006 & after reading a couple of menuese menus lately i couldn't help but re-post this original observation

The way we were....
From an idea I originally saw in The Bulletin, tried to remember it completely & couldn’t. So here’s my version.

Aussie caf menu circa 1966

Chiko roll
Hamburger with the lot
Hot chips
Dagwood dog

Modern Australian Restaurant equivalent 2006

Shaved premium vegetables & hand reared Perrendale lamb perfumed with exotic spices and enwrapped in a gossamer-thin ancient recipe Asian pastry and crisped in estate grown & first pressed oil.

Finely ground grass fed Black Angus topside beef seasoned with Pink sea salt & freshly ground native pepper. Mallee Root grilled, served on a freshly baked 18 hr sourdough bun, vine ripened tomatoes, just-picked heirloom lettuce, free range egg, rare breed middle bacon & hand made tomato relish.

Hand harvested, scrubbed & peeled first growth Idaho potatoes from own farm, machine cut & immersed in rendered Wagyu tallow until golden (Dulux Honey Afternoon TM shade)& crisp factor 9, lightly Murray River sea-salted & arranged in & brown paper bag from a sheltered workshop.

Boudin of milk fed Foppshire piglet enriched with floor sweepings & encased in a fine sheath of intestine, dipped into a frothy Artisinal Bitter Ale batter from Elizabeth David’s English bread & yeast cookery, crisped until golden ( Dulux Saffron Summer TM shade) & served on a precision lathed Huon Pine dowel

Is it better to expand or stay small?

Many small food producers in this state initially embrace the chance to promote their product through a nice magazine article or spot on a cooking show. The magazine or show gets to legitimise its foodie credentials by featuring the producer & the producer in turn will get some publicity & exposure to the consumer that may not be aware of their product.
In many instances this exposure leads to a noted increase in enquiries for the product & where to buy it. This might in turn lead to a swelling of demand & in some cases the pressure is too great for some small operations to deliver the quantities required or within the appointed time frame. This leads to disappointment from the consumer, which is a rather ironic situation considering that the conventional wisdom is that all publicity is good publicity.
In some cases, the PR can actually be a hindrance to a smaller operation for the reasons I’ve stated above & some I know avoid it altogether which leaves a few media savvy people scratching their heads in disbelief as they think they are living in the dark ages.
This increase in demand is but a first turn of the wheel toward making the decision to expand. Sure its makes sense on paper & sounds quite simple.
Make product that people like, get favourable publicity, sell more product, increase capacity to meet higher demands, thus, get bigger.
Now, to get bigger they would probably have to spend a considerable amount of money in order to upgrade the plant & machinery to meet this increase in demand. This might mean going into debt to do so. They might also have to consider selling their product to an even wider market to justify the expansion & this would mean investigating more clients & perhaps initiating a marketing drive, which of course costs more money.
It may also mean hiring more staff & with it the time to train. It may often mean that the original person who made the product is not as frequently ‘on the tools’ as other commitments have arisen with the expansion.
In many cases when a small popular artisan product grows into a larger concern, there are those consumers out there who will complain that ‘something’ isn’t the same about the product, that it has somehow lost its charm, its handmade feel & its point of difference. Though they might be a small minority, it could be the very loyal consumers who helped forge the reputation of the product. In fact it could be they who alerted the media to the merits of this product in the first place.
Those who are for pushing expansion & growing a business usually think those who decide to stay mall are nuts, as bigger means making more money. We know that many people who set out to make a unique product are not all motivated by making loadsa money but this is a view not shared by the majority of big food producers, where profit always comes first & in many cases, before quality. In fact, in my own brief dalliance with big food, the merest suggestion of doing a quality product with integrity & provenance was seen as a bit of a waste of time, effort & money if it also meant paying more for the quality ingredients in which to make it.

Staying small can be a good thing. It means that you are usually at the reins & are able to oversee the quality of your product. It can also mean that you are shoehorned into doing everything yourself with barely time away for a day off. If you are a control freak & workaholic then you’ll be comfy but it is a hard slog for those who are not. The thing is you have to be passionate about your product, you have to really love it otherwise why would you really put up with the sometimes impossible demands its production puts on you. This for me is the difference between staying small & getting bigger. How can someone really still truly ‘love’ their product when it has been assembled with an army of helpers in a highly mechanized environment? I don’t believe they can quite frankly. Yes they might get enthused about processing so many thousand ‘units’ or smile about shaving a degree of cost from the product, but this is not a ‘passion’ for the product.
I am cynical of the food stories concocted for products who hope to convey their connectedness by using bucolic imagery on their packaging. A sunny orchard, a snuffling pig or a verdant meadow don’t convince me when I know the orchard is a thousand hectare agri-business, the snuffling pigs are all trapped in huge feed lots & the green meadows are super phosphate enriched. Who are they kidding really?
We have collectively, the world over, come to realise the hard way, that getting bigger isn’t always the best thing to do & can have some dire costs.
I think that that small is just fine.

Your Country Show Stall

This morning, the kids & I got up early to vacate the house & leave my studying wife to let them both exhale our boisterous energy outward toward a direction that would be more apt for our rabble & hopefully restore a Zen like stillness, more in tune with an atmosphere of thoughtful scholarship, in which the missus could meet some weekend deadlines looming.
Rugged up & prepared we arrived in New Norfolk at 9.40am, an hour & twenty minutes from Cygnet & twenty minutes before the Country show was set to begin. We were there to support the stall from the Agrarian Kitchen who had toiled all night to get their stuff ready for the big day.
Rolling into New Norfolk, the traffic was already beginning to build to a thickening stream. When I say this, I mean there were about five cars in convoy that all turned into the car park on the edge of the tannin coloured Derwent River. Already though, the carpark was filling & I watched with amusement as the several volunteers armed with walkie talkies, set jaws & determined stares, participated in the free flowing exchange of car park jargon that I imagined wouldn’t be out of place in an air traffic control room.
It never fails to amuse me how an ordinary person with an orange vest & a mobile communication device who gesticulates wildly & with some exasperation when you don’t understand through the windscreen where it is they mean you to park, can make ones pride feel slightly sullied as you leave the car. Do all festivals, fairs & shows make patrons suffer this same malady I wonder?
We head toward the droning warm up of what turns out later to be a rather polished Tartan embellished Police bagpipe band. Through the gates we go & past the mandatory polished pride of vintage cars & hot rods. Their owners stealing glances between wiping at imagined smears, hoping to elicit jealous looks from Dagwood dog eating spectators, enough envy perhaps to make all this effort worth while.
We all need immediate refreshment after the trip. Me, coffee of course, the chilluns, hot choccy’s & perhaps pastries? We settle on one of those stalls that seem to materialize at every festival, kinda like the Flying Dutchman of legend did, through the mists & then sharply into focus. On offer, were some sad, pale & fat jam impregnated doughnuts & the kids were getting tetchy so I got a few of them, against better my judgment but what the hell, authentic patisserie’s were curiously not thick on the ground here.
A side mission was to locate a desirably quirky & cuddly tea cosy to replace the treasured one that I had left to combust on the stove whilst idly being negligent in my kitchen duties one day at home. After several visits to some promising stalls festooned with colourful woolen everythings, the pursed lips of the agitated matronly vendors all telling me that ‘Tea cosies are not what we do’, led me to believe that I was somehow insulting their collective knitting & crocheting prowess, like maybe tea cosies are like ‘level entry’ craft. We were then mesmerized by the sheep dog, his master & the mob of sheep they both had to corral into a yard & with this spectacle, the essence of a country show had begun to reveal itself. Seemingly comforted by this connection, we were better able to ‘tune in’ to what was happening. More people had now arrived & with them a sea of yellow battered covered saveloys now bobbed through the crowd like a wave of fetid glow sticks at a rave. The twang of pedal steel guitar of which I am partial, reverberated throughout the grounds antiquated PA, punctuated by the sounds of an arcane steam engines intermittent whistle & the pneumatic thumps of some berk doing a compacting demo on a pile of elevated mud. & the air became heavy with that familiar smell of a community group sausage sizzle. The boy needed snags so we forked over our dough to the pinnie wrapped front line troops whilst the generals at the back stoically manned the barbeques. All for a good cause.
Whilst the chilluns ate a snag, I scanned the horizon for stalls of note & the one we had come here for. I was saddened to observe that we could have been anywhere really, such was the homogeneity of the food stalls on show.
Rock sugar this, Persian that, Berry this, Potato that, Deep fried grot, Pseudo ethnic that, then wait a Minnie, my periscope spied a stall standing out, not through flashy banners, aging chiko roll posters or twinkling fairy lights. It was a modest stall with a simple blackboard menu of five or so items, a counter full of three smiling beauties & a tub of house made Rhubarb & rose petal sparkler, the most perfect individual motif to set itself apart & raise the bar, a stall could want.
I, dear reader was privileged to have had the first roast lamb roll, with coleslaw on homemade bun sold at the stall today, an experience that I have to say was a cathartic one for me. It was also a moment captured by a film crew that are following the exploits of the Agrarian Kitchens much anticipated enterprises, which might have a few in some quarters, suggesting that I am a media tart of easy virtue, but I swear I didn’t know cameras would be there! Ask Rod, Severine. Luke or Kat!
But as I say, it was very instructive to see some hand made, scavenged, foraged & grown produce at a stall at a country fair. Yes you are right, this is not a revolutionary situation for sure, however will it be the most popular, will it be embraced by the punters, will they see the pride or the value in what can be made right here in their part of Tassie? The snaking queues to the deep fried grot stalls were omnipresent as per usual so the jury’s still out I’m afraid.
My hope is that we have seen a little push toward re claiming the spirit of what grub should be offered at a country show that bears its name.

Is what you do who you are?

More times than I can remember I have been asked ‘do you get invites to there people’s homes for dinner, ‘or are they too scared to invite you?’ This is a common question I’m sure for many people associated with making their living with food or its service. Many people assume that because you are a hospitality person you will be hyper critical of what’s served, how it was dished out, what crockery & cutlery were used, the lighting of the room & what music, if any was playing. Speaking for myself, I am usually chuffed enough just to get a Guernsey, yet alone being insolent in criticising my gracious & it seems, brave host. Criticising the efforts & generosity of a host has always been for me, one of the great social No No’s & great test of ones sensitivity to & an awareness of their emotional intelligence. It is a constant source of great interest too, in observing those who are tuned into this & those who are not. The successful ones make the best choices in filling the gaps at table, safe in the knowledge that they will pull their weight & often they will literally sing for their supper, greasing the cogs of social discourse & making the event a happy & interesting one, for which as host, you will be fondly remembered.
Sadly, at your soiree, the other lot will make themselves about as welcome Mark Latham would be at an ALP fundraiser, boorish, insensitive & ignorant.
I am digressing though. What I would like to talk about is the image others have of us because of what we do for a living. This particularly modern demon has been exercised many, many times before especially in the case of but not limited to, men.
It seems that many men of an older generation, once they retire, find it very difficult to adjust to life without work, or more particularly, life without their identity. You see it’s the work identity that is seemingly entwined around & inseparable from ones own person, sometimes it’s the thing that other people most readily identify about someone. Now as I’ve said its been studied before many times & mostly with older blokes as the subject matter, however in these, ahem, enlightened times where everyone, ahem, is trying to achieve a work life balance, this notion of us being what we do seems remarkably out of step with the times.
Knowing this, why still does this perception still cling on to the coat tails of our values, crossing the great generational divide where even those pesky lil’ Gen Y’s perpetuate it & of course its been going on since Adam ate the apple.

Perhaps this observation was best summed up this way:

Long ago in ancient Greece a wise old man was walking with his student.
They reached a clearing & before them was a view of Athens great irrigation system.
‘See that, I designed it,’ said the older man, ‘spent 10 years of my life on it, but do they say there goes Vassilki the great water bringer?’ To which his student looked perplexed.
Next they walked into the town square & before them lay the great Library of the city.
Gesturing toward it the old man declared, ‘Look in wonder young man, the culmination of 20 years work, my gift to the people of our great city, But do they say, here comes Vassiliki the great architect?’ Again the boy felt he was missing something.
Eventually they came to a vantage point where the sprawling city stretched out before them.
‘Behold!’ the old man cried, ‘My life’s work & my gift to the Greek people, the wonder that is modern Athens, But’, he went on 'do these ungrateful wretches say, there goes Vassiliki the great Town Planner?....No!’ he bellowed scaring his wide eyed student.
‘You shag one sheep………..’
And before you put two & two together, I don’t like sheep.