A Whine about Books and a Book about Wine
By Jackie McMillan
As Rebecca Huntley points out in Eating Between The Lines: Food and Equality In Australia (RRP $24.95, Black Inc. www.blackincbooks.com), ‘Australians have shown an almost inexhaustible appetite for cookbooks, magazines and novels featuring food and cooking.’ Many of them end up on my desk, and as much as I’d like to read them all, and tell you about the best of them, it’s getting quite exhausting keeping up with our Aussie obsession with writing about all things edible. So this month my column, which looks like a bit of a whine about books, is devoted to catching up with some of these new releases that I love and hate in equal measure.
Rebecca Huntley takes a food tour out of her ‘Bobo’ existence “slap-bang in the middle of the affluent eastern suburbs” and looks at the eating habits of Australian people. Her middle class lens which sees her call the “sucker(s) prepared to spend a lot of money on not a lot of food” at growers’ markets “my people” may strike you as annoying if you buy organic food genuinely because it tastes better, is better for you and is better for the planet. Along the way, you do get a reasonable overview of Australian eating habits, indexed to economics ‘ we can only eat as well as we can afford, and the middle class have a more ‘wonderful way to eat’. Buy the book if you dine with “chardonnay socialists”; choose chocolate that “saves the endangered rhinos”; and if you have a love/hate relationship with The Biggest Loser.
In her book, Huntley mentions El Bulli as an example of a restaurant serving ‘food that has been endlessly fiddled with’. For me some of the beauty of food is its capacity to create emotional responses ‘ to transport you back to childhood with a simple waft of fairy floss. So when a chef like Ferran Adrià comes along, who can create a symphony of food to manipulate my feelings through my senses, I’m going go there! Who cares if it’s techno-emotional’ If this stuff fascinates you as much as it does me, get your hands on a copy of A Day at elBulli: An insight into the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià (RRP $75.00, Phaidon Press www.phaidon.com). The man himself is in the country for the launch of it this Friday at the State Theatre (for tickets call 136 100 or www.ticketmaster.com.au).
Taking a jaunt in a completely different direction, rediscover what’s great about working class food and get back to basics with Jennifer McLagan’s book Cooking on the Bone: Recipes, History and Lore (RRP $39.99, Capricorn Link www.capricornlink.com.au) For a good twenty years or so we’ve run away from bones. The boneless fillet has practically become an aspirational symbol of the peak of civilisation – as if it somehow more civilised to eat meat when it is off the bone. But it’s cheaper, opens up a whole range of amazing cuts that don’t work when they are rendered boneless, and actually tastes better to eat meat on the bone. This book shows you how to use boned cuts to best effect, in simple well-presented recipes.
To end I promised you a book about wine, and it’s a gleaming gold book called the 2009 Australian Wine Vintages (RRP $34.99) which is partially the work of Robert Geddes, Australia’s third Master of Wine. If you buy a lot of Australian wine, and you’ve got a few winemakers that you like but you’ve been perplexed by which vintage to buy, when it’s drinking well and whether you’re paying what it’s worth, this is the book for you. I was particularly taken with his map of Australian wine growing regions. For a budding wine connoisseur this book would definitely improve your likelihood of being able to drink your favourite Australian wine at its peak.
If I’ve left you thirsting for a good drop, I have a wine you might like to try, particularly if like me, you’ve had trouble matching your love of wine to Asian cuisine. It’s called Aja, and as Mark Silcocks from D & M wines tells me, it’s a ‘blend of white varieties, drawn on the strengths of different regions; for example Verdelho and Semillon from the Hunter and a bit of Sauvignon Blanc from South Australia.’ Now that might sound a bit hectic, but what they’ve ended up with is a wine that goes ‘perfectly with Asian food’ where the ‘zesty, aromatic, luscious grapes complement the fragrant flavours of Asian cuisine and counterbalance any chilli or hot spices, with a crisp citrus finish’. It worked for me, and I am pleased to see my two favourite Thai haunts, Rambutan in Darlinghurst and Oceanic Thai in Clovelly have taken it up. If you’re up in the Hunter for any reason, look out for it at the Tempus Two cellar door (where it’s made), or keep an out an eye out in your favourite bottle shop.
