Modern Cuisine.

Australian cuisine has the most diverse range, quality, and inventiveness than many others in the world. However, it took Australia some time to evolve from the scenes of meat pies, Vegemite sandwiches, and sausage rolls to the scene of dishes such as " seared kangaroo fillet with wilted beetroot greens and roasted onions". The culinary art of Australia only luxuriated in the 1990s. But at that time, it was already considered the most adventurous in the world. Each capital city has seen a swarm of new restaurants within the genre 'Modern Australia' cuisine, with inventive chefs at the helm and an audience of willing hedonists at the ready. This culinary reawakening is due to two factors: the wealth of superlative Australian produce, including native food, and the plethora of international cuisine brought to Australia by its immigrants from all over the world.

Australia is also well known for its fresh ingredients such as seafood, local fruits, beef and lamb, as well as its world class cheeses. Like in Italy and France, Australia can be divided into regions that are known for particular produce such as King Island cream, Sydney rock oysters, Bowen mangoes, Coffin Bay scallops, Tasmanian salmon, and Illabo milk-fed lamb. Each state has its acknowledged specialties, which travelers should take advantage of.

Never forgetting the native cuisine called 'bush tucker', which involves traditional diets such as flour and water cooked in the campfire coals to make bread called damper, billy tea, and local animals' meat. To summarize the varieties of food in Australia, it is then necessary to categorize them into modern Australian food, bush tucker, Asian food, and Australian's favorite.

The food culture brought to Australia by English immigrants who first settled in South Australia in 1836. These people brought with them traditional English recipes. They were all simple recipes, not requiring complicated ingredients, and not costing much money, a style of cookery that reflected the modest means of the time.

Among the English immigrants were sheep graziers providing prime lamb, others farmed beef cattle and still others became the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers of newly established towns. Many recipes, in hand written recipe books, brought to Australia by migrant women have been passed from one cook to another down the years. These recipes still hold their place in home cooking of today including Lamb Roast, Lamingtons, tasty Steak and Kidney Pies. They have been joined by dishes that have earned their special place in Australian history, such as the Pavlova, Soldier's Cake and Anzac Biscuits, and of course for genteel afternoon teas, the Lamington and Pumpkin Scones. Damper: A damper is a traditional Australian bread, made without yeast, and commonly made on a campfire in a cast iron camp oven.

Lamingtons: A chocolate coated cube of sponge cake, rolled in

desiccated coconut; usually served with whipped cream and afternoon tea. It is said that Lamingtons were invented in the Queensland Government House kitchen as a creative use for stale sponge cake. I do not recommend that you use stale cake, but the mixture is easier to handle if the cake is not too fresh and crumbly. They are named after Lady Lamington, the wife of the Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901.

Pavlova: A recipe developed by a chef in Western Australia, or so the story goes (or was it in New Zealand?) to celebrate the visit of the famous ballerina Anna Pavlova, is a confection of sugar and egg white meringue, covered with delicious whipped cream and seasonal fruits.

Anzac Biscuits: A rather hard but crisp biscuit of rolled oats and molasses Soldier's Cake.

Although English immigrants brought their foods and recipes to a new land, there was already a wealth of cultural food in existence. These are the indigenous foods and style of eating that of course was the very

first cuisine established in this country. It may have taken many decades for this to be acknowledged, but there is an awakening taking place both in Australia and internationally.

The oldest food culture is indigenous Australian food or native food.

For centuries the indigenous people of this country have used the fruits and plants growing widely on the land. It may have taken a long time, but it is satisfying to realise that Indigenous foods are becoming more widely known and available, being grown very successfully by a group of visionary farmers in South Australia, and enabling the creation of dishes such as: Calamari seasoned with lemon myrtle, Lemon myrtle linguine tossed with local scallops and prawns, Native spinach fettuccine with Springs Smoked Salmon with creamy bush tomato and macadamia sauce, Kangaroo fillet crusted with Mountain Pepper, and served with a pepper berry dressing and fresh leaf salad. Damper is a perfect example of a food passed from one tradition to another. The aboriginal people have traditionally ground seeds to make a kind of flour, added water and baked a kind of Damper in the coals of their cooking fires. Damper became the means of outback stockmen having fresh bread, but using the more traditional flours, and using a camp oven for baking in the hot coals of the camp fire. In Oz we have a little freshwater crustacean that lurks on the bottom of streams, lakes and in farm dams, they are called Yabbies, and have been enjoyed by indigenous Australians for centuries.

An enterprising lady at Inman Valley, looking to diversify on a dairy farm during a downturn in the dairy industry, tried farming yabbies in her farm dams. She has established a successful and innovative business,

buying and marketing yabbies. Now the rest of the world is waking up to their secret delights. Their delicate, sweet flavour and firm texture has won lavish praise from connoisseurs the world over. They are absolutely

delicious, and can be used in Yabbie Chowder, Yabbie Pate, or Yabbie Stir Fry with Asian vegetables.

Lemon myrtle: fresh leaf, or ground dried leaf of the Lemon Myrtle tree.
Mountain Pepper: ground leaf or berries of the mountain pepper tree
Native spinach: warrugul greens, a native spinach growing in coastal areas
Bush tomatoes: small tomato-like fruits, also called desert raising
Macadamia nuts: a nut, native of Australia, now grown in other places
Wattle seed: A small, oval, black variety of the Acacia seed. Wattle seed is used in myriad foods including rice, soups, meat rubs and baked goods.

Although English immigrants brought their foods and recipes to a new land, there was already a wealth of cultural food in existence. These are the indigenous foods and style of eating that of course was the very

first cuisine established in this country. It may have taken many decades for this to be acknowledged, but there is an awakening taking place both in Australia and internationally.

1. Does Australia have long culinary traditions?

2. What types of food is Australia traditionally famous for?

3. What are the main dishes of so called “bush tucker”?

4. Who brought culinary traditions to Australia?

5. Can you name any traditional Australian dishes? What kind of dishes are these?

SO, WHAT ARE AUSTRALIANS LIKE?

Australians have typically been described as laconic, egalitarian, rugged, no-nonsense, down-to-earth types obsessed with sport but uneducated in the more refined arts of civilization. There may be truth to the cliche, but as with any cliche, it can only describe one layer of the truth. And the whole idea is to show that there are many layers to reality, each piled on top of another onion-style. In order to understand the Australians, you have to understand where they come from. There have been four principal migrations of humans into Australia. The first three were Aboriginal waves, and the fourth, which continues today, began with the European colonization of 1788. It is important to note that, unlike the colonists who flocked to America, the early immigrants to Australia didn't go by choice, in a vast number of cases. Early Australia was a prison for the trash of the British Empire – or at least a dumping ground for dangerous elements of British society. White Australia began as a convict nation -- a land settled by criminals. There was never a sense that this was a Promised Land, to be developed and built into a new Paradise on Earth, as was the case with America. Rather, Australia was a place to be hated and despised by the people who were sent there. It is mentioned that the " typical Australian ethos was developed by the convict, working-class, Irish and native born peoples".

1. How have Australians typically been described?

2. How many principal migration to Australia have there been? What

were they?

3. How did White Australia begin?