UNIVERSITY STRAWBERRY LAMINGTON

As readers of this blog may be aware, I do like to reflect on the ordinary moments of eating today. This is about the mundane, the close at hand, the banal, and all as a way to help us understand contemporary identity, place, and belonging. In Perth, the banal often means the suburban, which is the dominant lifestyle here. The suburbs sprawl from north to south, peeling along the coast for kilometres on end, hemmed in by the ocean to the west and the scarp to the east. This is the ordinary as it manifests here.

I think there are lots of reasons why the close at hand matters. It might not only be the challenge of thinking about what is immediately around us, but it might also have to do with what we can afford, the idea of the normal, and the celebration of those moments that go unnoticed. The glue of life, the substance that binds it together like flour or egg or sometimes rice, is the everyday, and, it is worth celebrating for that reason alone.

A lot of my everyday takes place at a local university, where I do some teaching in an arts department. I am on campus four days a week, and, besides my desk at home (where I am writing to you from) it is the place I am most often in. There are a number of food options that are on campus or nearby, including international food courts with Japanese, Malaysian (2 kinds), Lebanese, Italian, Chinese, fish and chips, and, an American burger place; cafes that look out across the river with birds flocking and boats crowding the immediate view; and there are places at the university itself. This last group includes a tavern, a number of food trucks, a couple of student dominated clusters, and, a club for faculty only. There is also a café at the library, where I often refuel, because of location and selection.

I will often catch up with students or staff at the library café, Quobba Gnarning. I do not drink coffee, and, I usually only have one cup of tea each day. But, I do not offer that digression up out of piousness, but simply to point out that when I ‘meet for a coffee’ I am often drinking something else. Quobba Gnarning has recently put milo on the menu, and, I think my students are pleasantly surprised when they discover that it is my hot beverage of choice. It helps them comes to terms with authority, which is, I think, one of the major changes between school and university. I am not there to discipline them, at least not in the way they have come to expect, but rather to educate them within a discipline, which is to say cultivate a way of thinking that comes with a sense of tradition.

The other day, there I was catching up with a prospective honours student, having ordered a milo. In his twenty two year old wisdom, he was having a long mac (no judgement). And, out of the corner of my eye I spied something that I had not seen in the cake cabinet before. As you will have guessed, this was a strawberry lamington. It must be said, that this is not my preferred flavour of lamington. That would belong to the classic chocolate one, but decked out with a thin layer cream and raspberry jam in the middle. Nevertheless, I persisted. I did what any university lecturer, and someone willing to lead by example, would do. I ordered the strawberry lamington to go with my milo. I had to show my student what was ahead of him if he continued to study at such a venerable institution.

The lamington itself was disappointing – the icing was a little chewy, and not in a desirable ‘this has Q’ kind of way, but more that it had been in the fridge a little long. The sponge was fair enough and the flavour rock solid gold. It succeeded in nostalgia factor despite making me a little sick and without the need to get another one for a long while. And yet, it brought with it a certain comfort, if not joy, that in the small break in the day one could holiday in the return of youth and celebrate something so ordinary. That is not a bad outcome for $2.90 not matter the day.

EATING BOMBAY

You don’t come to Bombay for salami. So, we didn’t eat it (even though they had it every morning at our hotel breakfast). What we ate was lots of glorious vegetarian food. In India, the culinary question people ask is: veg or non-veg? By that simple phrasing, veg becomes the normative standard, and, one is not assumed to be a carnivore. It is easy to eat very well indeed without the slightest bit of meat passing your lips. I do think it is perhaps the best place in the world to be vegan.

If I am anything, I am a contextual eater. My diet, like my ethics and aesthetics, is determined by where I am and who I am with. This is not to say I do not have universal rules, but that I am a soft structuralist – I bend and flex depending on custom and ritual. And so, as they say, when in Bombay, go veg all the way. That does not mean there is only one diet here, but twenty million ways to eat. Many of them are vegetarian, so why not embrace it?

Bombay is a global city and a national hub. You get people from everywhere in India, which means you get great food from all over the subcontinent. This is to say nothing of cosmopolitans from other places as well. What is exceptional is street food; partly because people live such fast paced lives that they need to grab and go. It means there is always something good to eat within touching distance, and, sometimes even a little closer. However, we did not only eat street food, nor curry for that matter. We had good sandwiches, nice cakes, solid Western breakfasts, salad bowls, drinking snacks. This was with friends and when it was just the two of us, in cheap locals and metropolitan hotels, for lunch and dinner, and all the times before and after.

What I like about Bombay is hard to say exactly. I first came here in 2011, and, was exhausted after two days. I was travelling cheap and the hotel I had found was being renovated so they were drilling into the walls throughout the night. I caught a train all the way to Delhi, defeated by it with my brother-in-law, but not quite bowed. I returned in 2016, and, stayed for two months. That was a better trip, and, when I ventured out of town to a small hill station nearby I came back renewed for the monsoon. And yet, the second time here I was also trying to fight the city, criss-crossing town on a daily basis, going out in downpours when I should have stayed home, eating risky food and getting sick by being stupid.

This trip is short, for a week and because of work, but now it feels like I can get along with Bombay. I am fighting it less than I was. I am learning how to be here, how to be part of the city in a way I had not before. What has helped is where we are staying – Khar, which is a hip, welcoming and green district with a number of great, local things. The importance of neighbourhood charm matters here because Bombay is a city cut up by traffic. Avoiding traffic cannot be emphasised enough, at least for me. Sitting still, horns honking, lurching to and fro can take it out of you, especially if you are not used to it. If you keep it local, you will be better for it, even if you are travelling by car with AC. Some restaurants have AC, but all you really need is a fan or some shade, lest you melt into a puddle if you are outside for too long, at least for most of the year. January is supposed to be better, and, you might even need a light sweater.

As for what to eat, I like all the puri snacks – pani to sev to bell (they could be thought of as individual tapas for those who have not visited); I like vada pav, a kind of fried potato dumpling inside a white bread bun with chutney or pickle or sauce; I had some excellent okra that reminded me of small village meal on a trek I did ten years back in the Himalayas; plus dosa, idli, vadai, which are South Indian treats and remind me of the places my mother’s family comes from way down the coast. All of them were on the table this time around plus a great many other things besides. In terms of memorable moments from this trip, I had a wonderful thali lunch the first day I was here at Madras Diaries then there was very good mini vada pav at Pali Bhavan then there was a wonderful meal with friends upstairs downtown at Crystal Ice Cream (which does not serve any ice cream at all) then a cosmopolitan experience at Olive Bar and bits and pieces in between from all around. It was, in this way, somewhat hard to leave because there is a certain rhythm here that engages all your senses. There is a lot to see and do and eat along with simply being when we are in this city. I will have to come back for it.

And though my trip was mainly vegetarian, I did have one moment of glorious meat-eating sublimity. It was at a street side stall where two young guys grilling chicken over charcoal. They then wrapped these succulent pieces of thigh in a handkerchief thin roti before squeezing in lime, a coriander sauce, and pink onions. I ate it right then and there while it was steaming hot and fresh enough for the many, many gods. No finer moment was had, and, it was worth traveling all this distance for. To revel in chicken in a week of being vegetarian – I was the sweeter for it even if it was a little bit of mischief that made you think twice about it.

Where to eat: MadrasDiaries lunch thali; Pali Bhavan appetisers; Crystal Ice Cream for North Indian; The Village Shop for cake and tea; Olive Bar for cocktails; KitchenGarden for salad; any guy on the street for all the snacks, please.

SAUMA CURRY FOR EIGHT

In another life of mine, I volunteer with PEN International, which advocates for the responsible freedom of expression and the release of wrongfully imprisoned writers. Although we are a worldwide organisation, it gets a little tricky being critical of some governments and it is not always easy to be a journalist, poet, playwright, novelist, or writer under some regimes. It can get you in trouble. What that means being where I am is a certain responsibility to call out human rights abuses at home from refugee detention to media freedom, data retention, mass surveillance, all of which are increasingly important in our digital era. The other night, the Perth chapter brought over a high profile journalist who was imprisoned, and, after listening to his talk, we went out for dinner, as you do.

He was staying at the Alex Hotel, just a short walk from the State Library, and we decided it would be best to keep it local. That meant the whole of Northbridge was in our backyard and so there was a world of choice on our doorstep. Would we go sushi at nearby Aisuru? Would we go modern Lebanese at Hummus Club? Would we opt for pizza at Comet? In my humble, food blogging opinion, these were all worthy choices. The only request from our guest was that no tripe or okra was served. Keeping this in mind and not wanting to disappoint, we decided to find the place that was most likely to serve these slimy specialities. We were hoping, of course, to trigger his memory of being in jail. Alas, no one would come to the table and we settled for a curry instead, down the road at Sauma.

There were 8 of us and we needed a good feed. We left it to mum to order for us, not on account of racial profiling though she certainly has the expertise, but rather because she knows how to handle a group situation and balance the flavours that make a meal more than the sum of its dishes. And so, after a short wait, the curries arrived – mushroom and pea, roast eggplant, fish in banana leaf, legumes. You might be thinking, what is a legume curry. I thought that myself, legumes after all, being a kind of catch all from beans to peas and everything in between. This was red kidney beans, some black lentils, and some unknown ingredients, all of which would suggest that ‘legume curry’ was, in actual fact, an apt description.

And so, we munched on curry and talked the night away, spending time thinking aloud about the war on terror, the state of security, why everyone is exhausted by Israel-Palestine, what matters more than being at home, and why we had not ordered enough naan and why there was no dum aloo on the menu at all. I knocked back a few beers, but kept it in order. I was with the white haired brigade and I had driving duties in the morning.

In between, I managed to have a good conversation about poetry with someone at the table, who, to my absolute amazement, kept her white silk shirt completely clean as we made our way through thick gravy. There was no safety net and this was a high wire act, and yet, she did admirably well.

I thought about what it was to got out for curry, something I rarely do, and though it will never be as good as mum’s, there was enough to like at Sauma that I would return for. My only regret was that I did not get pani puri, but that might be for another time, when PEN brings over another guest, who wants to get their feet wet in Indian street cuisine’s tamarind glory. And that might be all we can hope for, that we get another chance to host someone else, that they can find in life after prison a little good taste in a restaurant that does not put on airs but simply puts on a few good curries and a pleasant atmosphere.  

HYBRID LONGING

What is Australia’s gift to the food world? I have been thinking about the answer to that question since I returned home from New York. It is obviously multiple, but I do not mean what dishes can handle being placed on the international stage next to the high-end greats from Ferran Adria’s liquid olives to Heston Blumenthal meat fruit, but what do ‘the people’ eat? What is our contribution to popular taste? This is a question about identity like when we debate the relative merit of Ken Done, Brett Whitely and Papunya Tula; or ACDC, Nana Mouskouri and Yothu Yindi; or Tatiana Grigorieva, Michael Diamond and Cathy Freeman. When I ask what is our gift to the world I want to know what is an everyday food that has travelled all over and resonates in a great many places.

The most curious candidate for this might belong to the television series Masterchef. When I lived in India in 2009, people were obsessed with it there, something my sister corroborated when she put on an art show at the embassy in New Delhi in 2013. At that event, intellectuals, diplomats and everyone else mobbed the judges Matt Preston, Geogre Calombaris and Gary Mehigan. They pushed aside artists, politicians, musicians, just to have a photo with these stars. This love for the show still holds up as of 2017, when friends of ours were able to offer careful analysis on why Ben Ungermann deserved to win. People there know and love the show, and when we asked why they preferred it to other nations, there were two main reasons. This was because of the food people cooked, which was a higher calibre than anywhere else and covered a wider variety of cuisines, and the fact that people were genuinely fond of each other. It was a good competition with the right values and a desire to make delicious food. Masterchef is our soft power.

To my mind however, the peak of volk cuisine in Australia is to be found in cafes. We do brunch the best of anyone, anywhere, and our coffee culture has made its way to every corner of the globe. Think of the humble flat white, which came out of Sydney in 1985 at Moors Espresso Bar. And, if we ever needed to question whether it was really Australian, we have people in New Zealand claiming it as their own just like pavlova, Manuka honey and Russell Crowe. Shared provenance is one of the things that makes it Australian in the first place just like Kiwis like to remind us that they are the real home of Chinese gooseberries, the kakapo and rugby. The competition helps us and in arguing for the flat white as ours, we know that the dish is truly from the antipodes even as you get it now in London, New York and Los Angeles.

Thinking about Australian taste, about Australian dishes for the everyday diner, does not mean thinking about ingredients that only come from here. In France, I have eaten wonderful kangaroo. In Singapore, I have drunk gin with pepper-berries. In Canada, I have had a red hot go at dried quandongs. All these matter when we are talking about ingredients, but to my mind, the dish that represents Australia is avocado on toast. My reason for this is not only because of the furore kicked off by Bernard Salt in regards to home ownership. It is because of what the dish is and represents, and how that matters for the imagined community of our nation in the global consciousness.

Avocado on toast is young, sunny, vibrant, yummy, accessible, democratic, and its proliferation speaks back to how people love a coastal lifestyle that reminds them of summer. It comes without the ocker jingoism of Fosters or the depression era taste of Vegemite. It can be made at home easy as you like or elevated to the height of cultural expression. It really is the taste of a new generation, and, in any brekkie competition, avocado on toast will surely win the votes.

Where does avocado on toast come from? Speaking historically, that is debatable, but there is good reason to think that it is from Mexico. When I was travelling there in 2003 for an extended period, I ate it everyday for breakfast and the ingredients were as good as I have had them anywhere. In between hiking in the Lancandjon Jungle and lounging by the coast at Puerto Escondido, I ate many an avocado on toast. This is to say nothing of a good torta, the likes of which you can find everywhere in Latin America – frijoles, feta, avocado in a bread roll together. This was before the bourgeois hipsters got their hands on simple ingredients and claimed it as their own.

In this latter setting, there is good argument to be made that Sydney’s Bill Granger was the point of origin. Avocado on toast first appeared on the menu at his café in 1993. With a vegetarian mother, a butcher father, he studied art before being drawn to food. His cooking is unpretentious, upbeat, optimistic, open, generous. All qualities that should be lauded, and the accolades have come his way across an ever expanding restaurant empire. After all, the United Kingdom’s Jamie Oliver is sometimes called the Bill Granger of Britain.

Since then, avocado on toast blew up in the Instagram era with Americans getting on board with Chloe Osbourne at Manhattan’s Café Gitane helping to promote our humble dish before Gwenyth Paltrow took it into the heartland in her 2013 book, It’s All Good. Middle America was on board, preferring that avocado on toast came via Sydney, New York and celebrity tastemakers rather than looking south of the border. Now, it is the only thing they eat in California and as we know from Frederick Jackson Turner, the West is what defines American national character. You find it everywhere, including at former footballer Jobe Watson’s Hole in the Wall café in Manhattan (it is not bad) and at diners all through the suburbs. Avocado on toast makes sense here and there, and is, surely, part of surf culture given its origins and points of co-ordination. What could be more Australian?

But, if that is the case for avocado on toast, how do I like to make mine? Of course, I am capable of making it at home though I must admit I do not always bake my own bread. My father has some recipes of his father, who was a country baker, but these are for 100 loaves, 200 hot cross buns, 300 jam donuts. I never have that many guests and it would not fit in my oven to begin with. For the most part, I buy my bread. At Redgate, it is woodfired sourdough from Yallingup Woodfired Bread. They have two branches – one at the other end of the cape in Yallingup (you guessed it) and the other just up the way on Boodjidup Road, round the corner from our place. They bake during the day, which means the bread comes out warm around 3pm, or just when you have picked the kids up from school or are heading out for an afternoon surf.

I get my avocadoes at the farmer’s market, but there is an orchard across the road that sometimes sells them also. The avocado is key here too and you have to take advantage of when they are perfect, otherwise you pay too much and it is not worth it. Sometimes, I slice, sometimes I mash, sometimes I will just plonk a whole half down.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this was all there is to avocado on toast, but the variations are multiple – do I butter the bread, do I spread a layer of white miso or hummus or mayonnaise (Japanese preferably), do I squeeze a bit of lemon, do I top it with feta and basil, do I go all out and poach an egg. You can do it so many ways, but the bread and avocado are what matter, which means you need unsurpassed ingredients.

When I go to sit down at a café I never get avocado on toast. It seems like a wasted order to me when I can get something I cannot make at home. I stick to the same rules when it comes to spaghetti carbonara, though sometimes I am persuaded by fresh pasta and imported guanciale. For breakfast, brunch or lunch though, I will always reach for the farmer’s omelette, the ricotta hotcakes, the multigrain waffles with berries, maple syrup and mascarpone; never the avocado on toast even though I love it so.

The other reason for this, the reason over and above the fact that my own one at home does the job, is that I have found the best avocado on toast that there is, in the world, hands down, no questions asked. To know that it is the best in the world, I did what every good millennial would do, and spent my accumulated savings on avocado on toast. I did this rather than buy a house because I knew, deep in my heart that I would prefer to know what is the best in the world rather than have a roof over my head.  And now, luckily for you, that taste test is about to payoff. Drum roll, please.

The best avocado on toast is at Chu Bakery in Perth. You cannot sit there, you cannot tweak your order, you must take what you are given, but this is no soup Nazi kind of place. They are welcoming and warm, they smile a lot and their coffee is unrivalled from filter to flat white to soy matcha mocha turmeric cocoa almond skim latte (which they might actually make given how they are so accommodating). They are a twenty-first century bakery on the edge of a park and so you can get your food and sit on the grass. Everything is delicious and they are inventive, combining the best of the Swiss patisserie with a palate that is South East Asian – think kaya croissant; passionfruit and chilli donut; banana and coconut on bread. They are a higher synthesis of tradition, a hybrid that is the second, or third, generation of fusion cooking.

And so, as you might expect, they know how to make avocado on toast. You can choose your bread there, but I get the seeded loaf. They cut it thick before spreading a roughly mashed avocado on it then crumbling some feta and squeezing some lemon. So far, so good, maybe even what you are used to and have come to love. What happens next is where they make it the best – a drizzle of sriracha and a handful of toasted nuts and seeds. The texture, the flavour, the combination. The size is perfect at a single slice and priced at $8, no one can deny that it is a good deal that allows you to save for a little home of your own in the outer suburbs.

If you choose to make the Chu version at home, you will have to solve some problems for yourself if you have not had the original. I would recommend buying your bread unsliced so you can get the perfect thickness – about an inch is my guess. Be generous with the avocado – use almost a whole one with only a spoonful that your eat before to whet your appetites. I think the key is the feta, sriracha, seeds combination – I would be tempted to go with feta that is creamy not crumbly, smooth and less goaty; the sriracha I like is the rooster brand you might know from your trips to Vietnamese restaurants; the seeds here must be toasted with sesame and pumpkin featuring. You do not need to get ‘funky’ with this –no gomasio, no eggs, no pesto, no pumpkin, no vegemite because we want to be taken seriously when we leave this place. If you wanted to push it, you could try a little green tree ant instead of the lemon. In any case, in today’s Australia you can get the very best of it without having to jump on a plane.  And that is what I love about making breakfast this way. It is the perfect start to the day.