to meat, Australians take quality and quantity for granted. The Sunday roast leg of lamb would be an Australian food cliche it not so gorgeously juicy and intensely flavored, thanks to the lush well-watered pastures of southeast and southwestern Australia. Kangaroo meat has rapidly moved from pet food to an exotic delicacy to almost a staple. Close to a slightly gamey beef in taste, nutritionists like it for its low fat content. Emu meat seems to be catching on the way kangaroo did; farmed venison is frequently found on menus and camel steaks have begun to make an appearance.
South Australia's Barossa Valley, settled initially by Germans, produces more than half of Australia's wine.
President Charles de Gaulle once said of his people: "The French will only be united under the threat of danger. Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 365 kinds of cheese." It won't be long before an Australian Prime Minister can make a similar remark.
Thanks to its sunshine and rainfall, Australia is perfect for dairying. Since the 1970s, when the missing element—the input of dedicated expert cheese-makers—was applied, the country began producing cheeses of international quality. Today, Australian gourmets avidly seek out the local products and cheese's share of the annual 500,000 tons of dairy exports is worth $1 billion in Australian currency.
Southern Australia has led the charge in producing superb cheese, particularly the offshore islands of Tasmania, King Island in Bass Strait and Kangaroo Island off South Australia. On the mainland, the main cheese states are New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Although generic names such as cheddar, brie and camembert are rife, there is an increasing trend to coin names which reflect their origin, like the splendidly Australian True Blue, or embrace the place of origin, such as Mersey Valley and Milawa Blue.
Whatever your cheese preference, it is made in Australia. And yes, there is at least one cheese flavored with gum leaves. Nor are Australia's cheeses confined to those from cow's and sheep's milk; there is a thriving goat's cheese industry making a range of products, including those hand-crafted by Kervella in Western Australia.
The lush pastures of southern Australia produce an excellent array of cheese.
From sugar to salt, if it crosses the taste buds, it will be made in Australia. I have spent some time trying to think of something essential to a first-class chefs output that Australia does not produce. The only product which came to mind is the truffle and, as you read this, some earnest prospector is doubtless hunting through loamy Australian undergrowth in the hope of striking it fungus rich.
A History of Australian Cuisine
From food gathering to an appreciation of fine food
by Michael Symons
“Is this all men can do with a new country? Look at those tin cans!" In his documentary novel, Kangaroo, D.H. Lawrence repeatedly describes Australia as rusty tin cans scattered over bare ground. In 1923, he found "towns—and corrugated iron—and millions of little fences—and empty tins."
When Europeans invaded the continent just over two centuries ago, Australia went from the highly integrated food gathering practiced by the Aborigines to settled agriculture and grazing. This led to the sale of food in sacks and barrels, then bottles and cans, and finally to frozen and takeaway packs. Until recently, Australian food was the rapidly evolving cuisine of agribusiness, not a cuisine built on the love of fine food.
With the emergence of the grazing industry in the 19th century, bush workers were paid in rations called "Ten, Ten, Two & A Quarter" after the typical weekly issue of 10 pounds meat, 10 pounds flour, 2 pounds sugar and ¼ pound tea. In addition, the rations included salt and liquor. The meat, which had been salted pork or beef, became mutton slaughtered on the sheep station. Together, the rations provided a minimal diet which typically consisted of slabs of meat grilled on an open fire, heavy bread or "damper" baked in the ashes, overly sweetened tea boiled in a tin pot called a "billy," and drinks that were guzzled not for taste but for intoxication.
The early settlers and drovers were often obliged to camp out and to live off the land in terms of game, which included kangaroo.
The reformer Caroline Chisholm tried to civilize the place by conducting a public campaign to attract married couples and, especially, single women as immigrants. She distributed a booklet in London in 1847 entitled Comfort for the Poor! Meat Three Times a Day!! Promising meat at every meal was a compelling advertising slogan.
Remarking on the central culinary paradox of the country, a young French journalist, Edmond Marin La Meslée, wrote in 1883: "No other country on earth offers more of everything needed to make a good meal, or offers it more cheaply, than Australia: but there is no other country either where the cuisine is more elementary, not to say abominable."
Towards the end of the 19th century the middle classes often celebrated an Australian midsummer Christmas in the cool mountain forests.
Rough bush eating habits were civilized through improvements in the food industry. Prior to that, investments had been largely directed at primary production, and this generally meant wool. This made Australia little more than a basic "garden," and entrepreneurs had to turn their hands to the next step in the production chain-food processing and preparation. In the second half of the 19th century, the excitement shifted to food preservation and distribution. An Australian, James Harrison, has been credited with inventing mechanical refrigeration in 1851, and its first use was in long-distance shipping. Massive investment in railways opened up the hinterland to the growing of wheat, milk, sugar, fruit and vegetables.
From about the 1870s, factories turned out, among other products for both home and abroad, Rosella tomato sauce, Arnott's biscuits, IXL jams and MacRobertson's chocolates. Roller-mills produced the white flour that became so symbolic of mass-produced food. While much or the country had been too hot for traditional brewing, in 1888 the Fosters brothers brought from the United States the technology for bottled lager beer, which relied on refrigeration, pasteurization, bottom fermentation and bottling.
With this second great revolution (the industrialization of food storage and distribution), Australian cooks advanced beyond the carcasses of meat, sacks of flour and chests of tea. They were encouraged to purchase packaged foods. In short, Australian households relied on those tin cans that caught the eye of D.H. Lawrence.
But from the 1890s, suburban housewives purchased local recipe books, even if they remained essentially rearrangements of Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families of England, written a half-century earlier. Each city adopted its culinary "bible," produced by the local gas company or a fund-raising group.
Schoolboys eating a typical lunch: a homemade Vegemite sandwich, a factory-made meat pie and a Chiko roll, a peculiarly local interpretation of the Chinese spring roll. Vegemite, a pungent spread made from yeast extract, is virtually an Australian icon.
Australian women excelled at plain and decent cookery, such as baked or roasted meats and vegetables. They also prided themselves on their puddings and cakes, relying on the iron kitchen range and the store cupboard's flour, sugar, cocoa, gelatin, dried coconut, and flavoring and coloring essences. Cooks swapped interesting recipes
