Butchering realism

I think Jamie Oliver should be knighted. Sure, he's long since lost the affability of The Naked Chef days, and his insistence on calling every woman he meets darlin', regardless of age or race, is annoying to say the least. But he gets food. And he gets that Britain has a wonderful food culture, both indigenous and imported, and has devoted his career to convincing people of that fact. I believe that's worth acknowledging.

For all that, I don't spend a lot of time watching him on the tele. I couldn't resist tuning in for Jamie's Great Britain last night, however, when I read this description of the episode in The Age:

This week's instalment...includes an unusually graphic and lengthy butchering scene...Jamie carts off a dead pig and hacks it to pieces with a saw. Only the most hardened carnivores will be able to sit through the bone-slicing scene.

Here's a link to a portion of the episode containing the scene:

The scene starts with an inspection of the breed of pigs in question, at about the 2 min mark, and the 'graphic and lengthy' scene is over about a minute later, most of which has been taken up with chatter.

It seems a particularly overwrought description for something you could see if you looked past the counter of my local butchers on any Saturday.

The journalist did go on to point out:

There are some who would say that it's about time we saw such realism in our cooking shows, that if we're going to eat meat, we should face up to where it comes from. Those viewers are probably right. But I challenge you to daydream about Oliver's crackling after you've watched a pig get sawn in half.

I agree with the notion of the first clause, and wholeheartedly with the second clause. I don't see how you can call for realism though and then be shocked by this scene. To do so seems the mindset of someone who thinks meat is manufactured, rather than grown, into steak-sized portions, shrink-wrapped and sold.

I do eat meat, and I do think about where the food came from and what the animal went through, and I can tell you it went through much more gruesome stuff than what this clip shows. In it we see Jamie meeting the pigs, talking to the farmer, bringing out a dead pig and then about 10-15sec of cutting it up, while he chats to the butchers. There's no blood, there's no noise, there's no skinning.

I absolutely agree we have to know more about where out meat comes from, but it seems to be disingenuous to be squeamish about this. We should be far more shocked by footage of a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) than by the posthumous fate of these hand-reared animals.

I acknowledge that for those against the consumption of animal products it would be upsetting regardless, but if a scene like this upsets any carnivores, I suggest they give up on crackling altogether.

'The True Story of Butterfish' - Nick Earls

Nick Earls writes what he knows. He's obviously learnt a few new things in recent years. The True Story of Butterfish introduces a new protagonist: rather than a member of the medical fraternity, Curtis Holland is a former rockstar. He's producing albums now and divides his time - and technical descriptions - between music software and cooking.

All familiarity is not lost, however. He lives in Brisbane. He has a persistent internal monologue. He's nervous around women, finds himself in unexpected and awkward situations, but has pop-culture funny lines at the ready.

I enjoy Nick Earls' novels. He writes genuinely amusing scenes, and underpins them every now and then with worthwhile bigger-picture musings. He's whimsical, sure, but there's a philosophy to his writing as well. And plenty of authors use their hometown as a touchstone or motif, so why can't Brisbane play that role?

And you really have to hand it to Earls for the aspirational quality of his work. In an earlier novel, his protagonist - in his thirties - admits that he'd only very recently given up serious hopes of playing cricket for Australia. His male characters (eventually) always ending up liking the girls who like them back, and who can give as good as they get when it comes to those pop-culture-laden one-liners. The protagonist in Butterfish played keyboards in a hugely successful rockband, and while the lead-singer has stayed true to the party-hard stereotype, Curtis remains the deep thinker, enigmatic, moody, lonely. All that fame has led him back to the Brisbane suburbs, and the happy fortune of moving in next door to a woman he comes to fancy (the aspiration works for her too - a highly recognisable rockstar moves in next door and they hit it off).

Some of the early scenes focus step-by-step on the process of making music, namedropping software and techniques. Then Curtis starts to cook, and it happens all over again in the kitchen. But once he really gets to know the family next door - and develops surprising relationships with mother, daughter and son - and the lead-singer returns to face family issues, the book gets stronger. Earls isn't scared to give us an overweight, almost-forty protagonist who is hard on himself and full of regret. True to form, however, his character finds redemption in new beginnings, new relationships and new choices.

Butterfish is more thematic than many of Earls' earlier novels. Its resolution doesn't come from neatly tied-up plot points, but rather from Curtis accepting his past, his choices, and how his actions affected others' choices.

Bimbo poster

I bloody love this poster, used at Bimbo Deluxe for their special needs pizza:

Sewing and reaping

Mr Fothergills - an Australian seed retailer - has an 'ad' in this month's Gardening Australia magazine. I put ad in inverted commas as it's quite clearly designed to look like an article, with no branding on the page but plenty of text.

The text focuses on two things: that Australians, on average, don't eat enough vegetables; and that part of the reason for that is their high cost. The ad claims '5 daily serves of vegetables for a family of four can average well over $1,000 a year'. The alternative, of course, is to grow one's own, and to that end the ad contains a table listing half a dozen of Mr Fotherfill's seeds, their estimated yield and the cost per kilo of yield, versus the average supermarket price of the same product.

I'm a strong believer in urban sustainability, growing your own, locavorism etc. But I'm surprised to see a company that ostensibly shares the same values presenting such a biased version of cost. First of all, I don't think $1,000 a year, for four people, is too much to pay for vegetables. Secondly, why do vegetables have to be 'cheap'? I think this is a great misnomer of our time, the cost of fresh produce. People are rejoicing that bananas are back down to $2 a kilo. Remember when they were more than $15? It was terrible!

Well, it was frustrating that a couple of bananas cost several dollars, but a cyclone had wiped out an enormous portion of supply. Lower supply + same demand = high prices. It's really simple market economics. And, frankly, I think $2 a kilo is an absurdly low price for a weighty product that doesn't grow within a thousand or more kilometres of Melbourne.

As Alla Wolf-Tasker - chef extraordinaire at the Lake House - says, 'There is no such thing as cheap food'.

A part of the marketing strategy for many supermarkets is advertising products that cost less than they did a year ago. I've always found that a bit strange, and the message I get from it is that we can't take their word on what a product 'costs'. Fresh produce should not sit at a fixed price. We should not expect to always be able to get apples for $6 a kilo or tomatoes for $4. We recognise that with the products that are still acknowledged as seasonal - mangoes, grapes, berries etc. But it goes for all of them.

Mr Fothergills does have a point though. Even though they ignore the cost of potting mix, plant food etc in their pricing of produce grown from their seed, at least a vegetable grown in your backyard demonstrates a truism more certain than market economics - you get out what you put in.

Vitamin WTF

VitaminWater are going all out with a new set of billboards advertising VitaminWaterZero, an improvement on VitaminWater10 because it's low calorie. That's a relief, cos all those calories in water have been bothering me...

Let's wind back a step here. They are advertising low-calorie water. Water. The stuff that comes out of the tap, made up of hydrogen and oxygen, rather than a bunch of carbohydrates that want to make friends with your hips.

I've been pretty flabbergasted over the last few years as these super-waters started, ahem, flooding the market. Bottled water is bad enough, with each 600ml bottle requiring about twice that much water to manufacture and distribute. Even advertisers tip their cap to the industry that has made so much money out of the ultimate free commodity.

But any product, no matter how successful, needs innovation to keep up the buying trend, so the gurus at Coca-Cola (Glaceau, who puts out VitaminWater, is a subsidiary of the soft drink giant) put their heads down and came up with stuff to put in the water to make it better for us. Advertising for VitaminWater is admirable - it's Gen Y styley with plenty of social media presence, and products spruiked to help in situations from hangovers ('get perky when you're feeling murky') to workouts ('more muscles than Brussels'). There's even VitaminWater 'uncapped' which sets out, armed with 600ml bottles of pick-me-up, to uncover the latest in music, sports and fashion.

The original VitaminWater10 range, with products names such as Focus, Revive and Spark, is pitched as a 'nutrient enhanced water beverage'. The liquid of life is improved with an alphabet of vitamins and flavours described as both fruit and 'other natural'.

They push the healthy line pretty hard: in the products area of the VitaminWater site, the interactive feature allows users to 'rollover to view nutrition info', which merely enlarges the front label of the bottle - already clearly visible - to zoom on the list of vitamins and additives such as taurine and chromium. It's a simple nutrition panel - it must be good for you!

So where, in amongst the -ins, -ines and -iums are the -oses? Where does sugar come into this? It seems pretty extraordinary that enough sweetener had been added all along to make it worth their while to bring out a whole new range that in effect spruiks the unhealthiness of the original product.

And it shits me that the conglomerates have carte blanche to take over the 'healthy' soapbox with 'enhanced water' (come on, it's a ridiculous phrase) when in fact that enhancement is in no small part sugar, the ingredient against which genuine health experts are fighting an uphill battle.

Hotbeautyhealth.com can't get enough of it. 'No more worries about high calories in our favorite beverages because Glaceau has come to the rescue creating Vitamin Water 10!' They spruik its benefits of only 10 calories per serving (although there are 2.5 servings in a standard bottle) and mentions three times how tasty it is, and as many times how 'natural' it is. 'Sounds unreal!'

My oath it does.

Fructose free III - at what cost?

I give great credit to Sacs in Westgarth. Formerly the wonderfully named Silly Yaks, this cafe and foodstore serves a full range of food suitable not only for a coeliac diet, but also for those avoiding fructose.

A range of breads, pasta and ready meals are available from the freezer, and the cafe offers pies, pizzas and sweets, all marked out as FF or GF. They even offer tarts with forbidden fructose-laden fruits, wherein the fruit has been cooked with dextrose, which binds with the fructose to carry it across the stomach wall, hence avoiding the deleterious effects of fructose malabsorption.

But...and this is a big but...their takeaway products are horrendously expensive. I ducked in this morning to look for some gluten-free breadrolls (pack of 4) so I could partake of burgers at home, as well as pastry to wrap around the mince we bought in readiness for sausage rolls. What would you expect to pay for two such pantry staples?

$30.

That's what the guy at the counter asked for. $10 for the rolls, $20 for the pastry. Most of their products aren't marked with a price, perhaps to avoid screams of the nature I swallowed as I calmly handed over enough food to feed myself for a week, in return for two pantry items. As I left the store, I imagined other uses for that $30. I could:

• See two films at Nova as a RRR subscriber, and get a choc top
• Buy one and half six packs of beer
• Buy two bottles of very reasonable wine, or three bottles of Gran Sasso from that place on Lygon St
• Travel to Yea and back, and back again, on the bus
• When Tiger's in a good mood, fly to Tasmania
  
• Buy three pairs of shoes from Green Collective
• Revamp my summer wardrobe at Savers
• Revamp my entire wardrobe at Salvos
• Pick up a desk and drawers at Don Boscos
• Eat at Don Dons five times
• Get two courses and a glass of wine at innumerable Melbourne restaurants

Instead, for that money, I have two meal components, not even two complete meals.

Now, grumbling aside (and I confess that as I left the shop I was pretty grumpy), let's consider what this actually means. The food we stock our pantries with, despite protests to the contrary, is, in the main part, quite cheap. A large proportion of the population can't satisfactorily process a lot of wheat, yet white flour is a staple of our diet. It's cheap and easy to grow, harvest and mill, and it has just the right amount of stickiness - or gluten - that we've come to expect in everything from bread to muffins to pastry. And, thanks to monoculture farming, it keeps the costs of those types of products low.

So it's pretty scary when you step outside the protected world of mainstream groceries. Firstly, to discover how many alternatives there are - rice, tapioca, soy, barley, oat, buckwheat and maize flour to name some - and what the cost of production and distribution is when you don't have the back-up of a large corporation.

You can't just replace wheat flour one for one with another choice - to get a reasonable consistency you need a mix, so there is more involved in product development. And, not everyone likes it, so the market is smaller. However, not everyone likes stomach cramps and headaches after a sandwich either, so people like me who are trying to lessen health problems are faced with elevated costs for alternative items, in part because mainstream costs are kept so low.

Think about bananas. When they're $17 a kilo people get angry. But that's what they cost when supply is low. When they're $4 a kilo, noone's thinking about the fact that they're still travelling thousands of kilometres to fill the market in cooler climates. The cost of food isn't a static one, yet supermarkets push prices down on lead items as if they can control the weather. If stores stocked a range of bread products, the white flour options might cost a little more, but the alternatives would almost certainly cost a lot less.

I'm still thinking of other options for that $30, and while the cost will make the sausage sandwich I've got planned for lunch a little tougher to swallow, I can take some comfort from contributing to the possiblity of alternatives one day actually breaking into the mainstream. And the lack of physical symptoms afterwards will feel pretty good too.

Where's your kitchen?

An intriguing part of the cafe boom around Brunswick is the forebearance of installing a kitchen. It's a pretty vital part of the food-service industry, but many venues go instead for a food-preparation area of grill and sink behind the counter, with as much bench space given to the coffee machine and its accessories.

The breadth of cafe options in the area owes thanks to that decision - it is, of course, about cutting start-up costs, making it possible to make rent and offer high-quality coffee with a small range of breakfasts and lunches, often under or around $10.

But, when the crowds arrive - as they inevitably do in Brunswick - the limitations of the set-up become more obvious, with 45-minute waits for breakfast orders, since only one or two items can be prepared at once.

It's a relief to visit somewhere like Mixed Business in Clifton Hill to see a cafe with closer to a 50-50 split between customer and kitchen space. A kitchen laden with colanders, steaming pots, aproned and hatted cooks is discreetly visible at the back of a single, large, light room. Filled with mish-mashed wooden furniture, it's an echoey space, but customers are given enough room that conversation is still an easy proposition.

Similarly, a recent lunch at Pope Joan was over refreshingly quickly, since their enormous food-prep area - with a separate room at the back and a finishing station at the front, often staffed by owner Matt Wilkinson - gives them capacity to cope with the endlessly eager crowd of customers.

Congrats to said Mr Wilkinson also, for recently being crowned Australia's best sandwich maker. I can attest that the ones on offer at Pope Joan are fantastic!

Cheap as chips

Down at Bridie O'Reillys, Friday nights are a bargain...for them. How does only getting a fifth of your meal sound? (Maybe one of the loads of 'give aways' is the chance to win the other 80%...)

Click on the pic to see in larger detail.