Food & Drink


Pork Martini


The guys over at Patently Silly have uncovered the work of heretofore unknown beverage genius Kineo Okado. Mr Okado has filed a US patent for ‘Alcoholic beverages derived from animal extract, and methods for the production thereof‘.

Yes, that’s right sports fans, we’re talking meat alcohol. Alcoholic beverages made from meat. And when we’re talking meat, we’re talking chicken and fish as well. The sky is the limit for Mr Okada who is proposing that his concept would be applicable to any animal protein.

(I can just see him enthusiastically explaining the idea to his lab assistant: “Just think Yamada-san – alcohol made from ostriches! Alcohol made from prawns! Alcohol made from water buffalo! Mwahahaha! This will turn the tables on those barbarian gaijin who shunned my Sea Cucumber Custard!)

Examining the patent (it’s a pretty good read, but make sure you’ve some Stemetil handy) we find Okada-san buttressing his pitch with precedents:

Various techniques are well known in the art for the preparation of yeast-fermented beverages such as wine, beer, ale, sake, and the like, which may be applied to the yeast fermentation phases of the production process according to the present invention.

… in Europe and America, various processed meat products, for example fermented sausage, are consumed.

Mmmm. Next time you order the Meat Lover’s Special Pizza, you might consider an accompanying glass of Pepperoni Pinot, Bacon Beaujolais or Cabanossi Cabernet for the Complete Meat Experience.

Of the fermentation process he informs us that:

The resulting product has a distinctive flavor.

Oh, yes, I’m sure he’s right on that aspect.

Skimming through further, one may find some truly nauseating suggestions accompanying the basic concept. Consider:

Carbonated water and flavoring materials such as fruit juice and honey may be added to the resulting fermented beverage according to an aspect of the invention.

Mmmm. Honey flavoured beef schnapps! Lamb & orange vodka! And not just sweet alcoholic meat beverages, but carbonated sweet alcoholic meat beverages as well! Forget Coq au vin: bring on the Coq au Cola!

The alcoholic beverage may also be used in subsequent processes to produce composite beverages (e.g., cocktails)

Here Mr Okado opens up the entire field of mixed drinks and cocktails. What a bonanza. You want to be really careful from now on when you order a Moscow Mule, a Salty Dog or a Fluffy Duck.

The comprehensive patent is wonderfully detailed, colourful and, I’m sure, technically precise, and yet, after all is said and done there still remains one weighty and impatient question on the matter of the Alcoholic Meat Beverage:

Why?

Easter Eggs

Provedore Pelagio in inner-city Sydney is re-writing the rules of solid geometry this Easter to provide new dimensions in chocolate fulfilment…

*Thanks Sarah!



What with all the dismay from foreigners that the Outback Steakhouse is nothing but a farcical caricature of proper Australian food, there are those who have been putting the pressure on The Cow to set things straight. So for your edification, a menu from a typical Aussie childhood, featuring the kinds of food that I grew up with. I need to point out here that there is dispute over some of the following items having an exclusive Australian pedigree (the jury is forever hung on the matter of the pavlova), but this is more a tour through nostalgic food than a comprehensive detailing. I am open to additions and illuminations from my Australian readers – I’m sure everyone has their favourite. I didn’t even get to mentioning iced vo-vos, cobbers, White Christmas, Milo, Anzac biscuits and countless other goodies.

For Starters (or entrees as we call them here):

The Prawn Cocktail ~ cooked small prawns (or shrimp) on shredded iceberg lettuce, drizzled with a tomato sauce & mayonnaise dressing, served chilled.

The Vegemite Sandwich ~ two generously buttered slices of fresh white bread with a thin layer of Vegemite. Best enjoyed with milky sweet hot tea.*

A Serving of Fresh Damper ~ a kind of soda bread, not unlike a scone in texture, wrapped tightly in foil and cooked in the hot coals of a campfire.† Served with a slice of cold lamb and some mustard pickles.

For the Main Course:

Roast Lamb Dinner ~ Lamb roasted with rosemary and pepper, served piping hot with baked potatoes, pumpkin and parsnip, and a generous portion of peas and broccoli. Rich meaty gravy on the side, for pouring copiously across the potatoes.

Meat Pie & Mushy Peas ~ A hot steak & luscious gravy pie served with a topping of mashed cooked peas. Optionally served in a bowl of gravy as a ‘floater’, or in pea soup as a ‘Pea Soup Floater’.★

Carpetbag Steak ~ A thickly cut Scotch fillet sliced open and stuffed with oysters and Worcestershire sauce. Served with mashed potatoes and peas.

Rissoles ~ Patties of meat, herbs and breadcrumbs, shallow fried and served with mashed potatoes and peas. A bottle of Fountain Tomato Sauce presented at table.‡

And for the Vegetarians:

Don’t be ridiculous.††

For Dessert:

Pavlova ~ A sweet crunchy-yet-gooey meringue case filled with cream and seasonal fruits. Strawberries are de rigeur if available. Named in honour of Anna Matveyevna Pavlova, after she toured Australia and New Zealand in 1929.♥♥

A Plate of Lamingtons ~ Small cakes made from sponge and coated with a layer of chocolate and dessicated coconut.

Pikelets ~ Small pancake-like flat cakes, served with jam and honey.

Drinks:

Passiona ~ a passionfruit flavoured soda. The taste of summer.

Tea ~ Brewed in a pot (teabags are a heinous crime perpetrated on humanity). Served black, or with milk, sugar optional. No-one drinks it iced; that’s for sissies.

Lime Spider ~ Lime soda with a big scoop of icecream.

Bodgie Blood ~ Cola with a big scoop of icecream and then a generous splash of raspberry syrup.**

The wine list would of course be comprehensive; if there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s making wine.

As I say, this is a menu typical of my childhood but I dare say you would still find any or all of these things served as part of the every day fare in country Australia. These days, though, especially in the major cities, Australian food can be as sophisticated as any cuisine in the world. Our restaurants do, in fact feature some of the world’s most accomplished chefs such as Tim Pak Poy, Damien Pignolet and Tetsuya Wakada, to name only a few. When I was a kid, we never ate pasta or coriander or even garlic. My dad used to think pizza was an exotic dish. Nevertheless, we have always had an abundance of very fine ingredients, and the extraordinary mix of cultures that we have accumulated makes for some of the most spectacular dining you are ever likely to experience.

*Vegemite is, it is said, an acquired taste. I am of course unable to vouch for that because I must have acquired it as a child. If you’ve never had it, it is a salty, yeasty black-as-tar spread that is traditionally eaten on bread, or even better, hot buttered toast. For me, it is always consumed in conjunction with sweet tea, a combination that has about as much nostalgic effect as Proust’s Madeleine.

†When we were kids we used to do a variation on this: the damper dough was rolled out into a long strand about half an inch in diameter and wound in a spiral along a green eucalyptus stick. This was then held in the campfire until cooked. It was peeled off the stick, warm and crusty and doughy, and dipped into Golden Syrup. If you’ve never experienced this, I wish for your sake I could give you some idea of the delicious evil treat it is.

★Famously available at Harry’s Cafe de Wheels, a Sydney institution.

‡The secret of the perfect rissole was famously portrayed in the quintessential Australian film, Sunday Too Far Away. I don’t want to tell you too much about this – suffice to say that if you search for “Sunday Too Far Away” and “rissole” on Google, you get one and only one hit. Read it at your peril. It is the ultimate illustration of Australian humour.

††There was no such thing as a Vegetarian when I was a kid. Really.

♥♥As I mentioned, the creation of the pavlova is the subject of heated disagreement. It’s unlikely ever to be definitively settled.

**This concoction was served at The Blue and White Cafe in Goulburn, the small country town where I grew up. Only very few Australians remember the Bodgie Blood, even though it was widespread enough for it to be more than merely a local invention, but there are enough of us that we can vouch reliably for its authenticity.

My friends Pil and William were married on the weekend at a lovely gathering of friends and family. Pil is a big tennis fiend (notwithstanding the fact that she seems to break a bone every time she plays), and William is, well, a tiny bit of a Doctor Who fan.

I thought you guys might like to see their cake…

(Oh, yes, the ring-in is their dog, Daisy, who likes to act in a supervisory capacity in all things).



In the comments on The Cow’s last post jedimacfan was moved to ask:

“I suppose the next thing you’re going to tell me is that Outback Steakhouse isn’t really Australian food?”

This reminded me of the one and only time I have ever been to an Outback Steakhouse, near Wilmington NC, and what a jolly old time three of us Australians had therein. And yes, jedimacfan, I’m going to tell you that this isn’t really Australian food. Not even close.

One of the things I remember is that our waiter, dressed in ludicrous faux ‘drover’s attire’ (or something), on hearing one of my friends’ very mild swearing, asked “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” We knew right away that these people had very little experience of Australia.

And then we saw the menu. Oh how we laughed! Let us examine it:

♦Bloomin’ Onion – An Outback Ab-original from Russell’s Marina Bay

The ‘Bloomin’ Onion’ is not an Australian invention. It is certainly not an ‘Ab-original’ invention and I sincerely hope that there is nothing more than a bad pun involved in this description. This is about as close to the wind as you could sail with a gag like this without being racist and/or condescending. As far as ‘Russell’s Marina Bay’ is concerned, well, there is no such place. They just made it up! Look it up on Google – all the hits you get are… yep, the Outback Steakhouse. Also, these are frikkin’ big onions. Where do you even get an onion that size outside the perimeter of a nuclear power plant?

♦Aussie Cheese Fries – Aussie chips topped with Monterey Jack and Colby cheeses and bacon served with spicy ranch dressing

It’s hard to imagine a foodstuff you are less likely to find in Australia. Sushi, yes, Goat curry, sure. kimchi, falafel, Chinese-style pig’s trotters, Thai octopus salad, gado-gado, sucuklu, burek – any of these I could go pick up for dinner right now. Foraging further afield I could get barbecued crocodile, kangaroo steaks, scrambled emu eggs and even roast camel. But sorry folks, no-one serves cheese on top of chips here. It is, I think I am right in saying, pretty much an American idea that you should take perfectly edible food and then completely drown it in melted cheese.

♦”Gold Coast” Coconut Shrimp – Six colossal shrimp dipped in beer batter, rolled in coconut, deep fried to a golden brown and served with marmalade sauce .

As bizarre as this sounds, I have to admit that, yeah, in Queensland that’s entirely possible. The Gold Coast is the Australian twin city to South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach. I’m sure jedimacfan will understand the comparison.

♦Walkabout Soup – A unique presentation of an Australian favourite. Reckon!

What? What do they mean by this? Aborigines don’t carry soup on walkabout. It would be utterly idiotic. Indigenous Australians would have NO idea what this was. Furthermore, you could stop anyone on the street here, anyone, and ask them what ‘Walkabout Soup’ was and I will guarantee that not one person other than someone who has been to an Outback Steakhouse would be able to tell you. Reckon.

♦Drover’s Platter – Generous portion of ribs and chicken breast on the Barbie with Aussie chips and cinnamon apples.

Ah, the old traditional Australian cinnamon apples. Yes, they feature a lot in the OS menu. But guess what! WE DON’T EAT CINNAMON APPLES HERE. (Except maybe, like, once every ten years at Christmas time. Maybe). Cinnamon is the dessert equivalent of melted cheese; take any perfectly edible dessert and add cinnamon to it. Genius. I’m surprised no-one in America has yet invented the perfect all-in-one meal: cinnamon coated melted cheese! (In fact I am totally afraid that someone has and I just haven’t heard of it yet).

Botany Bay Fish O’ The Day – Fresh catch, lightly seasoned and grilled, with fresh veggies

You don’t eat anything that comes out of Botany Bay. Or Sydney Harbour for that matter. Seriously. Recently there was a government-issued warning about doing so.

I could go on. Suffice to say that the entire menu is risible in one way or another. There is no ‘Rock Hampton’ although there is a Rockhampton; we have never called mushrooms ‘shrooms’; no-one says ‘Hooley Dooley’ anymore (the last user of this phrase died twenty years back, and he was a hundred and fifty eight); ‘bonzer’ is generally spelled ‘bonza’; and there is not, among the choices of burgers on the OS menu, anything remotely resembling a traditional Australian-style hamburger (and yes, we do have beetroot on hamburgers).

About the only thing that is acceptably Australian on the Outback Steakhouse menu is the wine list. So, if you should find yourself in one of these places, my advice to you is therefore to get completely plastered as quickly as you can on one of our great Australian wines. Hopefully you will wake up the next morning with no hangover and no memory at all of where you’ve been. Then you can come visit us down here sometime and find out what our food is really like.

My shout.

If you run a cafe and a customer asks the question “Is your orange juice freshly squeezed?” there is only one acceptable answer: “Yes, of course!”

If you need to answer “No” then you shouldn’t be offering orange juice on the menu. The chalky bitter-and-yet-too-sweet orange coloured stuff that comes supplied in plastic bottles is about as close to orange juice as Kool Aid is to, well, any naturally occurring substance.

Other unacceptable answers to the above question:

♦”Yes, it’s that brand that gets squeezed daily. We get it delivered every couple of days…*”

♦”No, but it’s organic”

♦”I’m not sure†”

♦”No, it’s Tang”

♦”No, but it’s a really nice brand‡”

Lately, a cafe in my area has taken to providing a certain brand of organic orange juice in an ugly plastic bottle. If you are foolish enough to order it, the bottle is delivered to the table with a straw, no glass. This is all about showing off your preference for drinking expensive organic juice and nothing about enjoyment. It tastes like shit.

Hear me, restaurants of the world: the only acceptable option for providing orange juice to a customer is to get a few big fresh oranges (organic if you desire, certainly), squeeze the juice out of them and deliver it immediately to the table. Don’t put ice in it.

The Cow has spoken.

*No kidding – a waiter said that to me once.
†You may as well say “No”. Any restaurant waiter worth their wage could hardly not notice orange squeezing apparatus. It’s not like it’s a Stealth process or anything.
‡ No it isn’t. Orange juice in bottles does not taste at all like real orange juice. Ever.

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