Australia: the cuisine, the history, the music, the workshop!

[Tabouli]

Mary Ann:
> Thanks, Megan, these look really good.  Now could I be an absolute 
pain in la derriere, and ask what that bit of history actually is?  A 
national food with a story behind it is just what I'm looking for.<

Ah, good one - didn't think of Anzac biscuits.  I have heard the story behind them, but too long ago to remember.  Though as resident acronym generator, I should be the one to tell you that it's actually ANZAC: Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.  The background story there is from WW1, when the ANZACs landed at Gallipoli and got annihilated.  In true Australian fashion, we now get a public holiday in memory of this event.  Yes, other countries celebrate glorious military victories, but not us, Australians are very suspicious of success (except in sport, of course, which is a real man's thing), so we celebrate a great military loss!

Here is where my career in cross-cultural training gets its own un-Australian moment of glory... about five years ago, I developed my three part workshop series, entitled no less than "The Naked Australian: Australian culture EXPOSED"!  OK, so perhaps a bit lacking in foresight on the nervous-international-students-already-terrified-by-the-sinful-sexualised-society front, but certainly attention grabbing.  I had this promotional poster with a cartoon of a wonderfully stereotypic Aussie bloke on it, wearing nothing but a cork-hung Akubra hat, a can of beer and a sign with an Australian flag on it (the idea was to draw attention to this later as a means of exploring commonly held stereotypes and as evidence of the irreverence of Australian society).  The second time I ran the series, I prudently put strips of paper declaring "No Nudity Involved" across my posters (in the hope that this would both reassure and intrigue).

Anyway, the point is, I did a *lot* of background research, and I've just discovered that I still have some files with the history of some of the dishes mentioned on my very computer!  Not for ANZAC biscuits, sadly, but for Vegemite, pavlova (including a reference to the fradulent New Zealand claims of ownership!) and lamingtons.  I even have the lyrics of the song sung on the original Vegemite ad ("We're happy little Vegemites, as bright as bright can be...")!

I'll briefly summarise them here (though if you want, Mary Ann, I can post the lot to you off-list):

Vegemite: This is a spread invented by Fred Walker in 1922 using yeast extract, celery, salt and onions to make a thick dark paste rich in vitamin B.  The name Vegemite was chosen in a trade name competition in 1923.  Vegemite was included in soldiers' and civilians' rations in WW2, and became so popular that there was a shortage for some time.

Lamingtons: The word lamington was originally slang for the homburg hat worn by Baron Lamington, the Governor of the state of Queensland in the 1890s and early 20th century.  The word was later used for a small square of sponge cake, sometimes filled with jam and/or cream, and covered with chocolate icing and dessicated coconut (now I'm sure there was more to this story, i.e. a connection between the good Baron and the cake, his chef accidentally dropping a cake in a saucepan full of melted chocolate or some such, but I don't have it in my files).

Pavlova: The Russian ballerina Pavlova visited Fremantle, Western Australian on the 29th of July 1929, and thrilled Australian audiences with her light, exquisite performance.  She stayed at the Esplanade Hotel, where six years later the licensee Mrs Elizabeth Paxton conspired with the head chef, Bert Sachse, to devise a new dessert.  The resulting meringue based cake was considered to be "light as Pavlova", and as the dancer herself had died in 1931, they named it after her.  Although there exist New Zealand recipes for a cake of the same name dating from 1929 with similar ingredients, this was quite different from the pavlova as we know it, being baked into three dozen little meringues rather than one large cake.

(So there!)

Mary Ann:
> Well, I have "Waltzing Matilda" on a kiddie tape somewhere, but sadly 
never got around to buying the Men at Work record in my teenage days. <

Ah.  If I may play Australian culture workshop presenter here, the Men at Work song you're thinking of isn't Bound for Botany Bay (a traditional ballad from the perspective of the convicts being shipped from England to Sydney) but Down Under, a pop song released in 1983 or so which was adopted as the theme of the America's Cup which we won at the time (hee hee!).

Megan:
> As an American I can say, "EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!  THIS STUFF IS SO
GROSS!"  It really is.  I don't see how anyone can stomach the stuff (Vegemite).
>
>But Nutella is to die for. :-D *which reminds her she has some in the
cabinet to eat for snacking*<

(Tabouli sighs sadly at the unsophisticated American palate).  Now this juxtaposition of Vegemite and Nutella support a long-held theory of mine, which is that the apparent American horror at Vegemite comes of misconstruing how it is meant to be eaten.  Vegemite is not supposed to be eaten like Nutella!  Unless you're a true diehard fan weaned on the stuff or a serious salt addict, you don't eat it in spoonfuls out of the jar, or spread it half an inch thick on bread the way you can use a sweet spread.  It's not really a spread, it's a flavouring, to be used *sparingly*, as it is extremely salty.  I eat Vegemite on Salada biscuits (large, square dry crackers divided into quarters).  First of all, you spread the biscuit with a generous layer of butter (not margarine if you can avoid it - it wrecks the flavour), and then you dab a little blob of Vegemite on each quarter and blend it into the butter with the knife.  I repeat, much more butter than Vegemite!  If people are tasting it in spoonfuls from the jar like Nutella, no *wonder* they think it tastes awful!

Tabouli (scrunching happily at a Salada with butter and Vegemite)


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