By Christine Salins.
It’s no easy feat to attempt to answer the question, “What is Australian cuisine?” But Ross Dobson has a pretty good crack at it with Australia: The Cookbook, published by Phaidon, RRP $65.
This bumper 430-page, hardcover book is ambitious in its scope, spanning three periods of Australian cuisine from the pre-colonial era through the period of English and Irish settlement to the numerous waves of immigration that followed.
A professional chef and cafe proprietor with a string of cookbooks to his credit, Dobson is also an amateur historian. The thoroughness of his research makes for interesting and insightful reading. One of the initial chapters includes an essay on indigenous food by Jody H. Orcher, an Ularai Barkandji woman and director of Wariku Bushfood Infusions.
The book is one of the few of its type that looks not only at aboriginal cookery alongside ubiquitous Aussie recipes such as lamingtons, but also canvases how imports such as lasagne and salt and pepper squid have been adopted and adapted to become very much our own.
The 19th century gold rush changed Australian cuisine forever, writes Dobson. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who came to work in the goldfields, many were Chinese who set up food businesses.
It was the start of a hybrid Australian-Chinese cuisine, with Chinese recipes changed to suit Australian palates. Dishes such as Mongolian lamb are peculiarly Australian, while salt and pepper squid has jumped from Asian fusion to simple pub fare in the space of a few years. “You would be hard pressed to find a pub restaurant now that didn’t have salt-and-pepper squid or chilli salt squid on the menu,” he writes.
Trawling through newspaper cuttings, Dobson traced fads for particular dishes and came up with the 350 recipes included in the book. In the 1920s and 30s, he said, Australians were mad about sharing recipes. “If a recipe for a cake in Geelong, Southern Victoria, proved popular it would get picked up elsewhere; it would be the equivalent of going viral today.”
Dobson considers how Greek immigrants brought soda fountains and milk bars to Australia, and details the “delicious sense” that Australian cooks found in adding local ingredients such as passionfruit to panna cotta, crab meat to quiches, and so on.
Australia: The Cookbook is a delicious romp through our melting-pot cuisine, and deserves to be on the bookshelf of anyone who wants to know the answer to “What is Australian cuisine?”
Salt And Pepper Squid
Serves 4 as a starter (appetizer)
400g squid hood
65g cornflour
vegetable oil, for deep-frying
1 large red chilli, finely sliced
1 spring onion, finely sliced
lemon wedges, to serve
For the spiced salt:
1 tablespoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon caster sugar
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
½ teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
For the batter:
120g cornflour
250ml soda water, chilled
To prepare the squid, cut the squid hood down the centre on a chopping board and open it flat. Use a small knife to scrape off the membrane on the inside of the hood, then cut the hood lengthwise into 1cm wide strips. Pat the squid pieces dry with paper towels and transfer to a bowl.
For the spiced salt, combine the salt, sugar, white pepper and five-spice in a small bowl, then set aside.
To make the batter, put the cornflour into a bowl and stir through the soda water to make a smooth mixture, then set aside.
To prepare the squid, first line a plate with paper towels, then put the cornflour into a bowl.
Half-fill a saucepan with enough oil for deep-frying and heat over a high heat. The oil is ready when a cube of bread dropped in sizzles on contact and turns golden in 10 to 15 seconds. Alternatively, use a thermometer and heat to 220°C.
Working in batches, and using your hands, add about one-third of the squid to the bowl of cornflour. Toss the squid around to lightly coat in the cornflour then toss in the batter. Allow excess batter to drip back into the bowl. Carefully add the squid to the oil and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until light golden. Use a slotted spoon or metal tongs to transfer the squid to the lined plate. Repeat to cook the remaining squid in batches.
Carefully add the chilli and spring onion to the hot oil and deep-fry for 1 to 2 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a bowl with the squid. Sprinkle over 1 to 2 teaspoons of the salt mixture and tumble the squid onto a serving plate. Serve the squid with lemon wedges on the side and the remaining salt mixture in a small bowl to add to taste.
Recipe and image from Australia: The Cookbook, by Ross Dobson, published by Phaidon, RRP $65.
