Why can't I get ...?
November 2, 2004
Whether it's the food police, our small population or the laws of supply and demand, certain produce is almost impossible to obtain in Australia. John Newton provides some answers.
OK, we know we can't always get what we want, food wise - but why is it so? Is it, as Stephanie Alexander says, because there just aren't enough of us in Australia to justify making all the things we try when we're away and die for when we're home?
Is it the food police - Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) and all the others who make the rules that deny us cured ham,
raw-milk cheese and real salami? Or is it that most of just don't know what we're missing?
As Alexander goes on to say: "Most people (in Australia) just aren't that interested in what they eat, so they're not prepared to pay more. If you have a beautifully grown and carefully dressed chicken for $27 sitting next to one for $7, most of us will settle for the cheap bird."
Well, some people won't. We asked them - chefs, providores and home cooks - what they'd like to have in their larders in an ideal Australia, and went in search of the answers.
There's good news among the bad. During the course of our investigations, we were delighted to find that some of the things we thought we couldn't get - we can.
And we should always keep in mind, as Alexander says finally on the subject: "Most things can be got. It's just that you have to know what you're looking for, put in a lot of effort, appreciate the difference and cheerfully pay the price."
Meat
"Beef in England was always aged on the bone (dry-aged) for 21 days," London-trained Andy North, executive chef at Le Restaurant at the Sofitel Melbourne, tells us. "Here, it's usually cryovacced (aged in vacuum-sealed plastic). Why can't I get dry-aged beef?"
He's not the only one asking that. Adrian Richardson of La Luna gave up asking local butchers to dry-age, so he does it himself, hanging up to 16 on-the-bone argentines (short loins and rumps) of beef in the cool room at his restaurant.
Why won't butchers dry-age their beef? Most would say it's too hard and many would say that cryovacced is just as good. Surely, chefs and consumers should be given a choice?
Good news: Help is on its way - from Sydney. Meat wholesaler and supplier to the white tablecloth trade, Vic's Premium Quality Meats, is already sending product to Melbourne restaurants (Circa, Radii, Flower Drum, et cetera). John McGeogh from Vic's says: "We can do it for you; just ask."
To all those chefs - mostly European - grumbling that they can't get white meat veal in Australia - get over it. The European Union defines veal as meat from a bovine animal up to six months old.
What it doesn't say is that to get really white veal, the little critters have to be deprived of iron in their diet and sunshine in their lives, which causes a multitude of animal health problems.
Good news: There is good Australian veal - White Rocks Veal from Western Australia. White Rocks veal comes from 3-4-month-old cattle, which are fed 98 per cent warm, fresh full-cream milk and 2 per cent rolled barley and lupin for roughage, and are housed in pens of 8-10 animals. Unlike American and Dutch products, White Rocks Veal is hormone-free.
Verdict: We're glad we don't get European veal in Australia. Our vealers might have a short life, but it's a happier one.
You'll find White Rocks veal on the menu at Cecconi's and Brasserie at Crown and Interlude in Fitzroy. But alas, not at any Melbourne butcher.
Peter Bouchier at Bouchier's at Malvern Road used to stock it, but stopped because he couldn't sell enough. "I could sell all the racks, but I needed to sell the whole calf."
Good news: Ring Perth butcher and White Rocks distributor Mondo di Carne direct, and they'll air-freight you whatever you want. "We'll move mountains to get it to you," promises Mondo's Vince Garreffa.
Go to mondo.net.au
Smallgoods
Cooks and authors Allan Campion and Michele Curtis have just come back from a fact-finding trip around Europe and report eating "mind-blowingly good prosciutto" at Antonio Carluccio's restaurant in London. "Why can't we get it?" they ask.
Melbourne's matriarch of Chinese food, Elizabeth Chong, misses Yunnan ham. "It would be wonderful to have it here," she says.
These products - and to them we'd add jamon, the Spanish version - are cured: a raw leg of pork is salted, then hung for up to three years.
According to the law, they're not cooked. And although we make versions of both prosciutto and jamon in Australia (as far as we can ascertain, no one makes Yunnan ham here), for a number of reasons (including the breeds of pig used), they are not quite as good as the real thing.
Good news: We asked the spokesperson at the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) about the persistent rumours that the ban on these products had been lifted.
Guess what? It has. Biosecurity Australia has recently completed an import risk analysis that has concluded prosciutto and jamon and Yunnan ham will be allowed into the country under strict requirements of herd health in the originating country. Score one for commonsense.
Stefano De Pieri wants real salami. The FSANZ Food Standards Code for the production of "uncooked comminuted (chopped, diced or minced) fermented meat" states that "the fermentation of (salami) must be initiated through the use of a starter culture".
The starter culture stipulated is a concentrated powder of freeze-dried lactic acid bacteria. Real salami in the way that De Pieri would define it is allowed to ferment naturally.
Artisan smallgoods maker Pino Tomini-Foresti, of Sydney, wants to make salami the way his family has made it for generations.
"Anyone can make a salami in seven days using phosphates, starters and dextrose," Tomini-Foresti says, "but mine is a pure handmade product. I have proved (to authorities) my product is as safe as the one made with the manufactured starter. They said that's not good enough."
Verdict: Why can't artisan smallgoods makers be licensed and provided with Hazard Analysis Critical Control Path (HACCP) systems to allow them to make smallgoods safely, by hand, the traditional way?
"We miss fresh foie gras," says Andy North. He's only allowed to import semi-cooked foie gras, which is cooked at a slightly higher temperature than the fresh: the less you cook it, the better the flavour.
We ask Biosecurity Australia (BA) why. "There are three poultry diseases of concern here," the BA spokesperson tells us: exotic strains of avian influenza, Newcastle disease and the really scary one, infectious bursal disease virus - and France harbours a particularly virulent strain.
Verdict: Fair enough. A small price to pay for the protection of our poultry industry.
Poultry
North wants hung game, too. In Europe, partridges, pheasants, even hares and rabbits, are "hung", that is, left in a cool place whole - or as the saying goes, "gut in, feathers on" - for at least a week.
CEO of PrimeSafe Victoria, Brian Casey, warns: "You have to eviscerate (gut) all birds within the hour," he tells us, "for obvious reasons. The viscera present major health problems and promote the growth of bacteria."
When we suggest there seems to be no problem with this method in Europe, Casey answers: "I'm here to apply Australian standards, not European standards."
Alan Rundell, of Gamekeepers Australia, raises and sells game birds in Gippsland. He has a slightly different take on the problem from that of Casey. "The food standards industry," he says, "has been taken over by microbiologists. All they know is to say no. If they only knew that if you hung a pheasant for a week at the right temperature there's less likelihood of that bird deteriorating - for every feather you pluck there's a hole that lets in bacteria."
Verdict: Once again, why not license experienced producers?
Good news: North misses the big magrets (breasts) of barbary duck he used to serve in England. In Australia, the barbary duck is known as a muscovy, and Vic's has Meadows muscovy ducks from NSW ready to deliver to his kitchen. They're not as big as the English ones, but the flavour is superb. For the home table, go to The Chicken Pantry at Queen Victoria Markets, where Janine Hunt is selling a muscovy from the Barossa.
Finally, Sydney chef Tony Bilson, of Bilson's, asks: "Why can't we get capons (castrated ****s, highly fancied for their superior flavour)?"
Sort of good news: When we start asking about capons, we discover the only problem in getting them is producing them. Geoff Fairbrother, of the Australian Chicken Meat Federation, says: "We used to castrate them chemically until the banning of hormones in the 1960s. There's no reason why you can't do it. It's just a matter of finding someone to do it manually."
If anyone knows how to castrate a **** manually, and can teach others the skill, please let us know. Because Bilson isn't the only cook who'll be excited at the prospect of a capon on the table.
Fruit & veg
"It's hard to get good tomatoes," says Nicholas Miriklis from Melbourne-based provedore, The Vegetable Connection, "because most farmers grow things for two reasons. Either the supermarkets demand it - 'we take the volume, you grow what we want for transport and shelf life' - or they grow a variety that yields prolifically. Having said all that, you can get good tomatoes - you just have to know where to find them."
Professor Barry McGlasson, of the Centre for Horticulture and Plant Science at the University of Western Sydney, agrees with Miriklis' last point. He's been working on improving tomato flavour for 30 years.
"There's been an enormous improvement in quality because of improved varieties and a greater awareness of the technical requirements of post-harvest handling," he says. Which basically means that tomatoes are no longer picked green, refrigerated and blasted with ethylene gas to sort of ripen them when they get to where they're going.
For Professor McGlasson, the keys to flavour are the level of soluble solids and the growing temperature. He says: "A Mediterranean climate is best - from 18-28C - which makes the country around Perth the ideal growing climate in Australia.
"You can bring out the best flavour if you select tomatoes with a good red colour, then leave them in a cool place in the kitchen - not full sunlight - for 6-7 days. Only when they're ripe should you put them in the fridge."
Verdict: There's no doubt that Australian tomato flavour is improving. Call us old-fashioned, but we still think tomatoes taste better in Southern Europe. You'll find good tomatoes in Melbourne from Cameron Russell, Stall 83 at the Queen Victoria Markets, and Damien Pike, The Mushroom Specialist, Stall 116 at Prahran Markets.
In summer - from January - try the tomatoes from the Kennedy Family Farm at Veg Out Market at St Kilda; Leonie Bessant at Collingwood Children's Farm Farmers' Market; and the Doncaster tomatoes and Adelaide rounds from Toscano's at Kew.
To everyone who asked, we can't find a San Marzano tomato (the famed variety from the town of the same name in Calabria) anywhere, although we suspect there are probably some beauties lurking in backyards.
Stone fruit is another cause for concern among chefs and provedores.
Sydney provedore Matt Brown, of Brown's Greens, says: "Why can't shoppers get good stone fruit?
Firstly, because getting fruit from the farm to the home is a rough business - the more successful hybrids are the ones that can handle the jostle, and they're not always the most flavoursome. And secondly, the latest fad for the super-sweet, acid-free fruit is a bloody disaster - it's like eating a bag of sweet water.
"My advice? Form a relationship with your greengrocer. Tell them this super-sweet stuff is rubbish."
Professor McGlasson tells us methods of transporting fruit have been improved.
Verdict: Let's wait and see if the new methods work. If they don't, harass your greengrocer.
Seafood
"In Queensland I ate fresh baby cuttlefish," De Pieri says. "It's much better than calamari. When we order it, it comes frozen. Why can't I get it fresh?"
Good news: "It's more a function of the conservative Melbourne fish market, I'm afraid," Sydney-based seafood supplier John Susman tells us.
"We've had the biggest run of cuttlefish for 20 years (around Australia) ... get him (De Pieri) to call me."
Paul Wilson, of The Botanical, is another Brit Pack chef with fond memories of home. He says: "I'd love to find naturally smoked haddock, not dyed. I like the salmon here, but wish there were other smoked fish.
And New Zealand turbot - why aren't they more available?"
Good news: Richard Harris, of Springs Traditional Smoked Seafoods in the Adelaide Hills, tells us he brings in about 400kg of frozen haddock every three months and smokes it.
"And he (Wilson) can have it undyed," he says. (Chefs and other smoked haddock lovers should call Brian Bell at Bellco Distributors on 9329 9722.)
As for the New Zealand turbot, it's not really a turbot, it's actually a sand dab and the reason it's in short supply now is that a large part of the European flatfish fishery off the East German coast has been closed (due to overfishing) and the Europeans are importing the New Zealand substitute.
Raw-milk cheese
It's at the top of everyone's wish list, and here's the bottom line from FSANZ: "The Food Standards Code requires generally that cheese sold in Australia and New Zealand must be made from pasteurised milk.
Alternatively, the milk can be thermised, which is a less severe heat treatment than pasteurisation, and the cheese matured for at least 90 days. The requirement to pasteurise milk is a public health measure."
Good news: There has been some movement. "FSANZ, however, has approved the sale of very hard grating cheeses and some Swiss hard cheeses made from raw milk following a scientific assessment that demonstrated that these cheeses could be produced to an equivalent level of safety as those made using pasteurised milk.
"It is possible that other raw-milk cheeses could be allowed if an application is made to FSANZ and it is demonstrated that they can be consistently produced to an equivalent level of safety as cheese made from pasteurised milk.
"FSANZ is assessing such an application from the French Government for roquefort cheese, which is made from raw milk."
The raw-milk cheeses currently allowed into the country include parmigiano and grana padano from Italy and emmentaler, gruyere, sbrinz and tilsiter from Switzerland.
Verdict: Keep up the pressure for both imported - and domestic - raw-milk cheese.
THE FOOD POLICE
Who are the food police and what do they do?
? Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ): This body sets and reviews food standards in Australia and New Zealand, and puts them into the Food Standards Code, which covers the manufacture and labelling of foods, food additives, processing aids, novel foods, genetically modified foods and irradiated foods. If, for example, you are a manufacturer and you want to use alpha-cyclodextrin as a novel food, you apply to FSANZ.
? Biosecurity Australia develops quarantine policies that protect the health of Australia's agricultural industries and natural environment from exotic pests and diseases and allow safe trade. Biosecurity Australia also works on behalf of Australian farmers to open up new markets by securing quarantine conditions for Australian agricultural exports. (From the organisation's website - we couldn't put it any better ourselves.)
? PrimeSafe Victoria is the body in charge of regulating the safety of meat, poultry, seafood and pet meat and food. Like all these state bodies, PrimeSafe implements the code set down by FSANZ, the differences lying in the strictness with which the code is implemented. CEO Brian Casey, when questioned about interpretation, says, flatly: "The current standard is the current standard."
? Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS): If you try to smuggle in a raw-milk cheese or natural salami or anything on the banned list, these are the folk who will get you. They're on the front line at our border, enforcing food regulations.
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