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[biggerbirdbrain]

Well, then, Viz,

As for the beverages, I'd fit right in down under. I love seafood, too, so that's not a problem. Besides prawn and all that, what else is popular for everyday fare? Is there also an aboriginal cuisine that's gotten into mainstream cooking?

 
B-B-B

[Viz]

hi bbb - we seem to have got onto my favourite topic which is food - i dont think that everyday fare is all that different to the US - we can get "roo" (Kangaroo) which is fairy easily available in some supermarkets and restaurants etc, and you can also get "Bush Tucker", various berries, spices, condiments etc, but that is a fairly "gourmet" market. Mostly we just eat the ordinary meat - lamb, beef, chicken etc. But in Melbourne, where i'm from we are very lucky to have a really extensive migrant population, which means we get lots of different cuisnines, ie vietnamese, thai, lebanese, turkish etc plus all the european types and so on. in fact at this very moment melbourne is having its food and wine festival  - Because the weather here is a bit cooler than Sydney (although this is rapidly changing due perhaps to global warming) we are more of an eating city wheras sydney is more of a beach city.

PS - just had prawns and oysters for lunch (yum) and now someone is going to make me a nice coffee (i hope)

[biggerbirdbrain]

Hey, Viz -

Thanks for so much detail.
What does kangaroo taste like? (Please don't say chicken, because whenever anything exotic or questionable comes up, that's the usual reply!)
And rice coffee? Now, that's really different.

I've been in a lot of big cities here, so I'm used to seeing many different cuisines. One of the most interesting ones, however, was in Europe, in Amsterdam, where they'd have, what was loosely translated, as "rice tables," often buffets, where you could get dishes from India and that part of the world. Those were great, cause the flavors and combinations and more exotic products didn't taste like same old, same old. Plus they were buffets, and very inexpensive. Here, because of the proximity to Mexico and other Latino countries, we get influences from there and then, inevitably (and sadly) it gets Americanized regionally, so you never know what's the "real thing."

 
B-B-B

[Viz]

no, not rice coffee - NICE coffee. PS roo tastes like venison - quite "gamey"
ps - how come you know so many words bbb? i'm incredibly jealous whenever i see your score, which is everyday!

[biggerbirdbrain]

Sorry, my eyes are going out on me. Of course, it's nice coffee.
I just found a website called www.theepicentre.com that has all kinds of info on Austrialian cuisine. I'm learning all kinds of new things, even about the Bush Tucker you mentioned.


As to the scores, just a bit of an anglophile, I guess, and grew up with several languages. I do quite a bit of writing and enjoy wordplay, but I'm not at the top most of the time at the end of the day. There are players like Mum, ussycat, and technomc who usually outdo me. I just get there first and stay for a while. Either way, it's still fun. As is this forum.

Cheers,
B-B-B

[bobbi]

Thinking about gourmet Aussie food, we (in New Zealand) are sometimes able to get a spice mix called lemon myrtle (comes in a Masterfoods herb bottle.) It's just the best stuff when sprinkled liberally on fresh Marlborough salmon just before it's thrown onto a hot barbeque - feeling hungry now 

bbb, that "rice table" ("rijstafel") you had in Amsterdam is actually Malaysian in origin. A lot of Dutch cuisine comes from their colonial days (18th C) when the Dutch East India company imported heaps of stuff (including slaves) from the East. All those 'goreng' curries are simply fabulous! And if you buy spice sachets in Malaysia today, you will see that the writing on the packets is often in Malaysian, English and Dutch - for the large export market I assume.

South Africa also has a fairly large debt of honour owing to Malaysian cuisine because of the number of Malay slaves the Dutch sold in Cape Town en route between the Far East and Europe.

One of my favourite "South African" dishes is called "bobotjie." It's a hot mince curry that's baked in an egg custard heavily spiked with fresh lemon leaves, with ten tons of apricot jam and even more sultanas - a weird combination, but simply delicious! Any decent Malaysian chef would be horrified to learn that many South Africans regards bobotjie as their national dish!

And on the subject of South Africans, well, you've never seen people get through so much red meat! They even dry out salted strips of beef, and eat it like that. There's a fairly large expat South African community in Auckland, and there are whole stores here devoted to providing a selection of pretty unique food to this community.

Apart from the dried beef, virtually everything else seems to be very, very sweet. There's a thing called a koesuster that's a deep fried pastry plait that's taken straight from the deep fryer and plunged into a vat of iced sugar syrup that defies the laws of nature, the solution's so strong. But they're good in small quantities. Now I'm really hungry 

[Viz]

Hi bobbi - i actually thought that the "rijstafel" was dutch - i've had it in indonesia, but i always assumed that it was due to the 500 or so years of dutch colonisation of what used to be called the east indies. still not convninced that it didnt travel to malaysai through indonesia and the dutch east indies company which kind of led the way for colonisation in malacca etc.
cheers

viz

[biggerbirdbrain]

Bobbi:
Lemon myrtle sounds divine! You are quite the international gourmand, and I was amazed at how much you know about Malaysian food. I guess being in the Pacific, you have more access to that cuisine. But your knowledge of South African fare is equally impressive. I'm not much for fast-food or fried stuff, but my kitchen is rather plain in comparison. I've done some Eastern European cooking like pirogies, potato pancakes and borscht, which my mother knew, and a little French-style preparations.

My mother, however, did like to experiment. I'll never forget the times when she served, at separate sittings, brain croquettes and tripe. Ugggh! She also liked to serve organ meats like kidneys and heart, which I actually liked better than calve's liver.

Thanks so much for all your details. It was fascinating. This is why I love this forum. It's never boring!
 
B-B-B