AUSTRALIAN COOKS

Evening Star, Issue 22720, 6 August 1937, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN COOKS

VISITOR'S CRITICISM “ I have not had a good meal since I left Europe; on the Continent your Australian cooks would bo hanged, or, at the very least, gaoled,” said Mr J. P. Perry, a visitor from Austria, and member of a Viennese society of epicures, as he paused during a hurried tour of the Antipodes to express a wholesome contempt of our attitude towards food, states a Sydney writer. “In Europe eating is an art; in Australia it is a necessity!” he declared. Mr Perry expresses the viewpoint of the human being who does not eat to live, but lives to eat. “ In Europe,” he says, “ we consider eating a kind of religious performance. Cooking is part of Europe’s history. You will recall that Vatell, chef of the Prince of Conde, committed suicide because the special sea fish he had ordered for a dinner at which the King of Prance was to he present did not arrive. Just imagine an _ Australian housewife committing suicide because she was not able to put a decent meal on the table! She does not care—it is a tragedy! “ Apart from the fact that your cooks are not able to produce Continental dishes,” Mr Perry continued, “ Australia has not produced a single dish of its own. _ Even the New Zealanders have their toheroa soup, very delicious soup. “ I like Australian people,” he said. “ They are the nicest, most charming, genial, and amiable people on earth. But there seems to bo a lack of cooks. This is all part of the general attitude of Australians; that eating is a kind of performance which they have to go through three times a day in order to live.

“ And you have the best raw materials in the world. What a strong race you must be to survive it all 1

“ Of course,” Mr Perry admitted, “ even Europe has not reached the perfection of the Orient in cooking. Last year I went badk to China for no other purpose than to taste again, after many years’ absence, a soup made of swallows’ nests with pigeon eggs inside, and a delicious dish of golden shark fins in the jelly made from lotus nuts. But Chinese cooking has lost some of its flavour. This is a most regrettable consequence of the political turmoil. Chinese people do not take the same interest in food as they did during the Ming dynasty or the reign of the Emperor Chin Lung. Austria is still the centre of music, art, and good cooking.” AN AUSTRALIAN REPLIES. Mir W. J. Bates, chef at a leading Sydney hotel, insists, in spite of Mr Perry’s statement, that Australians do know what good food is. “ And, furthermore,” he says, “ they demand the best and most wholesome food. “ Australian people generally,” he says, “ may not be acquainted with Oriental and Continental dishes, but they eat the type of food that is favoured here, with the same appreciation as the European epicure. And then there is, quite definitely, the travelled Australian who is thoroughly conversant with Continental food, and is able to order and eat these dishes with the same appreciation and knowledge as the European connoisseur. “ The people of all countries have different modes of living and eating,” Mr Bates continued,’ “and it is ridiculous to declare that Australians do not know food merely because certain Austrian or Chinese dishes are not served here. I could name dozens of dishes that may be prepared in 90 different ways, some of which are German, some Chinese, and others French. In some cases we have evolved our own methods of preparation, although, generally speaking, w© adhere to the ‘ classic ’ methods. In this sense, therefore, we have ‘ original ’ dishes. Very few dishes are original in the narrower sense,- because they are all based on methods that have prevailed for centuries. The New Zealand toheroa soup is no more original than our own kangaroo tail soup, because they were both created in a certain tradition.”