JOIN USIt’s magic mate, straight from Australia!
Australia has MasterChef and many a master chef but does it even have a cuisine of its own? We do not really hear of restaurants specialising in Australian cuisine, do we? These were the questions on the top of my mind when I met Chef and two-time MasterChef Australia contestant Michael Weldon recently at a curated lunch in Bengaluru. As part of the Australian government’s Taste of Australia campaign, the chef was on a whirlwind tour of India, conducting masterclasses, hosting dinners and food demonstrations — all in an effort to introduce the little continent’s cuisine to Indians whose palate is now primed for new flavours.
“Australia’s heart is multi-cultural — we have people from nearly everywhere here. There are the Indians, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the British... this is why our cuisine is also a delectable mix of everything,” says the chef who, almost like a modern-day merchant of spice, had carried with him a treasure chest full of native spices from various regions of Australia. From this casket emerged saltbush, a native herb with medicinal properties and a distinctly salty flavour; mountain pepper, also known as the Tasmanian pepperberry, as well as the highly nutritious wattleseeds, which, he told me, were an important part of the Aboriginal diet for thousands of years. And, of course, there was lemon myrtle, clearly the chef’s favourite. Found largely in the rainforests of Queensland and long used in Aboriginal cuisine and medicine, this ‘queen of lemon herbs’ has the ability to change the texture of a dish completely — “that too, with just a strand or two” as the chef puts it.
And what happens when this herb queen meets our humble banana leaf in a fish preparation? “Magic, mate!” grins the chatty chef, happy to experiment and happier to talk about food! But before we came to the fish, there were the squids coated with mountain pepper and saltbush and dipped in coriander sauce to savour first. A believer of the farm-to-fork philosophy, the chef says, for him, a dish is successful only when one can discern every spice and every herb that has been used in it. “When I was in Kolkata, I met a chef from Odisha who introduced me to panch phoron. I ended up using mustard, fennel and fenugreek in my roast chicken dishes,” recalls the chef. (For the uninitiated, panch phoron is a five-spice blend used especially in Eastern Indian fare.) Probably why we could also spot a curry leaf or two hiding between the squids. The lemon myrtle baked fish, which was next, was as delicious as promised. Baked in herb butter and paired with burnt leeks, it was all things citrusy. The coriander sauce that accompanied it gave it a nice Indian twist. “The sheer variety of flavours and cuisines of India is unmatched,” says the chef who wants to undertake a deeper exploration of regional Indian cuisines and use his knowledge to experiment with typical Aussie grub. Like how he combined turmeric and pepperberry with cauliflower, the cooking technique of which was inspired by the good-old ‘onion bhaji’! From sampling chicken and fish preparations on which native spices had done their sorcery on, we smoothly slipped into the embrace of the Lamington — the iconic sponge cake and the one Aussie speciality everyone knows about (and loves). Lamington, often a Christmas staple in homes across the continent, is a butter cake coated with chocolate sauce and rolled in desiccated coconut but Chef Michael had revved it up with a dash of strawberry gum jam. “A perfect end to an Australian meal, isn’t it,” asks the chef. Indeed. For Lamington is a cake that symbolises everything Australia — its innate warmth and natural cheer as well as its generosity of spirit.