Perhaps it's the global economic climate. Maybe I can chalk it up to vestiges of university frugality. It could be that I have a need to feel a greater connection with my food. Possibly I just like not paying for stuff.
Whatever the reason, I keep finding myself looking for free food. I've eaten acorns and figs, nasturtiums and lavender, olives and feijoas. I find myself eyeballing trees and vines and bushes as I walk around Sydney, searching for lemons or grapes or loquats. This habit has honed my ability to spot fruiting trees at some distance. One eventually gains the ability to recognize leaf shapes and colors so that I often know where to keep checking back, waiting for the fruit that will eventually come.
I'm a bit proud of my ability to identify fruiting trees and shrubs by their appearance. However, I am a chef and not a botanist, so I do miss the occasional tree. For instance, I only noticed the giant mulberry tree which grows less than a block from my house earlier this year when the sidewalk beneath was bruised purple with crushed berries.
In all my fruit-spotting, I've realized, I am looking for plants from the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, but I spend absolutely no time looking at native Australian trees. There are plenty of native Australian foods: most famously the macadamia nut, but also the finger lime, bush tomato, and lemon myrtle, to name a few. Not many of these plants grow in Sydney, and I wouldn't know how to recognize the ones which do.
Still, I'm the curious type, and when I see something that looks edible, I can't help myself.
Bush Food
I'll Eat That
I eat kittens. You heard me. I eat kittens. Little ones are the tastiest. As they mature they tend to become stringy from all that jumping around. I love their little legs, their tenderloins, and their bellies which crisp up so nicely in a pan. I love to stew them, roast them, put them into pie. All I can think when I see a little kitten is: lunch!
If you haven't stopped reading in disgust already, allow me to explain a bit. Chef's, you see, generally eat anything. In a professional kitchen, everyone is required to taste every single thing that they cook, and I, as do most chefs, carry a spoon in my pack pocket just for this purpose. A side effect of all this tasting is that you are forced to try many things that you might normally pass on: brains and kidneys and tripe, for example. Add to this the fact that a good chef can make any of these items taste good, and you find, after a while, that there are few foodstuffs you aren't willing to eat.
On Hand-Me-Downs
A chef's livelihood, as you might expect, depends as much on the quality of his recipes as it does on his level of skill. Many of these recipes are developed slowly over time, tweaked, tested, modified, perfected. It wouldn't be surprising, then, if chefs were more than a little reluctant to part with these recipes. This is not, however, the case.
That's not to say you can march into the kitchen of your favorite restaurant and start asking for recipes. You will be thrown out, quite violently. Chefs are not going to willingly share their recipes with you, unless you are paying $49.99 for their cookbook.
The Zeitgeist
I had this week's post all planned in advance. I was going to tell you how I once had a brilliant, spontaneous idea for an odd but wonderful flavor combination: blood orange and rosemary marmalade. You see, a year or two ago I was making a rather large batch of blood orange marmalade to give away in Christmas baskets and, while bottling the last of a dozen jars, randomly wondered what it might taste like flavored with rosemary. Luckily I had some growing on my balcony and stirred a sprig into one jar of the hot marmalade. As the combination it's not one I've ever heard of, I was not entirely sure it would work out.
It works swimmingly. Rosemary is somehow best friends with the savory-sweetness of blood oranges. Each flavor is distinct and balanced and crisp. While this marmalade is good on wholemeal toast, it is absolutely amazing on a thick slice of buttery brioche. This flavor combination, my flavor combination, was an absolute triumph.
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