Modern Australian food 101

Side note: We wanted to alert our readers that the Apple App Store is celebrating their 5th anniversary with some free apps, including Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.

In an article by Rebecca Morris over at Serious Eats –  An Introduction to Modern-Day Australian Food – an American expat moves to Australia and devotes her time to deciding what makes modern Australian food uniquely Australian. She’s finding it a bit tough to define: “I’ve been eating like an Aussie down in Sydney for about five months now, and I still can’t tell you in a word. Australian cuisine is truly an intersection of influences, drawing from indigenous, European, and Asian flavors.”

She makes a strong attempt, though, and has some fascinating descriptions of varous foods: Coffee is served as a “long black” or a “flat white;” native food is called “bush tucker” (she especially enjoys wattleseed pancakes); pork rolls are the Aussie version of banh mis; and meat pies can have uniquely Aussie ingredients (kangaroo and stout).

There is the rather interesting observation that Australians are the only country that “consumes both of the animals that appear on their coat of arms” – kangaroo and emu – and she has obviously delved into the craft beer industry. In seafood, apparently salt-and-pepper squid is highly popular, barrimundi is in danger of being over-consumed, and the Balmain Bug has a head that resembles a tail.

She finishes with high praise for a popular cookie, the Tim Tam.

Of course, there are far more indepth (and expert) sources for more information on Australian cooking – here are the most popular ones in our library – but we thought it was fun to see an outsider’s viewpoint.

Photo by Alpha, Flickr