'Yada yada' or indeed blah, blah, blah?
- 5 days ago
- 9 min read
"I found page after page after page celebrating the passion the purveyors of ingredients have for their product … before finally finding a recipe." Lisa Hill/ANZ LitLovers
Time to tackle this book which has been sitting around for me to (a) read and then (b) sort of review.
I thought it was just me in not recognising how wonderful it is - and it is in a way that I shall come to - but honestly most of the food did not really appeal - but that I think is just me - as I am not really into the Chinesey kind of Asian food. But she is one of Australia's most well-known Asian cooks, and I only had one tiny book of hers, so when I saw it on a table of second-hand books for sale in one of our local wineries on a Nillumbik winery crawl, I grabbed it. And, now I find, that as well as the food not appealing, the whole concept of the book did not appeal. In Kylie's words:
"This book is a celebration of all the growers, farmers, fishermen, artisans and food providores I have met ... A tribute to the people behind the food I love."
And so what we get is fairly long chapters on an individual who produces, doubtlessly wonderful, and also doubtlessly expensive, organic - it's all organic food - with a few recipes here and there - well over 100 the blurb says, so I suppose I shouldn't complain, and I have only bookmarked two - Billy Kwong's duck with citrus sauce - rom the Foodwise website and Roast tomatoes with dried currants, the recipe for which is not online, but which is really simple - roast tomatoes in a moderate oven with currants. drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Hardly a recipe at all really, but don't they look good. I wonder if they taste good too. Well at least it wouldn't take much to find out with these.
Before I come back to the book and a few more general comments about food producers, a couple of words about Kylie Kwong herself. I guess anyone who is interested in food would recognise her name, but being Sydney based, I guess I at least did not pay her a lot of attention. What I discovered today, and what I did not know is that her first and longlived restaurant Billy Kwong, was established with Bill Granger - hence the name. I think I always imagined it was the name of a member of her family. She later had a smaller restaurant Lucky Kwong, named, rather weirdly and sad, I thought, for the still-born child that she had with her longtime partner Nell. But in 2024 she gave up the restaurant business to focus on:
"using food as a catalyst for positive social impact and cultural exchange. Leaning heavily on her long-held philosophy that food is a connecting force, Kwong, 55, hopes to further build on her existing relationships with social enterprise and charity organisations focused on First Nations and multicultural communities. ... "what I'm really excited about with this next phase is I'll now have the time and energy to amplify other people's stories." ABC News
Which is sort of what my book is about. And it's all very worthy. But.
"This profusion of passion is why the book is so heavy and is a liability in a domestic kitchen where space is at a premium." Liz Hill/ANZ LitLovers
"Yada, yada, yada" is how that particular critic put it. But then, she, like me had been expecting a cookbook with enticing recipes. And indeed in between all the pages and pages about individual producers of superb organic food, there are indeed some enticing recipes. So should we put up with 'this profusion of passion' for the sake of a few recipes?
Kylie Kwong is not alone in this kind of food writing however. Most of them just bang on about fresh food as an almost incidental thing that is mentioned here and there. Although Jamie Oliver, for one has produced the odd cookbook that emphasises health, and fresh food. He is always aware, however, that the bulk of his audience - or at least the audience he would like to talk to - are not that wealthy and also not that educated. The common man if you like.
Stephanie Alexander did a similar thing yo Kylie Kwong with her book - and television series A Shared Table, which the publishers - on their flyleaf blurb say is:
"a book like no other about food in Australia - a completely fresh approach to the culture, the landscape , the people and the produce ... The ingredients available are infinite and of outstanding quality, enticing us to cook simple and delicious food."
Like no other? I don't think so.
An idea that Stephanie reiterates with these words in her introduction:
"I explored the Australian culinary landscape and the same things struck me over and over again. First, the variety and quality of what is available to us all, and the second, the manner in which our passionate producers face up to quite awesome challenges with universal good humour in order to achieve the best possible product."
Yada, yada, yada?
'Available to us all'. Really? For example, in her section on Victoria and the Queen Victoria Market, she picks out for special mention this man - Cameron Russell who runs Stall 83 - which is located in the Organic section of the market, where the prices are considerably higher than elsewhere. I have passed this stall a few times, and never seen him there, so maybe he has made so much money that he doesn't need to man it himself. But that's probably unfair. My point is that I have no doubt that, besides being organic the produce is excellent, but it's not for the everyday shopper. Some products mentioned in both her and Kylie Kwong's books are indeed available in our supermarkets, but I doubt very much that the more lowly paid amongst us are buying Meredity goat's cheese, for example very often. Probably not even Coles Finest, Laurent Patisserie bread, which is not at all on the same level, coming as it does from a factory, as the Norcia bread from that monastery over there in WA, as shown in the collage below, which continues on the opposite page in Stephanie's book. This and other similar collages throughout the book are sepia coloured - to emphasis the 'realness' of it all.
And photographs - in this and Kylie Kwong's book as well - are supremely important. They are gorgeous - both those of the landscapes, the foods, the people and the finished dishes. For they are both coffee table books really, not meant for life in a kitchen, where, Lisa Hill of the ANZ LitLovers moans that they are too big to fit into her recipe holder:
"before you shell out a lot of money for the latest celebrity cookbook as a Christmas gift, have a proper look inside it to assess whether the recipient can actually use it in the kitchen. If not, it’s just food porn" Lisa Hill/ANZ LitLovers
Well, some might say, what's wrong with food porn - like a really expensive meal out to celebrate something really special? Perhaps food porn gives us something to aim for. Indeed I now remember remarking to David as we sat for dinner at the top of a divine hill top village somewhere in Italy, that this was travel porn - and as our meal arrived - food porn too. But such a good memory.
Besides - at the other end of the market - the supermarket magazines - we get the same thing - at least once in every issue. Herewith two examples from each one.
The above is from Woolworths. Just about always in their section on seasonal produce they will have a spread something like this. On the left a little bit about the product - in this case corn - and the producers who are generally shown to be a family of hard-workers, generations on the land ... In this case it is three generations, but this is not a tiny business - According to Business News it is ranked 35th in the Australian agribusiness list. They are the largest corn and bean producers in WA with four different very large properties. The implication is of an ordinary family - and of course it is and all power to them for growing from nothing - in this case a Greek immigrant, to an agricultural empire, which seems to actually deserve its success because, as Business News says:
"The reason behind this longevity is the fact that West Australian Corn Growers consistently produces the highest quality vegetables and is able to efficiently ship that produce locally, nationally and internationally."
Note the nationally and internationally - for they export around the world. The spread is gorgeously photographed in a romantic sort of way - note the sunset behind the tractor. However, unlike Stephanie and Kylie's artisans who supply organic market stalls, and posh restaurants, these producers supply supermarkets - corn is $1.00 a cob at the moment.
Coles does similar things, but they also get in a little bit of publicity for themselves as in this one page feature of a date farmer who is pioneering the commercial growing of mejdool dates in Australia - thanks, says the article - to a $500,000 grant from the Coles Nurture Fund. This farm may be more ground-breaking - and small - as I cannot find the company online - and the mejdool date is not really an everyday ingredient, so perhaps more in line with Stephanie and Kylie.
It's good of course, that we get to know more about the people who produce our food. Even some of the world's biggest food companies - Mondelēz for one - started small - although in their case a variety of small beginners. Behind every company there is a story to find.
Maybe in the case of these artisan, gourmet producers - choose your descriptor - they are indeed pioneers who should be encouraged for showing us how to live more in harmony with the world, whilst at the same time benefitting from its riches. These days we certainly get to hear more about the need for fresh, carefully - in the best possible sense - produced food, from expensive and glossy cookbooks, podcasts, television series, the occasional Hollywood film and supermarket magazines. Cookery writers at all levels are always banging on about quality - it's Nigel's least endearing quality I sometimes think. Because real quality is either a privilege of the wealthy, or else a con game - the quality not being much better than the cheaper alternative. Whether we buy the best that money can produce and buy, is not necessarily a choice that we make. Many just buy the cheapest thing that they possibly can or grow it in their own backyard - if they are lucky enough to have one. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. If you've never tasted the best of the best, then you possibly won't miss it.
Until the brave new world arrives and everyone will be able to choose, we shall have to dream via glossy books. And actually you don't have to spend a lot of money on them - you might pick them up for virtually nothing in an op shop - or you can go to your local library and borrow them for free.
"Kylie shows that you don’t need exotic ingredients to create magical dishes – just fresh, flavoursome food that has been produced in the most beneficial way for us and the planet." Publisher's blurb
It's actually more or less impossible for the ordinary person to know whether our food "has been produced in the most beneficial way for us and the planet". You probably can't really believe what it says on the packet as it were. And do you really know if those corn farmers in WA are doing the right thing by the planet, even if the product is of high quality.
Sorry Kylie. You have done, and are doing so many good things for society, and your food looks delicious, but honestly I was a tiny bit bored ploughing through all those pages of text about various farmers and producers, of products that I shall never buy - well Meredith cheese gets a big tick but it's the only one that I had any recognition of. Maybe the Norcia bread - but then if I want artisan bread Eltham has it's own supplier - Old Europe - or is it Evrope? - very annoying and pretentious sign over their shop. Which is sort of emblematic of the whole gourmet thing.
YEARS GONE BY
February 15
2025 - Valentine's Day on Melbourne's river - so good the performance was repeated on Friday 13th this year. This is the view from our table across the river.
2023 - Black garlic
2021 - Missing
2020 - Define easy
2019 - Bahari - the Hellenic palate
2018 - A wonderful book
2017 - Back to basics
2 stars for Kylie Kwong. She will not be missed. ByeBye KK 🤑