And now for something completely serious
The story of South Australia's Riverland citrus growers having to dump fruit or 'pick to the ground' and let fruit rot isn't new. The Riverland trend for the last few years has been to rip out citrus orchards and plant grapes for wine. (When that comes to glut you'll hear similar screams of pain I'm sure). But this year it seems as if there's a new twist to the story. With the San Miguel purchase of 50% of Berri last year there was apprehension locally that there would be even less concern for local growers by a multinational company. It seems as if that's now come to a head. Riverland growers who had contracts last year to supply oranges for juice have been told this year the fruit is not wanted. The Adelaide Advertiser has been running the story for the last few days (archived) and the ABC's Rural radio reporters had tried to get to the bottom of what seemed be a juicy tale. 

The story as I understand it involves Berri, the biggest buyer in the region having imported concentrate (and some say fresh) juice from Brazil last year. This is still being held in storage and they can't take any fresh juice until that is cleared. Now Berri have never claimed on their labels that their product is 100% Australian even on the premium line that is called Australian Fresh, but it seems that the also don't say this year that it could be as little as 1% and it would still comply to their stated mix of "Australian and imported fresh juice".

Even the term 'fresh' is slippery with talk of 'single strength' juice being held in storage, not 'concentrate'. Should you be concerned? Yes and while most readers are committed to the taste hit they get from real fresh squeezed juice. There are more local markets or greengrocers selling juice squeezed on site (like Harris Farm), most of the public don't seem to care what they drink. But as recent surveys have shown, they do care if the product is Australian. We should be given clear and accurate choices on food labelling and there are some manufacturers and supermarkets who would prefer we didn't ask for it. Do I feel a change in the wind?

(BTW. Website legal disclaimers are often blunt but have a look at Berri's, it is more direct than most.)
Fred Harden 9 June 05

Kookychow.com
Bryan Ballinger has a fun food related website called kookychow.com dedicated to er, kooky chow. Those foods we pick up in ethnic groceries (and mainstream supermarkets) look at the ingredients and quickly put them down before we catch something. It's a strange food world out there. I had trouble selecting one item to show here to give you the 'flavour' of the site but I thought this would relate to Jan's piece last week about nut allergies (blog archive #7).
As Bryan says..

There’s nothing wrong with eating food that other people find absurd. In fact, there’s a big difference between absurd food, and bad food. Absurd food is a good thing. Bad food is, well..., not good."

Fred Harden 8 June 05
 

A web tail

Recognise the bottle? I bet you did even if you only tried it once (like me). It's a home grown success story in marketing our wine overseas. I'd heard John Casella talking on the radio (transcript here on ABC) and there have been some media bits around. When I saw it mentioned in an online food site I visit, I decided it was time to tell you about both the Canadian site, Gremolata and suggest you have a look at the article there on Yellow Tail wine's USA success.
 

	Gremolata was started by Malcolm Jolley and still has his personal voice all over it. If you want to know about Toronto's food and wine scene, have a browse of the website
and then subscribe to Malcolm's free email newsletter.

Yellow Tail is available in my local bottle shop for about $8.00, so it's nice to see the Americans paying a relatively premium price (US$11.45) for a cheap wine. Maybe we're just spoilt?

 (Have I complained about the mark up we're hit with here on American magazines yet? Compared to some of the US cover prices, subscribing looks really good value. Are news agents now just for lazy people and local publications? I was goaded into getting a subscription to Dwell by a markup of $10 dollars over the exchange rate. I doubt it's going into the newsagent's pocket.)

Fred Harden 4 June 05
 

Mindil Markets – Darwin
Billed as a must-see in Darwin, these markets are open Thursday and Sunday nights. They attract crowds of locals and tourists who come to watch the spectacular tropical sunset across the waters of Fannie Bay. There’s the usual display of tat, jewellery, souvenirs and crafts – some tawdry, some spectacular. You can have a massage or a tarot reading. And there’s a multi-cultural array of food, much of it of Asian persuasions.

However, the food cart that really grabs your eye has a strong local flavour. The Road Kill Café proudly announces “You kill it, we grill it” and offers local specialities such as croc, camel, buffalo, kangaroo and possum. (Well, we didn’t actually see possum on sale, but they did have the rest.) Seemed to be a hit with the elderly couple looking for the genuine Territory experience.
Jan O'Connell 3 June 05

Airline food – incredible or inedible?
I haven’t been exposed to anything you’d actually call “food” aboard a plane for some time, since most of my flights are short hops from Canberra to Melbourne or Sydney. However, this week, on a flight to Darwin, the wait seemed too long and the arrival time (11pm) too late to hang on for a hotel hamburger. So I succumbed to the offer of dinner.

Now, the hype leads you to expect at least a reasonable standard of food from Qantas. After all, they sponsored the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Month. And the much-vaunted Neil Perry is food consultant to the airline. Perhaps he only consults to first-class.

My plastic tray of greenish sludge with small, gnarled pieces of something in it, clearly came from a steaming vat in an industrial kitchen. Has Mr Perry even been there? I seriously doubt it. It didn’t look like any other kind of meat, so I suppose, by default, it must have been chicken. There was a vague taste of Thai spices in the background. A passenger who had chosen the alternative dish - pasta - took one mouthful then replaced the foil cover neatly and turned his face to the window.

Dessert, a mini chocolate bar, was so tiny that it hid under my plate, only to fall to the floor as the steward removed the dinner tray. Later in the flight we were offered an icecream. Served straight off the dry-ice, it was a real tooth-breaker, the choc-coating shattering into a hundred pieces at first bite and depositing itself at random over my clothing, there to melt gently during the remainder of the flight.

Arriving in Darwin, tired, hungry and flecked with chocolate, I resolved to do without dinner on the return leg. A colleague told me the Parmesan Chicken on the way back was really quite edible. I was reminded of Paul Hogan’s famous line in Crocodile Dundee. “You can live on it. But it tastes like shit”.
 Jan O'Connell 2 June 05
 

Oh, No. Not the quote!
You know. That quote. The one from Anthony Bourdain, about hating open kitchens? And food appearing as if by magic? Surely you remember, you've seen it everywhere, print, screen and television. It's the one used by that Australian food and travel magazine. They just can't stop using it.

Memo to Ad dept. Hold the Bourdain quote!

In the April 2005 issue of Gourmet (the US one) in a great article by Bourdain on changing restaurant trends, he cites a desire for less pretension in presentation and stuffy restaurants. He finishes ...

" I once loathed the idea of the open kitchen. Cooking was, to me, a private magic act. It was not performance art, and the cooks I knew did not invite public scrutiny. Now I'm not so sure. Food, at its very best, is an expression of a place, a culture, a personality, even a worldview...

In my own long, checkered career, some of my unhappiest moments were spent slinging hash behind a counter. Now, it seems - as long as I'm on the other side of the equation - that some of my very happiest times are being spent there."

 Oh, well. Maybe we could use the new quote for Regional Food? I can see it on the screen now, appearing a line at a time, in script...

"I once loathed the idea of the open kitchen...now I'm not so sure... Food, at its very best, is an expression of a place, a culture, a personality, even a worldview...
                                                   Anthony Bourdain
V/O: Regional Food Australia - with a whole new worldview

Can you have a worldview if you're regional? Of course. Watch us!

Fred Harden 28 May 05
 

More power to the supermarkets, less choice for us
A recent article in the Financial Review sounded an ominous note for those of us who like to seek out the smaller brand or the niche product in the supermarket. The big supermarket chains have announced their intentions to increase the presence of their house-brands, and to make room for this by stocking only the two top-selling name brands in most categories.

The winners, says Fin Review, are the supermarkets themselves (higher profit margins) and the food giants who already dominate various product categories (less competition). The losers will be the manufacturers with small or medium size brands. And, presumably, customers who buy those brands and value the opportunity to choose.

Finding that two or three of our favourites have vanished from the shelves has, in the past, been enough to make us change where we shop. But this time, it seems, we may have a harder time of it, with both Woolies and Coles going down the same path. Maybe the result will be to push choosy shoppers towards smaller local supermarkets and other food retailers, reducing the overall share of the big chains. Maybe. But I guess most people will just make the best of what they’re offered for the sake of convenience. Another step in the blanding of the Australian diet.
 Jan O'Connell 12 May 05