Iberia via Albury/Wodonga
If you're a Melbourne Age 'Epicure' reader like we are, (we get all the newspaper food mag sections Brisbane's Courier Mail is a good 'un) you'll have seen a small item about Wodonga butcher Michael Frederick. Michael did his apprenticeship with a traditional European butcher who was part of the big migrant intake at the nearby Bonegilla Migrant camp. (That was back when we welcomed migrants but still kept them in camps until they got used to the water.)

Michael now runs Morrison Street Butchers and makes a dazzling array of continental smallgoods, not confined to the German styles of his mentor. The local tourist officer asked us when we visited, to bring him back some of Michael's Boudin Blanc sausages (they've been renamed for local pronunciation as Buda Blanc which doesn't quite suggest the culture of origin).

Of course Michael smokes his own hams, and the Epicure article, and our photo above is about his attempt to create an Iberian jamon style ham, the acknowledged 'queen' of raw hams that include proscuitto. The Iberian product is from the Iberico pigs who feed on fallen acorns from wild oak forests. (scroll down and you'll see Fiona Chambers notes on European and South African pigs).

While acknowledging that this ham is 'in the style of', Michael was pleased to find that the acorn diet changed the taste and colour, making it darker and stronger. The meat is well marbled with fat which keeps it moist. It's gently smoked, not air-dried as the original is for long periods, so it's softer. To try it you'll need to visit Mileto's Butchery in Windsor in Melbourne, or visit Michael and his butchery as you drive through Wodonga. He will vacuum pack any of his meat so that it will travel well in a fridge bag, and if you ring ahead he'll make sure he has ready the variety of ham, sausage or his special beef (from a herd of Welsh Black cattle in the nearby King Valley)that you want. See the list on his Website.

Fred Harden 7 December 05
  

Oh, dear
SAVEUR magazine has had a re-design. This SAVEUR groupie is not happy and by the sound of it, neither is their editor. Have a read between the lines of the October issue's editorial - 'Wine & Redesign' and see what you think. Here's a bit...

"In October 2004 we celebrated the end of our first ten years of publication with a special issue ... featuring ten of this country's most influential and articulate food figures. With the same issue, we also introduced a new cover deign, offering a larger image and more emblematic (less complicated) cover lines. This October we've rethought the cover again - and the rest of the magazine along with it. The man largely responsible for our new look is Dave Weaver*, a Florida native, graduate of the respected Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, and an 18-year employee of World Publications, SAVEUR's parent company. "This isn't so much a redesign as a refreshing, an updating." says Weaver. "We have just simplified the way information is presented, making stories more accessible to the reader." The essence of SAVEUR, he stresses hasn't changed. "We will still bring our readers the authentic experiences of food and the cultures, people, and places that surround it. This isn't going away. Our approach to food isn't changing." To that we say amen.
                                                    Colman Andrews, Editor-in-Chief

Now I'd like to believe this 'refreshed, updated, simplified, more accessible' layout by a 'respected design school graduate and 18-year employee of the parent company' who talks about 'our readers' and reassures us (not the editor) that 'nothing's changed in the editorial approach'. But it sounds like they're worried to me. SAVEUR will continue to sell to people like me who know it, but I'm not renewing my subscription just yet, and I'll look at each issue even if it's a month or so later, and decide if I want to buy it. At least until I'm sure about the content and style being unchanged. 

Maybe the friends I've showed the magazine to who say 'God, I can't read this it's so visually busy', will now find it as comfortably bland as their regular publications. I think that the big cover shot is strong and Bruna (our Circulation Manager) will love the number of less 'emblematic' cover lines, but I think they've tossed out a whole lot of tradition and the magazine's position of authority along with the changes. This is basically a relaunch and I'd love to be a fly on the wall and see if it changes the sales at all. It's like messing with the New Yorker design. There's a place for the tradition in publishing, and food and wine market doesn't have many magazines that have the authority that I think we've just lost with this 'refreshing' of SAVEUR.

As I've said before, the US magazine market is primarily one of subscriptions. Actual news stand sales are almost the same proportion as to what we sell as subscriptions in Australia. Most Australians prefer to buy at the newsagents. In America once someone is subscribed they go to great lengths to retain them with special deals to get them to re-new. Because the subscribed audience is captive and know what to expect each issue, you don't need to have covers that try and catch you with at least one of a dozen hooks into the content.  (Wallpaper* even offer subscribers a 'cover-line free' version, so you can have your coffee table uncluttered.)

(*Dave Weaver has won awards for his design of Sport Diver and Boating Life magazines)

Fred Harden 26 November 05

Pig out
You probably know that Fiona Chambers from Fernleigh Farms is on our Regional Food Advisory board. We appreciate the input from all our busy board members, and we're especially pleased when we get emails from them. Like this one from Fiona (that she has let me share with you). I've added some links and her images.

"I’m just back from a month overseas in South Africa, Germany and UK. I had such an inspiring trip! I attended the 6th Global Conference on Domestic Animal Genetic Diversity in Johannesburg, visited the  Animal Research Centre & Pig Museum in Irene, and personally met with some South African Kolebrook pigs (amazing creatures that live on next to nothing and raise piglets that weigh up to 140% of the weight of the mother at weaning!).

I then went to the Pretoria zoo and participated in doing “animal enrichment“ with the rhinoceros. Yep – that included shovelling up elephant poo and spreading it around the rhino’s enclosure to make him think Mr. Elephant had gone walkies during the night! We also mucked around with his food, cleaned off all his territorial markings and hung a tractor tyre in the tree to awaken his senses! It was all good fun and a great opportunity to see behind the scenes how they keep wild animals “happy” when they are kept in zoos.

I was then hosted in Germany by a company I met in Italy last year at Terra Madre. They invited me to speak about my piggies at a cooking festival. Well, when I got there I was taken aback! 450 people at the dinner which was booked out 3 months before with no advertising! The Company began 20 years ago working (like me) to save an endangered breed of pig called the Schwäbisch-Hällisches Landschwein- (it’s a saddleback breed) (Wikipedia entry translated). The Dept of
Agriculture in Germany declared it extinct back then, but this one man,  Rudolf Büller set about looking for remaining animals. He found 24 animals, registered 8 of them and set up a breeding and marketing campaign.

The business last year turned over €52 million, employed 200 people and sourced pigs from over 900 farmers from the region! What a business! They have just bought the local abattoir from the govt and that employs 100 people! All this around one breed of pig! I am absolutely gob-smacked. The only trouble is now I’ve seen what can be done, it has set a precedent that is going to see me very busy for the rest of my life!

The guy with me here is from the Daimler-Chrysler factory’s kitchen management staff. They buy pork from the Co and were having a tour of the enterprise to see why their pork is 20% more expensive than anywhere else. They don’t mind paying extra for the quality. They were good clients. About 10 of them were there the same day as me and we took a tour of the business together.

The Daimler-Chrysler kitchen serves 11,000 meals per day! 800 are in the evening and the other 10,200 are served between 11am and 2pm. I’d like to have a contract to supply them with their schnitzels! And all locally grown!!! We’ve got a lot to learn!

I’ve had such a great time.

I then went on to UK and visited an organic pig breeding unit (200 Saddleback sows), spoke at the British Saddleback Breeders Club AGM, met with the coordinator of the Traditional Breeds Meat Marketing Scheme. And did lots of other fun stuff…..

I’m going back to UK for 2 weeks in January for a Rare Breeds International board meeting and will fly over to Spain and Italy briefly on a Slow Food exchange program for pig farmers. I can’t wait to see the Iberico pigs!

So things are finally starting to move... I just have to keep up the shaking!"

Fiona Chambers 19 November

Sex sells... wine?
I scanned this last week and was prompted to blog it when I saw it again in the Good Living and Epicure newspaper inserts. Women wine makers = good.  We need more of them, and more power to them. And they don't have to be sexless in their photo's, or stand in a vinyard looking grubby like a bloke. My confusion is that somehow here the body language and that single glass send different messages. But if Nigella can do it for the Aga stove, we can have Sarah Fletcher as our barrel girl. 
 
Fred Harden 1 November 05

Regional Foodies be found!
Have you seen Google's mapping tool? It's still in Beta but it works a treat, if you're a Regional Food magazine or website reader, add yourself to our map and show us where you live!

Fred Harden 1 November 05

Chocoholics
These arrived a few weeks back (thanks) and I still don't know what to make of them. In a blind tasting, three winos said they tasted like cherry ripe, and they do. I like cherry ripe. This is obviously a novelty item (they'd be good for a Christmas stocking stuffer for grown-ups) and the thin (100g)  chocolate blocks are nicely packaged. Inside they're supposed to have Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Merlot infused currants inside. There are definitely small chewy things in there, and then they toss in some pepper for the Shiraz, and artificial flavouring for cherry, berries and 'oak'. Or so it says on the label. It's all a bit of fun, and they're cheap because the chocolate isn't anything special. What is a bit silly however is the Vinlife sticker on the product. "Each block contains Vinlife, the natural antioxidant equivalent of a standard glass of red wine." Gee, that's fab.

The company that makes them is called Cool Health P/L and I get the feeling the Vinlife idea came first and the chocolate was a place to put it. There is a website , which also tells us that they've started their own cocoa plantation, the first in Australia, and that they're 'farmers not manufacturers'. Which sounds commendable. Oh and they're passionate.

Fred Harden 25 October 05

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