FOOD BY REGION- AUSTRALIA

PAVLOVA

Pavlova is a meringue-based dessert named after the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova. It is a meringue dessert with a crisp crust and soft, light inside. The name is pronounced /pævˈloʊvə/ or/pɑːvˈloʊvə/, unlike the name of the dancer, which was/ˈpɑːvləvə/ or/ˈpævləvə/.

The dessert is believed to have been created in honour of the dancer either during or after one of her tours to Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s. The nationality of its creator has been a source of argument between the two nations for many years, but formal research indicates New Zealand as the source.

The dessert is a popular dish and an important part of the national cuisine of both countries, and with its simple recipe, is frequently served during celebratory and holiday meals. It is a dessert most identified with the summer time, but is eaten all year round in many Australian and New Zealand homes.

Origin

Keith Money, a biographer of Anna Pavlova, wrote that a hotel chef in Wellington, New Zealand, created the dish when Pavlova visited there in 1926 on her world tour.

Professor Helen Leach, a culinary anthropologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, has compiled a library of cookbooks containing 667 pavlova recipes from more than 300 sources. Her book, The Pavlova Story: A Slice of New Zealand’s Culinary History, states that the first Australian pavlova recipe was created in 1935 while an earlier version was penned in 1929 in the rural magazine.

The Australian website "Australian Flavour" gives the earlier date of 1926 for its creation, suggesting that Home Cookery for New Zealand, by Australian writer Emily Futter, contained a recipe for "Meringue with Fruit Filling". This recipe was similar to today's version of the dessert.

It has been claimed that Bert Sachse created the dish at the Esplanade Hotel in Perth, Australia in 1935. In defence of his claim as inventor of the dish, a relative of Sachse's wrote to Leach suggesting that Sachse may have accidentally dated the recipe incorrectly. 

Leach replied they would not find evidence for that "because it's just not showing up in the cookbooks until really the 1940s in Australia." (However, a 1937 issue of the Australian Women's Weekly contains a "pavlova sweet cake" recipe.) Of such arguments, Matthew Evans, a restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, said that it was unlikely that a definitive answer about the pavlova's origins would ever be found. "People have been doing meringue with cream for a long time, I don't think Australia or New Zealand were the first to think of doing that."

The first known recorded recipe named "pavlova" was published in the fifth Australian edition of Davis Dainty Dishes in 1926. However this "pavlova" recipe was not meringue based, but was instead a multi-coloured gelatine dish.

A newspaper article from January 1927 claims an American ice-cream was named after Pavlova: "Dame Nellie Melba, of course, has found fame apart from her art in the famous sweet composed of peaches and cream, while Mme. Anna Pavlova lends her name to a popular variety of American ice-cream.

BUSH-TUCKER

Bushfood (referred to as bush tucker in Australia) traditionally relates to any food native to Australia and used as sustenance by the original inhabitants, the Australian Aborigines, but it is a reference to any native fauna/flora that is used for culinary and/or medicinal purposes regardless of which continent or culture it originates from. Examples of Australian native animal foods (meats) include kangaroo, emu and crocodile. In particular, kangaroo is quite common and can be found in many normal supermarkets, often cheaper than beef.

Other animals, for example goanna and witchetty grubs, were eaten by Aboriginal Australians. Fish and shellfish are culinary features of the Australian coastal communities.

Examples of Australian native plant foods include the fruits: quandong, kutjera, muntries, riberry, Davidson's plum, and finger lime. Native spices include lemon myrtle, mountain pepper, and aniseed myrtle. A popular leafy vegetable is warrigal greens. Nuts include bunya nut, and the most identifiable bushfood plant harvested and sold in large scale commercial quantities is the macadamia nut.

 Knowledge of Aboriginal uses of fungi is meagre but beefsteak fungus and native "bread"/a fungus also, were certainly eaten.

Traditional Aboriginal use

Australia Aborigines have eaten native animal and plant foods for an estimated 60,000 years of human habitation on the Australian continent (see Indigenous Austarlia food groups, Australian Aboriginal sweet foods. Various traditional methods of processing and cooking are used.

 Toxic seeds, such as Cycas media and Moreton Bay chestnut are processed to remove the toxins and render them safe to eat. Many foods are also baked in the hot campfire coals, or baked for several hours in ground ovens. 'Paperbark’, the bark of Melaleuca species, is widely used for wrapping food placed in ground ovens. Bush bread was made by women using many types of seeds, nuts and corns to process a flour or dough to make bread.

Aboriginal traditional native food use has been severely impacted by non-indigenous immigration since 1788, especially in the more densely colonised areas of south-eastern Australia. There, the introduction of non-native foods to Aborigines has resulted in an almost complete abandonment of native foods by Aborigines. This impact on traditional foods has been further accentuated by the loss of traditional lands which has resulted in reduced access to native foods by Aborigines and destruction of native habitat for agriculture.

The recent recognition of the nutritional and gourmet value of native foods by non-indigenous Australians is introducing native cuisine to many for the first time. However, there are unresolved intellectual property issues associated with the commercialisation of bushfood.

Colonial use

Bushfoods provided a source of nutrition to the non-indigenous colonial settlers, often supplementing meager rations. However, bushfoods were often considered to be inferior by colonists unfamiliar with the new land's food ingredients, generally preferring familiar foods from the homeland.

In the 19th century English botanist, J.D Hooker, writing of Australian plants in Flora of Tasmania, remarked although "eatable," are not "fit to eat". In 1889, botanist Joseph Maiden reiterated this sentiment with the comment on native food plants "nothing to boast of as eatables."  The first monograph to be published on the flora of Australia reported the lack of edible plants on the first page, where it presented Billardiera scandens, "... almost the only wild eatable fruit of the country".

This became the accepted view of Australian native food plants until the late 20th Century. It is thought that these early assessments were a result of encountering strong flavours not generally suitable for out-of-hand eating, but these strong flavours are now highly regarded for culinary use.

The only Australian native plant food developed and cropped on a large scale is the macadamia nut, with the first small-scale commercial plantation being planted in Australia in the 1880s. Subsequently, Hawaii was where the macadamia was commercially developed to its greatest extent from stock imported from Australia.

Modern use

In the 1970s non-indigenous Australians began to recognise the previously overlooked native Australian foods. Textbooks like Wildfoods In Australia by the botanist couple, Cribb & Cribb were popular. In the late 1970s horticulturists started to assess native food-plants for commercial use and cultivation.

In 1980 South Australia legalised the sale of kangaroo meat for human consumption. Analysis showed that a variety of bushfoods were exceptionally nutritious. In the mid-1980s several Sydney restaurants began using native Australian ingredients in recipes more familiar to non-indigenous tastes - providing the first opportunity for bushfoods to be tried by non-indigenous Australians on a serious gourmet level. 

This led to the realisation that many strongly flavoured native food plants have spice-like qualities.

Following popular TV programs on "bush tucker", a surge in interest in the late 1980s saw the publication of books like Bushfood: Aboriginal Food and Herbal Medicine by Jennifer Isaacs, The Bushfood Handbook and Uniquely Australian by Vic Cherikoff, and Wild Food Plants of Australia by Tim Low.

Bushfood ingredients were initially harvested from the wild, but cultivated sources have become increasingly important to provide sustainable supplies for a growing market, with some Aboriginal communities also involved in the supply chain. 

However, despite the industry being founded on Aboriginal knowledge of the plants, Aboriginal participation in the commercial sale of bushfood is currently still marginal, and mostly at the supply end of value chains. Organisations are working to increase Aboriginal participation in the bushfood market. Gourmet style processed food and dried food have been developed for the domestic and export markets.

The term "bushfood" is one of several terms describing native Australian food, evolving from the older-style "bush tucker" which was used in the 1970s and 1980s-Wikipedia