6 Degrees of Bush Tucker

It's been some weeks since the event, but the delicious taste of 6 Degrees of Bush Tucker is still almost as vibrant as that night.

The team at 6 Degrees of Preparation brought it, big time.

Contemporary Australiana fare at its interpretative and experimental best.

This time with increased numbers both in attendance and kitchen staff. I suspect that sooner rather than later, they'll have to take the events to a different location, or at least open up the partition that keeps the current crowd separated from the stacked up chairs from Rosebud's day trading.

I brought my two girlfriends and we brought two bottles of wine. It's handy to note the event is no longer BYO, so we parked our bottles for another time. With a great wine selection on offer, affordable drinks prices (approx. $5 or $6 per wine glass and we paid approx. $20 for a bottle) and with the night's signature cocktail (Arnhem Land Mule) on offer, it works so that there really is no need for BYO. Plus it's handy for a wine rookie like myself having the team recommend matching wines that complement the dishes.

1: Barramundi Goujons marinated in Bush Tomato Chutney wrapped in thin pastry served with Lime Aioli. I'm a fan of fish, a big fan, especially of our native Australian varieties. How do you explain to people overseas what they're missing out on? This dish was a hit.




2: Pumpkin & Bunya Nut Soup with Herb Damper. Sweet, sweet pumkiny goodness, it went down a treat, so smooth, (actually) sweet, creamy, with a crunchy nut finish. Great contrast in texture.



3: Paperback Grilled Queensland Trout Salad with Lemon Aspen and Warrigal Greens. See dish one: big fan of fish. Another hit.

4: Surf'n Turf: Kangaroo Loin, School Prawns, Mountain Pepper Leaf and Berryfgh Jus served with Mash. Tender, succulent, delicious kangaroo meat. I had the misconception that due to its "gaminess", kangaroo meat needed to be cooked long and hard. These pieces were seared lightly and contained a juicy, soft, melt in your mouth tenderness.

5: Old Man Salt Bush & Lamb Pancakes. Probably my least favourite dish of the night, not to say that it wasn't good though. I reminded me of the "pitta" (in Greek) or "bourek" (in Macedonian) that my mother and mother-in-law respectively make. A round dish of pastry filled with either cheese or a combination of cheese and spinach. This was the Aussie version! Not as refined as its Greek of Macedonian counterparts, after all they've had thousands of years to get that pastry just right.

6: Pavlova Roulade with Wattle Seed Cream, Kiwi Gelee & Autumn Fruits. Pavlova: the classic all-Australian dish. Add a splash of fresh, tangy, colourful fruit and you have a home run.

Following the footsteps of 6 Degrees of Goat, it was yet another well executed night. The 6 Degrees crew were on the money with capturing and show casing native Australian food. Yet again they managed to take me back to my childhood: reminiscent of coming to a foreign land with such vastness and diversity. Strange animals such as never-before-seen fish and that strange marsupial hopping around on two legs, which would later become a favourite pet (yes I had a kangaroo for a period during my childhood). They also taught us about, and gave us a taste of what the indigenous ate and lastly tied it into contemporary culture with what has become to be identified as one of the true Aussie dishes (pavlova, in case you've been living under a rock). Awesome. Who said we had no culture?

Authentic Happiness

Meditative March has made me all thoughtful and stuff. Less talk more action seems to be the motto. I've been busy socialising, cooking and living my life, too busy to be recording it all, which is starting to seem like such a ludicrous concept by the way.

I'm torn between two generations: X and Y. I  was born somewhere in between the two, either the end of X or the beginning of Y, no one is able to decide the exact dates that define the generations. Either way, I sway between the two like a fish being pulled by the tide. As much as I love technology I despise it. As much as I want to be connected I want to disappear.

Is there anybody out there? What is all this for? What's the purpose? The last is the biggest question.

What am I doing all this for? Who am I? Do I have to pick who I want to be? Who cares where I ate at on the weekend?

The last couple of weeks my writing has been inconsistent. I have a backlog of cafes I need to write the reviews for and photos to edit. That shit is weighing me down. When did it stop being fun and start being a drag?

It's Bourdain's fault, that rat bastard. He's got it made. I want what he's got. The traveling and the eating with a big slice of culture in his face.

It was a slow and steady culmination of doing Bourdain-a-thons (watching back to back episodes of No Reservations horizontally on my couch wearing nothing but a T-shirt and my underwear, eating my shitty food while he tasted exotic things and got sloshed), reading my signed copy of Kitchen Confidential and meeting the bastard. Add my constant slutting around Sydney cafes and restaurants the last two months and the last straw of the Taste of Sydney Festival. But what could all this mean?

I've got all Bourdain things that I love on one hand, then all Sydney things which I also (should) love in the other. Shouldn't they all harmonise? Something hasn't been sitting right deep down in my gut, it didn't make sense. Like eating a dodgy meal which is sure to cause you pain later, it festers and churns.

It's what I've been thinking and feeling ever since I stepped foot on this massive island of ours called Australia, 22 years ago. There is no culture. There is no history. So without these two elements, what story are we trying to tell? I knew it back then as an eight year old and I know it now even better.

Food is history, food is culture, it's who we are, where we came from and where we are going.

The only story Taste of Sydney explicitly told me is how to cash in, how to pose like a real Sydney-sider and how desperate we are for something more real and tangible, for something authentic. This is the same story I've been told consistently in every Sydney cafe or restaurant I've dined in. The superficial transactions speak for themselves.

Kooky decor or random tid-bits collected from someones trash can and back yard garage sale? Voila. We have a new theme for a cafe!

Sydney and in fact Australia is asking for anything as long as it has some sort of story or even abstract interest, just to get away from our every day monotony and instead get the opportunity to be sophisticated and cultured and shit.

That's why I'm over it. I've been trolling through the multitude of food blogs out there and every fucker and his dog is a food critic. But they're not telling me what I really want to hear.

I'm putting this down and hope that you pick it up: I'm not a food critic, I don't know the French names or techniques for food. That's what the chefs are for. I just know what I like and what resonates with me deep down in my soul.

Who I am is a Greek raised on farms and living the urban life for a while now. I'm a citizen of the world, taking in different cultures and wanting to find out more. I'm looking to make connections between how I was raised and what my culture and family is about, with how I live my life today. This is a declaration damn it. That's what I want to share with you reading this right now. I want to tell you my story and hopefully help you build your own.

Like any true philosophizing Greek and my forefathers before me, I want to know what the meaning is. I want to search the deep recesses and figure out how we got here in the first place.

I said Australia has no culture or history. The reality is, it has almost if not all the cultures in the world living under one roof. What an awesome collective?! It's evident in the faces of its inhabitants, in the cuisines they dish out and the themes and ideas they prop up. We are truly spoilt for choice and opportunity and perhaps smaller collectives like Melbourne and Adelaide are becoming so successful at it (the authentic food thing) because they are able to stay true to this vision of sharing their experiences authentically. Luckily Sydney is catching up, especially with cool and fun initiatives or groups like 6 Degrees of Preparation.

This is our time, where we the invaders bring our influences and traditions and create a mish-mash for this, our new world. It's us creating out own story. This is our time of making history or at least understanding it.

So this is my vow. No more boring posts of "this is a cafe I ate at and the service was good and the coffee tasty". Fuck that boring shit, let Simon Food Favorites wade through that dredge. It's time we took it up a notch and explored ideas and what that cafe really means, what lies underneath the surface, find out what the real story is. It's time to reinvent myself and this blog. Its time to start a conversation with some real people.

Existential crisis number two complete for this year and it's only March. Stay tuned.

6 Degrees of Preparation: Goat

A friend of mine told me about 6 Degrees of Preparation. I joined the group on Meetup and Facebook and the rest is history. Already I feel like a part of the family. There's no turning back, I'm hooked.

6 Degrees of Preparation is a social experiment. It's an artistic expression. It's a culinary delight. It's a social event, a dining experience, a great night out, an excuse to do three of my favourite things: eat, drink and socialise.

There's been four events since it's inception:

1. Fennel
2. Hazelnut
3. Chilli
4. Goat

Each event focuses on one key ingredient. I was interstate for chilli (boo) and didn't even know about it at the fennel and hazelnut stages. So I lose my 6 Degrees of Preparation virginity to goat.

It's a three hour cocktail dining experience and the menu includes:

1. Goat mince bisteeya, brik pastry with cinnamon, corriander and almonds
2. Goat's cheese and zucchini tart with pear and rocket salad
3. Goat cutlets crusted in dukkah with cous cous
4. Preserved fig and sweet onion tart tatin with goat labne and watercress
5. Slow braised goat shoulder with eggplant and soft polenta
6. Saffron goats milk panna cotta with stone fruits

Sally tells us the first two were run out of her mother's tin shed at the back of her house, using the small residential kitchen available at the premises. Since their humble beginnings they've moved up in the world, securing a commercial kitchen and space.

I understand what Sally and Utku are trying to do. It's what I've been trying to do yet somehow feel I've failed to in this blog. It's to combine culture and food. They incorporate sustainability, experimentation and inspiration. The concept encompasses what gastronomy is all about.

It's tangible yet fleeting at the same time. It transports you to a different time and place.

It's not about stiff upper lip michelin starness or what the fuck you want to call it. It's about making "it" accessible to the every day person. It's about getting together with your mates or like minded people and enjoying the good things in life.

For me goat takes me to my core, my childhood, where it all began. Having grown up on a dairy farm in Greece and then later a hobby farm where my dad would hunt (and gather) wild goat, goat was a staple food. I've seen the whole lifecycle from inception to birth to growth to death and table. I've herded, nurtured, played with, befriended, sacrificed and fed on goat.

I couldn't wait to see what Sally, Utku and their Chef Evan had come up with!

First course was goat mince bisteeya, brik pastry with cinnamon, corriander and almonds. Delicious in its Moroccan origins, I loved the icing sugar on top which added an unreal dimension to the spices and meat inside, as well as the crispy pastry which incased it all. We were off to a great start!

Second course was goat's cheese and zucchini tart with pear and rocket salad. This was our favourite. Light yet satisfying, a great yet simple combination in flavours. You can't go wrong with goat's cheese!

Third course was goat cutlets crusted in dukkah with cous cous. Goat's meat is by nature very lean, yet this cutlet was surprisingly tender and juicy. The dukkah tasty, yet I felt it was not strong enough to give the goat that kick. On second thought, maybe it was meant to be a more subdued flavour? I enjoyed the cutlet alone, it really surprised me.

Fourth course was preserved fig and sweet onion tart tatin with goat labne and watercress. My companion, a hardcore Leb, was all about the labne. She thought the sauce should not have been poured over the labne as it overpowered it. She was right, I could only appreciate the "goatiness" of the labne when I tasted it on its own. Overall though, it was a fucking tasty dish! The tart tatin was soft yet crispy, yummo!

Fifth course was slow braised goat shoulder with eggplant and soft polenta. I realise now the key to awesome polenta is lots of butter. I could taste the butter in the polenta and it was oh-so-comforting. The pureed eggplant surprised and excited me. You have to try that at home kids! So soft, egpplanty clouds of goodness. The goat shoulder was tougher than what I thought it should be for slow cooked, but it reminded me of the Sunday goat roast my mum would make.

Sixth course was saffron goats milk panna cotta with stone fruits. This was my least favourite dish as the "goatiness" of the panna cotta was clearly evident. Flash backs of my mum trying to force feed me fresh goats milk. Rank. Stone fruits good though and in season.

It was a fucking awesome night with delicious food, copious drinks and great company. 6 Degrees of Preparation succeeded in igniting long forgotten goat memories in this groupie anyway.

I can't wait until the next one! Sally and Utku are taking a well deserved break in NZ so we're set to rock again in mid-end April sometime.

Bring it!