Australian Cuisine: Sweet and Salty
Sunday lunches are spent enjoying the best cuisine that Australia has to offer surrounded by family and friends who enjoying the simpler things that life has to offer. Much like its food, Australia is a land of opposites but also tries to remain simple. Arid deserts cover the center, sandy beaches encircle the coast, luscious bushlands separate the two. Its wildlife contrast with its largest animals are friendly whereas the smallest will kill you almost instantly. Australian cuisine continues this contrast, with every dish that can be called Australian being primarily sweet or salty. Born from a scarcity of ingredients, those Sunday lunches often employ the most basic of ingredients to flavour their dishes: Salt and Sugar
With deep roots centred around an abundance of seafood, most dishes that contain meat as the primary ingredient are salty flavoured. As you look around the table, Lamb Shanks covered in delicious gravy occupy one end, Pork Cutlets garnished with mint take the middle while the grilled Barramundi your mother had gotten fresh from the farmers market rests on the end. Leftovers are virtually non-existent in an Australian household after these lunches, though everyone always made room for the deserts that were sure to follow.
The sound of gunfire raining overhead as the world seemed to be ending upon that beach in Gallipoli, the only comfort the men of the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) had began as they received biscuits from the families that were non perishable, easy to make and most importantly, used sugar as a main ingredient. These ANZAC biscuits helped shape Australian cuisine by using sugar alongside other simple ingredients to make some of the best deserts in the world, even still made today. As soon as the plates were taken to the sink, one by one the deserts would be brought out and placed on the table as everyone’s gaze followed. First came the ANZAC biscuits, then the national icons of Lamingtons and Pavlova with ice-cream. Any room left in anyone’s stomachs was quickly filled, leaving the family and friends gathered to retire from the dining table to the nearest comfy chair.
