Evans - The dirty chef: from big city food critic to foodie farmer

the
dirty
chef

from big city food critic
to foodie farmer

Matthew Evans

Warning
You should not eat any plant, nut or mushroom you find while foraging unless an expert can identify it as edible. In the case of mushrooms, its necessary to harvest the whole fruiting body of the fungus in order to identify the species correctly.

First published in 2013
Copyright Matthew Evans 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Email: info@allenandunwin.com

Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74331 696 2

eISBN 978 1 74343 565 6

Internal design by Christabella Designs
Set in 11.5/14.5pt Sabon by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

Contents

There wasnt much blood. Just a trickle from a perfectly round hole only a few millimetres wide. But the pain. Oh, the pain.

Cari barks at quolls. Bails them up at all hours of the night as they skulk into the yard and try to steal her bones. Kelpies and quolls eat the same things. The quoll, a marsupial carnivore, is more wilda savage beast, with decent jaws and a bloodlust way beyond its size, disembowelling chickens at dusk if theyre not locked safely away and stealing meat scraps from the compost heap. But Cari doesnt catch them. Or chase them off. Because shes a purebred Kelpie, born to instinctively round things up, she merely corners them, then barks at them every few seconds all night. Until they can find another way to flee. Oras is usual because Cari is very, very good at rounding up quollsI help them flee.

So it was about 3 am. That moment in the night when a bark doesnt so much wake you up as become part of your deepest dreams. Wed lost a mother hen to a quoll only a few nights before and Cari had been up barking at others that seemed to be circling the yard most nights that week. With the chooks locked safely away, sleepthe dead sleep of the labourer that most farmers are blessed to enjoywas top of my mind. But several barks dragged me from my bed. The quoll had to be chased from the yard if I was to get any more shut-eye that night.

Cari, in hunting mode, always ignores my calls. A naughty dog at the best of times, shes wont to misbehave even more when shes on the scent of a predator. When I tried to catch her to let the quoll escape unimpeded, she did what instinct told her to doround on the prey from the other side. As I circled around a bush that hid the quoll, trying to let it flee through one side or the other, Cari was immediately on the opposite flank, hedging in the scared, wild yet tiny beast. Caris ability to always remain facing me through the other side of the bush also meant I couldnt catch her to pull her away.

Bleary eyed, dressed in nothing but PJs and a dressing gown, I stepped from the front door and grabbed the first long stick I could find. Usually I use a broom, a bit of plastic pipe, any long pole to poke under the trees or stairs or deck, to encourage quolls to leave in any direction they can manage. So long as its not towards the chook shed.

Problem was, the long stick I grabbed on this night was a Dutch hoe. With a flat blade on one side and three feisty prongs on the other, its a very handy tool in the garden, but a menace in the hands of an idiot after midnight in the dark.

It had been a long week, preparing to serve 2000 hot pork rolls at the Taste of Tasmania festival. I was about to embark on the first of several sixteen-hour days, after plenty of twelve-hour days and only a single 24 hours off from work in the last six weeks. (And that 24 hours wasnt even Christmas Day, sadly.)

Let me tell you, a Dutch hoe isnt something you should have in your hand when youre tired, its pitch black, and youre wearing slip-on shoes.

I still dont know how it happened, but I reacted to a shadow moving in the dark. The hoe bounced off a log and struck me in the ankle. A bone-wrenching pain erupted. I bit my lip. I cursed. I couldnt walk. I tried to move, but stabbing pain stopped me. I shone the torch down to find just a tiny hole. A minor puncture wound, with the barest fine line of blood leaking from my foot to the shoe below. Nothing a proper farmer would find worrying or painful or that would stop them in their tracks. I drew deep breaths, tentatively put weight on my foot, then continued in my increasingly futile attempts to help the quoll escape. Until I heard the squelch, squelch, squelch coming from the shoe and felt the trademark stickiness of blood pooling below.

Sadie had joined in the chase by this stage, perhaps roused from bed by my bad language. Or the high-pitched scream I emitted when the hoe bit my heel. I stemmed the flow of blood with a strong, sticky fabric bandage, and together we wrangled the Kelpie and the quoll until everybody was back where they belonged.

I limped upstairs to bed, exhausted beyond words, half expecting the throbbing in my ankle to cake the sheets with blood by morning, but too tired to care. Sadie curled herself against my prone body and drew in deeply. For the next ten days she alone would have to manage 30 pigs, a dozen cows, a mob of sheep, 35 chooks, two farms and a wild three-year-old boy, while I tried to sell our farm produce for a profit. At dawnperhaps not as rested as I wouldve likedI would rise, travel to Hobart, and serve customers for twelve hours a day, every day for a week.

My brain shifted between lists of chores to do at daybreak, and the desire to rest. Sadie snuggled closer and was already half-asleep after the excitement of the quoll. In that dozy tone Ive come to love so much, she whispered her goodnight, and added, To think you moved here for the quiet life.

I blame milk. That unassuming, ubiquitous white substance that we take for granted in Australia. It was cows milk that turned my life around, and set me on a path that has changed not only my way of living but also my world view. Yes, that innocent stuff that comes from the bovine udder was the inspiration to help me make the move from gritty, urban inner Sydney to impossibly lush green Tasmania. From a clean and cushy life to one that involvesquite literallymud, blood and tears. And to the non-food types among you (apparently there are some out there), the story seems more unlikely with every telling.

First, a back story. I trained as a chef. But Im okay now. I was, post-chef, a restaurant critic for a major metropolitan daily newspaper, able to dine at the finest restaurants in the land. Mostly at someone elses expense. Id also eaten at Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, at Troisgros in Frances south, and in great restaurants across the US, Spain, Italy, China and Japan.

But I was also living in a 3-metre wide terrace house in a narrow lane in Glebe, a decent walk from Sydneys CBD. The overshadowed garden I tried to establish in the backyard was destroyed by snails and rot. There was no room for chickens. I did have some good food locally, though. I had access to a fantastic greengrocer, Galluzzos, and a baker who made woodfired sourdough bread had just opened their shopfront a few doors down. Olives, which I harvested and pickled, grew wild in the streets, and if you timed your morning walk right, you could pick ripe figs from a tree overhanging a path next to the stormwater drains without being sprung by the trees owner. I was eating out at restaurants about ten times a week for work, and still relishing cooking at home.