18 GOURMET TRAVELLER
Space invaders
MONA’s new “cookbook” and exhibition
tackles pests creatively.JET TRAILS
A food lover’s greatest-hits journey by private jet across
southernAustraliaticksalotofboxesinlessthantwo
weeks: private tours and long lunches at wineries in
three states, shucking oysters at Coffin Bay, fine dining
on Kangaroo Island and in Hobart, and whistlestops in
Kalgoorlie and Coonawarra along the way. Captain’s
Choice’s 13-day “Gourmet Trail of the Southern Coast”
departs Perth on 14 September and ends in Hobart.
It’s one of several free-range private-jet itineraries
of Australia launched by the luxury travel company
this year.captainschoice.com.auSouthern Ocean Lodge,
Kangaroo Island.Ecuador’s ancient Nacional cacao was decimated by
fungal disease in 1916 and thought to be extinct in its
pure form, until its rediscovery in a remote valley. Since
2013, To’ak has produced limited-edition heirloom
chocolate aged in casks – its Art Series Guayasamín box
is a sweet $967 – with proceeds helping to conserve
Ecuadorian rainforests. toakchocolate.comChristine
Manfield’s
sea-urchin
spaghetti.Pussy cat, Tasmanian-style. Sweet
and sour cane-toad legs. Fox tikka
masala. Roast camel stuffed with
goat and pheasants. Not your typical
recipes, but then Eat the Problem
isn’t a typical cookbook.
Its author, curator and artist
Kirsha Kaechele, calls her 544-page
book an “artwork”. Its publisher,
the outré Hobart institution
MONA, calls it “a surrealist
compendium of food and art”.
It features “recipes” for cooking,
eating and thinking about pests,
along with poetry, essays and
interviews that “reimagine what we
think of as invasive”. Contributors
include chefs (Enrique Olvera,
Dominique Crenn and Heston
Blumenthal among them), writers,
scientists and artists, including
Tim Minchin, James Turrell and
Marina Abramovic.
Kaechele traces the project to
2013 when she staged zero-waste
markets on the museum’s roof.
“We asked all the food-stall chefs to
create dishes out of invasive species,
and serve them with no disposable
anything,” she says. Dishes such as
starfish-on-a-stick by the museum’schef Vince Trim were the “fun and
challenging” result.
Some recipes in Eat the Problem
sound genuinely enticing, such as
Christine Manfield’s sea-urchin
spaghetti and Tetsuya Wakuda’s
venison tataki with root vegetables.
Others are in keeping with
the book’s “conceptual and
experimental” approach to
sustainability. A hemlock cocktail
recipe, for example, comes with a
disclaimer: “This is art. Do not
make this cocktail! Socrates drank
hemlock and he died.” The notion
of using a weed to take out humans
(surely the most invasive species
of all) makes an interesting,
hypothetical point.
The book’s ideas are the basis
of MONA’s forthcoming Eat the
Problem exhibition. There’ll be
dining events, too – and yes, pussy
cat, Tasmanian-style, might even
make the menu.
Eat the Problem by Kirsha
Kaechele (MONA Publications,
$277.77, hbk). The accompanying
exhibition opens on 13 April at the
Museum of Old and New Art, 655
Main Rd, Berriedale, Tas, mona.net.au