Australian Gourmet Traveller - (06)June 2019 (1)

GOURMET TRAVELLER 21

PHOTOGRAPHY YOUMEE JEON (

THE TEAPOT PROJECT

).

ON THE PASS

When you were growing up in Taiwan, what was a local dish you loved?

My grandmother’s steamed fish: she’d buy birdlime-tree seeds, preserved in brine

for half a year, and stuff them between fish slices; sometimes she’d use preserved

plum, which gives a bit of sourness, saltiness and sweetness.

Describe Squidlipops, the Taiwanese-style octopus skewers served at Formosa

Bites, the food stall you run with partner Sam Gardener? In the beginning,

we thought: don’t put whole squid on the skewer – the crazy tentacles might

scare people away. Later, we were doing an event at Mona in Hobart – they do

experimental things and support eating the whole animal – and we decided to put

the whole squid on skewers, with the tentacles hanging out. And people loved it.

What was it like cooking at last year’s Dark Mofo Winter Feast? That was the first

time we had attended such a big festival. We prepared 200 squid, which we had

portioned for one day, and sold out within two hours. The waiting times were crazy.

People were waiting 20 minutes to order and 30 minutes for the squid – and they

were happy to do it. We felt really bad, though. We stressed ourselves out so

occasionally I’d burn a few squid, and we ended up having less than 200 to sell!

What will you cook with Anchovy’s Thi Le at this year’s Dark Mofo Winter

Feast on 14-16 June? We’ll be making bánh tráng nuóng, Vietnamese rice-paper

pizza. We top rice paper with egg, a spring-onion mixture, pork floss, Tassie

soft-melting cheese and rocoto chilli sauce and bake it on charcoal. It’s served

with pickled vegetables, Vietnamese mint and other herbs from our garden.

You’ll serve pan-fried wallaby buns at your stall for the second part of the Winter

Feast from 19-23 June. Why cook a Taiwanese dish with this native ingredient?

It’s so cheap, and no one is valuing it. Wallabies are a sustainable protein source:

they feed themselves, you don’t need to cut down forests, they fertilise the land, it’s

part of the natural cycle without humans getting involved. I love it. Dark Mofo Winter

Feast, 14-16 & 19-23 June, Princes Wharf 1, Castray Esp, Hobart, darkmofo.net.au

Tang-Ya Yang

FORMOSA BITES, HOBART

SCREEN STARS

Savour the line-up of food documentaries at the

Sydney Film Festival (5-16 June). The Biggest

Little Farm is an account of a couple coping with

snails and coyotes as they launch a sustainable

farm in California; The Wandering Chef focuses

on Jiho Im, a Korean culinary figure famous for

foraging across his homeland; and Nothing Fancy,

which is about Diana Kennedy, the “Mick Jagger

of Mexican food”. “She’s in her 90s now and

she’s so fierce,” says festival programmer Jenny

Neighbour. “You can feel it coming off the

screen.” Also showing is the late Agnès Varda’s

2000 film, The Gleaners & I, a look at food

waste that was far ahead of its time. sff.org.au

showingatSydney’sAustralian

DesignCentreuntil 5 June. The

potsthenshow at Melbourne’s

ModernTimes (19-28 July)

andCanberra’s Craft ACT

(7Novemberto 14 December).

News

DesignersKennySon,whoruns

SángbyMabasainSydney,and

HendrikForster havecrafted

30 potsforThe Teapot Projectt,

Jiho Im in The

Wandering Chef.

Tang-Ya Yang

(left) and

partner Sam

Gardener.