Australia Up Close Aussie Cuisine Puts By CHELSEA MCLEAN	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
国際的なオーストラリア料理 オーストラリア国内で、最近、自国の料理が話題に上ることが多くなりました。オーストラリア料理は、イタリア料理と中華料理を組み合わせるなど、創造的で国際色豊かな点が魅力です。また、これまでアボリジニの料理として知られていたワニやカンガルーなどの料理も、レストランで人気のメニューになっています。

If you ask an Aussie to define Australian cuisine, most will tell you it's a meat pie, barbecued sausage or well-done steak. Some people know that lamingtons are Australian, and of course there's vegemite. But aside from these typically Aussie foods, most people are at a loss to define Australia's cooking.

It would probably be more accurate to call Australian cuisine "international cuisine." Australia's multicultural society has brought together many different foods from overseas that Australians have come to accept as their own.

Australian restaurants serve almost every kind of international cuisine. On the Gold Coast, where I live, there are plenty of different styles to choose from. I've been to Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mediterranean, Indian, Thai, Malaysian, French, German, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Mongolian, Irish and British restaurants.

Australians are eating more international foods today than ever before, but these are not all new. One of my mother's Australian cookbooks published in 1965 contains recipes for many international dishes that are still popular today. These include spaghetti bolognese, beef stroganoff, wiener schnitzel, sweet and sour pork, chow mein and sukiyaki.

Listening to a national talkback radio program in my car one day, I was surprised to hear that Australian cooking has become a popular issue. Australian restaurateurs and food critics across the country are trying to define our cuisine and give it future direction.

Sydney restaurateur Jean Paul Granetto said we need to become much more Australian in our cuisine: "Mediterranean and Asian style cuisine is not Australian at all. This type of cuisine is found all over the world, and I think we're cheating ourselves if we believe Australian cuisine is a `Mediterrasian' cuisine, as I've heard it called."

Authentic native Australian foods do exist, but they can usually only be found in restaurants. Native Australian animals like emu, kangaroo, wallaby, crocodile, goanna, and witchetty grubs have recently become trendy on Australian tables. This kind of outback "tucker" or "grub," as it is sometimes called, was traditionally eaten by Australian Aborigines who used to hunt and gather their own food. Other authentic Australian "outback" favorites include damper, scone bread cooked over an open fire, and "billy tea," tea heated in a tin "billy-can." However, these foods are not eaten at home by Australians and are usually only enjoyed by tourists seeking something more Australian than a pizza or stir-fry.

One advantage of Australian cuisine is that we don't have any strict rules to follow, so we can be innovative and have fun with our food. Australian chefs love combining ideas from different countries to make dishes they call their own. They've created some great new dishes like Italian schnitzels with Chinese five-spices, lamb kebabs with Lebanese tabouli, and pasta with Asian herbs.

Sydney restaurateur Bill Granger said this new Australian cuisine invented in restaurants is also filtering into Australian homes. "All our women's magazines now have recipes showing how to make exciting new international dishes like Thai green salad." Experimenting with dishes like this is a lot of fun because you can let your imagination run free!

My mother, herself, is always coming up with new ideas for our family's dinner. Recently she's cooked Thai coconut prawns, beef risotto, chicken and mandarin stir-fry, pineapple pasta salad, and avocado, mango and walnut salad. Of course we also have our old favorites like lamb roasts, steak with pepper sauce, lasagne and quiche with salad or vegetables.

On Christmas Day my family usually has a traditional English Christmas lunch with roast beef, roast chicken, ham and vegetables. Because it's usually so hot on Christmas Day, some families opt for an Aussie picnic at the beach instead.

Australian cuisine may be called a contradiction in terms because it doesn't have its own characteristic style. But most countries are becoming more international in their eating habits, so it could be said that Australia is leading the way in food trends of the future!

Shukan ST: Dec. 13, 1996

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