Walkabout Dream

February, 2010

Devoting his holidays to the pursuit of seafood excellence and new inspiration, Cheong Liew continues his dream menu.

I am still dreaming food and this is the New Year sequel. In the early eighties when I was teaching, someone from Regency Park TAFE asked me about my interest in using or developing dishes with the indigenous products such as oven-dried quandongs, pepper berries, natives limes, wattle seeds, dried or live witchetty grubs which were trickling into the market. I said I was really more interested in experiencing cooking with native animals – kangaroo, wombat, wallaby – and also plants, in order to understand more about how they could be best handled and presented. I felt instinctively, coming from the tropics myself, that I would find plenty of connection to the produce of Northern Australia. I was dreaming fresh water turtles and snakes, vegetables from the wetlands of the Kakadu region, with water lilies in abundance and many other tropical delights. But I was also aware that only Aboriginal people held legal rights to hunt and gather these plants and animals for their consumption in their own country.

Last year a cookbook arrived on my doorstep entitled Walkabout Chefs. It was co-written by one of my long-lost work mates and friend from Regency Park days, Steve Sunk, with co-author and photographer David Hancock, and features superb pictures of Northern Australia, its wild life, food and people. What Steve had cooked with his band of "Walkabout chefs" (his indigenous students) I can only dream of – goanna risotto, kangaroo tail and witchetty grub broth, bandicoot stew, stuffed bush turkey, stir-fry of turtle liver, dugong tripe curry and wattle seed pancake with sugarbag caramel. A decade ago, Steve embarked on a cooking program called "Back to Basics" through the Charles Darwin University. It was designed to employ cooking to improve health, nutrition and employment for indigenous people throughout the Northern Territory, blending European cooking style and techniques with bush tucker. It’s a wonderful bush tucker book and he was awarded an OAM for his contribution. I am proud to be his friend and his work shows clearly what a fabulously diverse country Australia is, and how its natural abundance can enrich food culture.

Back to the present dreams of abundance. Only the other day I slipped into Port Lincoln for an educational visit to a local abalone farm. The second part of the mission was to seek out some unforgettable seafood eating experiences and on the flight into Boston Bay, we caught sight of oyster and mussel beds and kingfish and tuna farms to whet the appetite. But as far as I am concerned the prize is always the wild catch and I was not disappointed. I got the reward of a wild abalone liver, normally discarded, glistening green with marine fat, and we experimented by sautéing it with fresh green chillies, sliced mushrooms and lamb chops. I created this dish at Tony Ford’s kitchen and also had the joy of preparing new season king prawns with whisky – they were fresh frozen and were only six days from the catch, and my you could spot the difference! Then there were succulent leather jacket cheeks and a 1.6 kilogram lobster served with a Tony Ford signature mayonnaise. It all had to be washed down with Graham and Mary Ford’s fine Boston Bay wines to do the meal justice. While we were enjoying our day’s gathering from the local fish shop and processing plant, we were planning our lunch for the next day in Coffin Bay at the Oyster Beds Café, known for its excellent seafood. It certainly lived up to its reputation with a very fine tuna dish and excellent coconut and lime squid and prawns. On our return to Pt Lincoln we stopped by the Fresh Fish Place for more extremely fresh fish, packed for us to transport back to the Big Smoke. Which brings me to the dream dish I promised you last time which employs farmed abalone from Pt Lincoln, a gourmet ingredient highly valued in Asia. It is getting very affordable in Australia with up to a 200gm specimen fetching about $6-$8. This is a good size for farmed abalone. There are many ways of cooking abalone. I like their sweet quality. It is an indescribable type of sweetness that brings out the best flavour of other ingredients and which the Japanese call umami. I am slow cooking the abalone with Japanese quality air dried scallops, Kikkoman soya sauce and Chinese wine, resulting in a deep rich colouration after six hours, and a very tender eating experience. I save all the innards of the abalone and make a sauce with finely ground wakame seaweed which adds to the essence of abalone. This abalone triumph combines with the next pièce de résistance. I salt bake a free range duck which is seasoned with ginger, angelica and encased with kilos of salted meringue. After baking for one and a half hours the crust is removed, and the duck has that air dried salty aroma that is reminiscent of the sea. The duck breasts are then removed and sliced thinly to accompany my slow cooked abalone. I use the cooked dried scallops from the abalone preparation, sautéd with royal oyster mushroom and broccoli, to complete the dish. This dish was on the menu for my last 8-course dinner at the Grange and Senses in KL. I have also demonstrated this dish for the recent Sydney International Food Festival. – with Elizabeth Ho