Page 10 - Australian Pork Newspaper

APL director and Milne Agrigroup Monogastric boss ‘Big Bad’ David Plant loves a good laugh and why not.
John Thompson (bottom right), Linley Valley Pork’s ‘magic man’. He’s a chef who works his magic by turning paddock pigs into pork parcels.
Things sunk to an all-time low in the author’s kitchen.
MUCH to the horror of my partner, who was kind enough to drop me off to the PorkStar din- ner at Young George in nearby East Freo a cou- ple of months back, I did have two mystery gifts when she picked me up.
One was a piece of yummy fudge, which I’d sampled as dessert back in the restaurant and then souvenired a spare for my Maree.
The other was a lot larg- er and slipped greasily into a plastic ‘doggy bag’, only to be revealed later at home.
The fudge was demol- ished in the car.
She liked it.
But, being vegetarian, she did question its origins.
Tongue firmly in pig’s cheek, I warily explained to her that with no Aus- tralian Pork stamp fudged onto the fudge, it couldn’t possibly contain pork!
Of course, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the descriptor on the menu was ‘vanilla porky fudge square’.
Having previously en- joyed at other Pork Star dinners such desserts as pork suet pudding and ba- con-infused ice cream, I had a pretty good idea that I’d told a ‘porky’ when it came to describing the fudge by chef Alia Glorie of Billie H. fame.
Also featuring on the night’s dessert menu were peculiarly named fried milk bun, pig jam, cin- namon myrtle sugar (cre- ated by Melissa Palinkas, Young George) and Snick- ers bacon bar (by Amy Hamilton, Liberte).
Cant Comment by BRENDON CANT
worse (read: funnier!) when we got home and I unveiled the contents of the ‘doggy bag’, ex- plained away, truthfully in this case, as unwanted table leftovers for my blue heeler Boodja.
See kitchen carnage pic- ture.
Alas, the lass was not impressed when out came a whole pig’s head.
Each table at Young George had earlier shared and enjoyed one (or two if on a big table).
I’ve always been big on recycling, from food scraps at home going into the compost bin to grey water going on the garden and I’ve always cringed at the sheer volume of wast- ed food at restaurants and food outlets.
Note my white enamel food scraps bucket on the
kitchen sink adjacent to pictured pig’s head.
So, I’ve never been ashamed to ask for a dog- gy bag when eating out, whether that be for me or my dog.
Needless to say, this PorkStar event, so capably and outrageously hosted by the gregarious Mitch Edwards of Australian Pork Limited fame, also featured some smashing snacks and mains.
See pic of menu card.
Well-researched esti- mates tell us Australians annually throw out $8 bil- lion worth of food (that’s household food waste only, so the total figure would be way above that).
Here’s a few more alarming numbers:
• Food waste is estimat- ed to cost the Australian economy around $20 bil- lion each year;
• Australian consumers throw away about 3.1 mil- lion tonnes of edible food a year;
• Another 2.2 million tonnes is disposed in Aus- tralia by the commercial and industrial sector;
• About 12 million tonnes of food in the UK is thrown away annually by households, hotels and the foodservice industry; and
• The annual waste fig- ure for the US is about 60 million tonnes, or about a third of all food produc- tion.
Indeed, the disgrace that is food waste has become so big that on November 20 last year, the Minis- ter for the Environment and Energy convened the National Food Waste Summit at the Melbourne
Convention and Exhibi- tion Centre.
The summit brought to- gether a range of stake- holders from industry, business, academia, gov- ernment and the not-for- profit sector to discuss ways to reduce food waste in Australia.
I only wish I was there, even just to enjoy the MC, the sometimes witty, oc- casionally acerbic and always delightful politi- cal journo turned TV pre- senter (Kitchen Cabinet) Annabel Crabb.
I wonder if the contro- versial subject of feed- ing recycled, treated food scraps to animals, wheth- er that be porcines or ca- nines, was raised.
It’s a subject that needs to be more closely investi- gated and debated.
I understand that in Ja- pan, for example, where using food waste in ani- mal feed was legalised in 2001, more than half that country’s manufacturing, retail and catering food waste is recycled as ani- mal feed.
The balance is compost- ed, incinerated or ulti- mately placed in landfills.
According to Dr Pia Spry-Marques, in her fas- cinating 2017 book Pig/ Pork Archaeology, Zo- ology and Edibility, the Japanese food waste is heat treated by registered Ecofeed manufacturers, which operate under Japa- nese food safety law.
Anyway, let’s waste no more time talking about it.
Bring home a doggy bag when next out and about.
Pork Star pig’s head stars in home horror movie
Anyway, things
got
PorkStar menu mayhem.
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Page 10 – Australian Pork Newspaper, May 2018
www.porknews.com.au