Text 1361, 85 rader
Skriven 2008-01-25 22:18:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Outlaw food 1
=====================
I think a few of us here have enjoyed a few of these clandestine
treats....

From this week's
http://www.independentweekly.com.au/features/foodandwine/
      
Criminally delicious

Richard Cornish goes underground to sample an old-fashioned menu
that could have landed him in jail. Under the cloak of a cold
Daylesford night a small group of food lovers quietly gathered in an
old timber grain store on the hill.

On the planned menu were foods that were once commonplace in
regional Victoria, but have now been legislated beyond the reach of
almost everyone. Our hostess had invited us for what was a last
chance to taste flavours lost or forgotten. The proviso was that the
host and all the guests remain anonymous. That meal has since become
known to the 12 of us as The Illegal Dinner.

Our hostess said: "This is not about transgression, but a
celebration of the ordinary foodstuffs our parents and grandparents
ate that, perhaps, the generations to come never will."

The delicacies on our menu had been deemed by government regulators
to be unsafe for human consumption.

On the table sat a glass jug of cold milk. It seemed innocuous
enough, but this was milked that morning from the cow's udder and
had not been homogenised or pasteurised. "You cannot buy fresh, pure
milk for human consumption that has not been pasteurised," said our
hostess. "Sure, there are people surreptitiously selling a few
litres as bath milk - but 99% of the population will never, ever get
to taste this."

The milk was from a Jersey cow, a breed known for producing milk
with high butterfat content. Enough time had passed since milking
for the cream to rise as a layer several centimetres thick, and as
yellow as a rising moon. Underneath, the milk had a tinge that was
an ever-so-subtle blue. It had the fragrance of pasture and, to this
old farm boy, the sweet smell of cow's breath. To taste, it was rich
without being cloying, had a complexity of different flavours,
textures and aromas. It simply tasted fresh. I realised that by
contrast, commercial milk tastes cooked and flat. Another guest, a
winemaker from Nagambie, made the comment: "Imagine drinking wine
made from cooked grape juice and you get the idea of just how
different raw milk is."

Waiting by the oven, lying cross-legged on their backs, were quail,
wrapped in fatty prosciutto held together with sprigs of rosemary.
"Shot by me mate over the hill," said our hostess. The quail in the
tray didn't look like the quail at the market. What they lacked in
plumpness they made up for in firmness. They were a deep pink to
deep mauve, and had dark, bloody marks from the shotgun pellets.
"Stubble quail," she said. "We ate loads of game when we were
growing up on our farm in the west, near the South Australian
border. The nearest town was 60 miles (100kilometres) away. So
anything other than farm-slaughtered mutton was a pleasant change.
We all grew up being good shots, so game birds were always on the
menu at home. We ate quail, duck..."

Shortly, the little birds emerged from the hot oven with the
prosciutto crisped, and the flesh well and truly set. Inside, the
meat was a deep pink and the flush of steam from the legs carried an
aroma more intense than poultry. The smell reminded me of the time,
as a young boy, I saved a wild duckling from the rain. The quail was
perfectly cooked, surprisingly moist but very toothsome for such a
small bird.

The other guests ate mostly in silence; the occasional "tink"
punctuated the air as small lead shotgun pellets were removed from
mouths and demonstratively dropped onto the side of a plate.

Although it is legal to hunt for stubble quail between April and
June, the law prohibits wild game animals not just from being sold
in Victoria (with a few exceptions) but also from being stored on
premises licensed to sell food. "There is also the small matter of
needing to have a gun licence as well," added our hostess.

con't


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