A crime against cooking. Was Barnaby Joyce the meat in Pauline Hanson’s stunt sandwich?
Vision of Hanson this week “wooing” Barnaby Joyce in Parliament House over a wagyu steak cooked on …. (checking footage) … a sandwich press … may have left some wondering. Was she trying to woo him — or was there some other motive?
Being a one-time hospitality professional — who could forget that Hanson once owned and ran an Ipswich fish ’n’ chipper — she should perhaps know that there are certain rules when it comes to serving food for consumption. Correctly cooking meat is one of them.
Some may argue that Hanson was merely being ingenious and practical by cooking those (huge) wagyu steaks on the only piece of equipment she had handy.
But the sight of that heavily marbled meat sliding out of the cryovac packaging — slimy and unprepared — should be considered a crime against meat.
Let’s be clear — these are expensive pieces of steak.
A decent slice of wagyu of the size Hanson was cooking will set you back more than $100 a piece at gourmet butcher like Sydney institution Victor Churchill.
Best practice would see the meat brought to room temperature, salted, and seared on a very hot grill or barbecue (Lennox Hastie style) to form a golden caramelised crust and juicy interior.
Wagyu, being a fatty luxury item best eaten sparingly, needs careful treatment. This isn’t the sort of meat you toss on the toastie press.
She may as well have used supermarket offcuts. The outcome would have been the same.
And what would Joyce — a cattle farmer by trade — thought of the steak? Would it have made him swoon? Maybe he was just glad to make it out alive.
As Labor frontbencher Amanda Rishworth commented after seeing the footage: “I hope that’s cooked well through, otherwise it may end up in a poisoning incident in parliament. Unintended, perhaps.”
Let’s hope there wasn’t a side of mushrooms.
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