Spirit of sharing makes room for all at the Taste
Gourmet farmer Matthew Evans was bowled over when he arrived at the Taste of Tasmania on Saturday, but it was not just the delicious cooking aromas wafting through Princes Wharf I site he noticed.
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GOURMET farmer Matthew Evans was bowled over when he arrived at the Taste of Tasmania on Saturday, but it was not just the delicious cooking aromas wafting through Princes Wharf I site he noticed.
The chef, cookbook author and star of long-running SBS TV reality series Gourmet Farmer was struck by punters’ table etiquette.
That bad old habit of saving spots on long tables for latecoming mates was nowhere to be seen and in its place was a spirit of sharing.
“If you came in early in the old days people would be spreadeagled on the table with their arms and legs stopping everyone else sitting there because they had mates arriving in three hours,” Mr Evans said.
“Today I noticed that people had the etiquette right. Everyone was eating, everyone had a seat and everyone was letting people have a seat right next to them if need be.”
Mr Evans was speaking on Saturday as one of five special guests in the Mercury’s first Live-in-Conversation at Hobart’s annual food festival.
The theme was the art of sharing and panellists did just that for both live and live-streamed audiences, expanding on their ideas about the way food connects people, and how a remarkable level of connectedness is an essential part of the Tasmanian food scene.
Mr Evans shared the PWI forecourt stage for the lunchtime session with The Agrarian Kitchen cooking school and restaurant’s Rodney Dunn, roaming cook, surfer and blogger Sarah Glover, chef and columnist Steve Cumper and 2018 Senior Tasmanian of the Year Tony Scherer, who grows produce for top restaurants.
Growing more greenthumbs in Tassie is a passion for Mr Scherer, who is also the co-founder of Sprout Tasmania, a not-for-profit organisation that mentors niche producers as they get off the ground.
“If we are going to develop a really great local food system here in Tasmania we need to transfer information we have to other growers so they can do a better job,” he said.
Mr Scherer said he learnt a lot from chefs and that an ongoing dialogue between cook and grower was an essential shaping exercise for both as they evolved.
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“I’ve had chefs walk through our garden and say ‘pick this now’, where I would have waited another two weeks.
“Gaining that information for me and being able to ask questions is very important and most growers feel the same way.
Mr Dunn said such relationships were just as important for chefs in Tasmania, where produce was the hero and fine cooking simply a way of honouring it.
“There are so many chefs who have little understanding of where their produce comes from and how it’s grown and could learn a lot from someone like Tony.”
Mr Evans said Fat Pig Farm employed an “amazing gardener” who taught him — and others — a lot.
“She’s growing vegetables, right.
“It’s not rocket science. It’s way more complicated.
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“She is dealing with the ecosystem under the soil, the ecosystem in the soil, the ecosystem above the soil and weather which is so complicated … and she does all of that then shares the gifts of that knowledge and produce with us.”
Developing a truly local food system, where most of what we eat is grown on the island, relied on accepting a seasonal approach with its periods of abundance and scarcity.
Mr Evans said that 99.5 per cent of what was served at Fat Pig Farm restaurant near Cygnet was grown inside its fence line — and that meant times of feasting and relative famine.
“We buy in only a bit of olive oil, butter and flour, which means some times of the year you need to work with turnips,” he said. “If you want to eat locally, you need to eat seasonally.
“Don’t be an utter purist about it all, though,” he said.
“Eat that tropical mango as a treat before reverting to homegrown goodness.”
Fern Tree Tavern chef and Country Style columnist Steve Cumper, who ran Cygnet’s Red Velvet Lounge for years, said restaurants committed to serving truly local fare were worth celebrating.
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“In this day of lots of greenwashing there are a number of restaurants that will try to get market leverage off the back of a producer,” Mr Cumper said.
“If a restaurant does say in their marketing they are 100 per cent this or that, those claims need to stand up to scrutiny,” he said.
For Sarah Glover, who recently returned to live in Tasmania after years based in Sydney, there was no sight more welcome than a good, old-fashioned roadside produce stall.
Fare from these humble stands has sustained many of the outdoor cooking adventures she is becoming so well-known for.
“It’s not about the meal being perfect,” she said of her trademark cooking on fire in remote settings. “It’s about stripping things back. It might be on a milk crate, it might be on the beach … and here you are in this moment and it’s so peaceful, and there’s joy in sharing that with friends.
“It’s the warmth of the atmosphere that makes it so enjoyable. For me, that’s where the memories are created.”
If they are also Instagrammable, so much the better for this new-generation star. But there are occasions, too, when she puts her iPhone away.
Table etiquette demands it. And so does the art of sharing in real life.
Join us at the Mercury’s Live-in-Conversation on the role of tradition on our food future at The Taste of Tasmania on Wednesday at 11.30am at Princes Wharf I.
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