Australia and New Zealand's neighborly rivalry often erupts on the sports field, but it's being played out in an unusual location this week -- the dinner table.
Just who did invent the pavlova, a baked calorie bomb made of egg whites and sugar topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit and named after a Russian-born ballerina? Was it an Australian or a New Zealander?
The great dessert debate is so vexed that a New Zealand university professor is studying the dish's origins. Australians widely credit chef Bert Sachse with inventing the dish at the Esplanade Hotel in the Western Australian city of Perth in 1935 -- although the exact date remains in doubt.
But Professor Helen Leach, of the University of Otago, says she has uncovered New Zealand recipes for the meringue dish -- bearing the name "Pavlova" dated 1929 and 1933. Leach is mystified about the fuss that has erupted this week with media reports in Australia and New Zealand -- saying she reported on the earlier finds last year.
"We've had a 1933 one in New Zealand for a long time, and we've found a 1929 one as well and that's where it stands," she said yesterday.
Media reports on the subject printed this week erupted after a member of her research team gave a talk in New Zealand on the cook who contributed the 1933 recipe, she added. Leach was reluctant to be drawn on why the dispute has lasted so long.
"I would say it has something to do with a small country and a large country, but I'm not going to speculate any further," she said.
Matthew Evans, restaurant critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, says it is unlikely a definitive answer about the pavlova's origins will ever be found.
"People have been doing meringue with cream for a long time, I don't think Australia or New Zealand were the first to think of doing that," he said.
And Evans says ultimately it is irrelevant.
"I think it's a great dish and we should be happy somebody invented it," he said.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the