At the Purple Goanna cafe in inner-city Sydney, a fillet of crocodile was slowly poaching in a wattle seed cream sauce.
“Previously, I had only tasted crocodile that had been fried, and it was really tough and chewy. But if you poach it slowly it’s very tender, similar to chicken,” said Taryn Stewart, 25, who has worked at the cafe for six months. The Purple Goanna specializes in fusing traditional Aboriginal meats and spices with modern cuisine.
Stewart’s favorite dish is kangaroo steak. “You’ve got to cook it fast so it’s really tender and not tough and chewy, which means just a couple of minutes on each side,” she said.
Photo: AFP
But she will not be standing over the grill here for much longer. This month Stewart, with 17 other trainees, is beginning an indigenous chef traineeship — the first of its kind — with some of Sydney’s leading restaurateurs. She hopes to have her own restaurant one day.
Neil Perry owns Sydney’s Rockpool restaurant and will be one of the program’s mentors.
“When you think of all the fantastic chefs in Australia, there aren’t really any indigenous ones at the top of the tree,” he said.
“We’d like to think that one day there will be a great contribution to the Australian culinary scene by young indigenous people.”
Perry is one of 13 high-profile chefs from Sydney who will take on indigenous trainees for three years.
“The exciting thing is the influence we can have on the trainees, so one day one of them might run their own kitchen and be able to reflect on their indigenous cooking and ingredients and bring that into their food,” he said.
Each trainee and their new employers will be mentored by respected Aboriginal figures in the community throughout the traineeship. The scheme is backed by private donors and the federal government’s indigenous employment program.
“Employment is the best way to close the gap on indigenous inequality and giving a person a job not only changes their lives, but the lives of their family and friends,” said Mark Arbib, a former federal minister for indigenous employment who is involved with the trainee scheme.
“A lot of work is under way to address the employment differences between indigenous and non-indigenous communities, but it’s going to take decades to turn it around.”
Less than half of Australia’s indigenous students finish high school, compared with 88 percent of the non-indigenous population. Unemployment is four times the national average and the average weekly wage of indigenous people is a third less than that of other Australians.
“The government can’t do it alone and private industry needs to get involved. A project like this is great because small business people are getting off their backsides and putting their shoulders to the wheel to actually fight indigenous inequality,” said Arbib.
The scheme will initially only operate in Sydney but the backers hope that it will eventually expand around the country.
At the Purple Goanna, Stewart said her excitement about the course was mixed with trepidation. “I’m a bit terrified to be trained by such well-known chefs but I do think we definitely need indigenous role models in this industry,” she said.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built
“Once you get there, you think, that’s a little embarrassing or revealing or scary... but ultimately, I learned that is where the good stuff is,” says Taiwanese-American director Sean Wang about writing indie breakout Didi (弟弟), which debuted at Sundance Film Festival Asia 2024 in Taipei last month. Didi is a heartwarming coming-of-age story centered on the Asian American experience. Not just a 2000s teenage nostalgia piece, but a raw, unflinching look at immigrant families and adolescent identity struggles. It quickly became the centerpiece of the event, striking a chord with not only those sharing similar backgrounds but anyone who’s ever
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
RSS