1001 things.

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I had a couple of food revelations. The only one I can formulate clearly at the moment is this: Cheez Whiz is really pretty delicious on anything. I tasted it on Momofuku pork belly, cold shrimp cocktail shrimp, and even, yes, a chicken nugget...every time, I thought "man that's delicious". Way better than American cheese.

Anyway. So in my Christmas stocking I got this book, 1001 Things To Eat Before You Die. You know me, I like eating, I like nitpicky trivial things like this, plus the timing was right to take a peek at what someone/anyone had to say about Australia's essential eats, fortunately there are several pages' worth of stuff in there on Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti.

Well wait: for context and comparison's sake, let's also look at what they consider essential eating for some of the other places we're already familiar with. For example:

Dutch
Banketletters
Hutspot
Lamb's Tongues in Madeira Sauce
Nieuwe Haring
Eel in Green Sauce
Kroketten
Bitterballen
Haagsche Hopjes
Uitsmijters
Broodjes
White Asparagus

Et cetera. Not a terrible list, only the lamb's tongues seem really out of place on a list full of things you see all the time, though you see eel less and less.

And America, though a much bigger section, also gets a lot of things right: apple pie, biscuits, bacon, BBQ, baked beans, BLT, Brunswick stew, brownies, candy apples, Caesar salad, Cobb salad, cornbread, corn on the cob, crab cakes, deviled eggs, gumbo, jambalaya, key lime pie, lemon meringue pie, clam chowder, toasted marshmallows, muffaletta, Oreos, po' boys, saltwater taffy, fried chicken, shrimp and grits, Tex-Mex, Thanksgiving dinner, etc. I left out more than half of it, but those things all feel pretty nostalgically, uniquely American to me. Thus:

Australia
ANZAC biscuits
Barramundi
Abalone
Carpetbag Steak
Damper
Doyle's On the Beach
Emu
Granny Smith Apples
Kangaroo
Lamingtons
Macadamia Nuts
Pavlova
Peach Melba
Pie Floater
Sydney Rock Oysters
Tasmanian Leatherwood Honey
Tiger Prawn
Vegemite
Wattleseed

+++