At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

Australia

Lara Anderson

Living in a part of Melbourne with a strong Middle Eastern influence, this family, like many others in the area, eats Middle Eastern food of some sort most weeks. Tonight, the meal is made up of a mix of takeout and homemade food. The mother—who in this house does the lion’s share of the cooking—has prepared some dishes she has sought out in one of her favorite cookery books, Abla’s Lebanese Kitchen. It was Abla Amad who, arriving in Melbourne in 1953, pioneered the now legendary transformation of the Australian foodscape. Until the first waves of immigration after World War II, Australian cuisine was considered bland and insipid. The richness of this transformation is clear in the smells and sounds emanating from the houses along the family’s street especially at this time of day, when the sun begins to lose its sting and children are called home from nearby parks. This family’s mealtime began then, before dinner, walking home from the playground, the father carrying a child’s bike, the four kids running and calling out behind him, all of them anticipating dinner and enjoying the smells of other meals being prepared. For many now, one of the best things about Australia’s foodscape is its ethnic cuisines; Melbourne is a city especially renowned for its multicultural culinary offerings.

For many Australians, there is also (and somewhat paradoxically) a growing emphasis on buying and eating local ingredients. This family—like many in the neighborhood—does most of its shopping each Saturday at a farmers’ market. Their favorite market is held at the local primary school, which sells Victorian food and seasonal produce. The mother buys what is in season before deciding what she is going to cook, adapting recipes to fit in with what she’s been able to purchase at the market. In winter, the youngest two children sometimes miss the tropical produce—mangos and avocados—that is trucked down from Queensland and sold in the supermarkets, but the pleasure of eating locally grown fruits after the long wait for summer to hit is unbeatable. Anyway, the children have learned about the seasons and their effect on food; the mother hopes they are learning to respect that slow, nourishing process. She wants as much as possible for the family to be semi-self-sufficient: they have fresh herbs growing in the garden (lots of mint, parsley, thyme, and coriander), some fruit trees (olives, figs, lemons), and a grape vine as well as their own laying hens.

Like a growing number of families in Australia, this family eats a primarily vegetarian diet. For tonight’s meal, the mother is making salad, pan-fried cauliflower with tahini sauce, and a lentil dish and rice. She has bought most of the ingredients from the farmers’ market, and she adds the homegrown parsley and lemons to the tahini sauce. The lentils are the blue French ones, which need to be soaked all day but can be cooked quickly after coming home from work. While the lentils are cooking on the stove top, she prepares the cauliflower, soaking it in boiling water and then frying it in some locally made olive oil. She keeps the water used for the cauliflower boiling on the stove and measures out a cup of basmati rice. Once it is tender, she drains it, pours it into a dish, and sprinkles over it a few handfuls of slivered almonds. The tahini sauce is similarly quick to make. She tosses together the nutty paste, a good pinch of salt, and a peeled piece of garlic, then as she slowly pours in water and a squeeze of lemon with one hand, she whisks it all together with a no-fuss handheld blender in the other. For the salad, she measures out a few handfuls of spinach leaves into a ceramic dish and grates carrot over the top. At the last minute when all is ready to be served, she will mix through a treat: a bag of sesame-glazed walnuts, bought at the deli on the way home from work.

Albala

A summer evening family meal, consisting of locally grown produce, homemade dishes, and some of the neighborhood's local Lebanese food. (Courtesy of Cathy Greenwood)

To supplement the meal and also to serve something her younger children will readily eat, she has bought a dozen miniature meat pies from one of the Lebanese bakeries she passes between her tram stop and her street. She also bought gluten-free falafel from one of the nearby shops, which only need heating up in the oven. The falafel are especially for the father and for the daughter’s school friend, who is a guest for the evening while her parents go out to see a play. The other children tend to prefer the pies. They are made out of a white bread outer layer with a tomato and minced meat mix in the middle. When they are served at the Lebanese bakery-café, they come with lemon and a chilli dipping sauce, but at home the kids prefer to dip them into a little bit of bottled tomato sauce that they pour out from a jug onto their plates. The mother is careful to ration the sauce so they don’t eat too much of it.

All the food is brought from the kitchen to the dining room at the same time and put in the middle of the table. One of the twins helps carry the salad. Each dish has its own serving implement, and everyone joins in passing plates and bowls to each other so that everyone can serve themselves. The mother offers food first to her daughter’s friend and then helps her two youngest children with their servings. While she needs to make sure they eat more than just the pies and sauce, the older children know that they need, at the very least, to try a bit of everything. They eat more of the lentils and rice than the younger children, and the adults eat the biggest proportion of vegetables. None of the children like the cauliflower; they can’t help comparing it to broccoli, which is a favorite. The father has celiac disease, so he avoids dishes with wheat content and eats only the rice, lentils, and vegetables. Partway through the meal he decides to supplement his plate with some cheese, which he slices in the kitchen and brings to the table with some rice crackers. The bread that the rest of the family eats is kept on a separate dish, since the father is very allergic and even the smallest amount of gluten makes him ill. The children have learned this and often stop to check that food is gluten-free before offering it to him. Celiac disease, or gluten intolerance, is increasingly common in Australia, so the kids have also been made aware of this issue at childcare and school, where they have learned to be careful about sharing food with friends. Fortunately, gluten-free foodstuffs are not uncommon and can be easily sourced at the local supermarkets, but they continue to be niche products, which makes them more expensive than their gluten-based counterparts.

After the kids have eaten their main meal, one of the adults normally tries to get them to eat a little bit more of their vegetables or salad before passing around a platter of fruit, to which everybody helps themselves. Tonight—a warm Melbourne evening—refreshing watermelon is well received by the children, while the adults continue to enjoy the cheese plate and rice crackers with their fruit. They talk to each other in snippets of conversation between eavesdropping on the children, who talk happily with each other about their plans for the next day together (a Saturday) and make constant jokes. Their excitement about all being together and having a guest is clear in the way they can barely sit still to enjoy the sweet melon. In the past, male adults tended to be served first and apportioned the best part of the meal, but this arrangement no longer holds sway—if anything, adults often wait until the children have taken or been served what they wish to eat. Tonight after the children have finished their fruit, a cake is brought to the table. Particularly in summer, dessert is normally just fruit and maybe a few pieces of chocolate from a shared shop-bought block. But since there is a visitor, the mother offers everyone (except the dad) a piece of coconut cake with raspberry and coconut icing that she made with her children yesterday. Making the cake took longer than any other part of the meal, since the younger children like to be involved in the baking, and they take longer to do their bit. The cake has been waiting on the kitchen bench all day, and now the mother is pleased to try it and find that it is a very satisfying end to the meal: the in-season raspberries really lift its flavor, and their sharp tang offers a delightful contrast to the richness of the coconut and butter.

Food Allergies

There is a widespread perception that food allergies have become much more acute in recent decades, making the simple act of serving dinner fraught with apprehension, especially when guests are present. It may simply be that these are more consistently diagnosed and that in the past people simply dealt with discomfort or in the distant past simply never survived. Others contend that it is the chemicals, processing, and antibiot- ics in food that have triggered the proliferation of food allergies. Whatever the cause, food manufacturers offer gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, and other dietary products.

Sometimes food is cut for the younger children, who are still learning table manners, and during the meal they are often reminded that they need to stay seated until everyone is finished. The older children know this rule well and don’t ask to leave the table until then. Often, they will go outside to play or into another room to watch television while the adults finish talking. At the table, conversation normally focuses on the meal itself and encouraging the kids to eat properly without making a mess. The parents ask the kids about their day and what they’ve been learning. Increasingly, the children also ask after their parents who, like many of their generation, are both kept busy working full-time outside the home. Mealtimes are therefore also often a space for planning the practical arrangements of school drop-offs, extracurricular activities, and playdates or sleepovers. Very occasionally, if there is something on the news the adults want to watch, then the television is put on. There is also the occasional Friday night when the children enjoy a more casual dinner while watching a movie or children’s programs on ABC.

As with about 90 percent of the meals eaten in this house, this meal takes place at the dining table. The table is found in the living area of the house, with a sitting area on one side of it and an open-plan kitchen on the other. This means that the table naturally tends to be a focal point for anyone first entering the space from either side, and it is where the family gathers most frequently to talk, do homework, and play games. The table was a gift to the family from the children’s paternal grandmother, who had no room for it in her home when she downsized to an apartment. It is an Australian teak extension table from the 1970s and is not dissimilar in style to the 20th-century Scandinavian furniture in vogue at the moment. Not just aesthetically pleasing, the table is also very practical. It can be extended to seat 10 or 12 and has been made to do so many times in the past for dinner parties and children’s birthday smorgasbords. The dinnerware the family uses tonight is also special to them. It is a Royal Doulton Morning Star dinner set passed down from the same grandmother, who received it as a wedding present in the 1960s. At that point in Australia’s history, the country’s Anglo-Celtic roots were felt much more strongly. Owning an English dinner set such as this one was then seen as desirable, as it represented an important connection with English culture. Many of the pieces are faded or have utensil marks, but the original pattern is beautiful and clear on those that have been used less and hand-washed rather than put through the dishwasher (like the jugs and big serving platter). Over the years one piece or another has been dropped or lost, taken out into the garden for play tea parties, or lent, carrying leftover cake, to a neighbor. So the set is supplemented with colorful and more child-friendly pieces, bought from IKEA or other cheap houseware shops. The mother also uses a mix of serving bowls and dishes that she has bought over the years during trips to different countries, especially to Spain, where she has spent a great deal of time.

The adults drink wine from sturdy wineglasses; the older children drink water out of the same glasses. The younger children are not yet allowed to use these glasses and eat and drink out of the colorful plastic crockery. The children normally only drink water; lemonade and orange juice are treats, and this reflects an increasing emphasis in the many primary schools in the area on healthy (“nude”) eating. The adults normally have one or two glasses of wine with dinner; tonight, they have poured themselves ice-cold New Zealand pinot gris. An aromatic white often with a touch of sweetness, pinot gris pairs nicely with the smoked paprika in the lentils and the richness of the tahini sauce accompanying the cauliflower.

During mealtimes, the cat—who otherwise would constantly try to jump on the table—is kept outside. If there is any meat left over, he is fed that before being given his packaged cat food. Other nonmeat leftovers on the kids’ plates are fed to the five hens out the back, which eat ravenously! The parents might also take some leftovers to work tomorrow for lunch. The oldest child takes leftovers as well—she attends a primary school with an ethnically diverse demographic, so the Anglo-Australian tradition of taking a cold sandwich for lunch is not observed by all of the students. The school has installed microwaves where the kids can heat up their curry, noodles, rice, or pasta. While the younger children clear the table and the older ones sweep up under it and wipe it over, the dad does the dishes, tidies the kitchen, and puts everything away, ready for use again tomorrow. The younger kids in particular can still make quite a mess at the table especially with rice, which gets into everything. The mother does the majority of the cooking in this house simply because she is the better cook of the two adults, but this means that after the meal is done she has time to herself while the others are busy with chores. She often uses this time to go to the study to read, to watch the news, or to get some work done.

Sometimes the kids need cajoling into helping with the meal, but for the most part they see the importance of pitching in. It is important to the parents that everyone understands that the domestic duties must be shared as equitably as possible, especially given that both parents work full-time. For this reason too, as nighttime sets in and all the work of the day comes to a close, the family members spend their time quietly, unwinding: reading, watching TV, practicing piano. Often they stay in the same room together. This north-facing living area is an extension, which was added to the original house when the twins were born and the children’s maternal aunt came out from New Zealand to live with the family. It was added to a simple weatherboard house, built at the same time as many others in the 1950s in an area that, at that time, was considered to be outer suburban Melbourne. Modest and unadorned, normally with just two or three bedrooms, these houses enabled owners to live and raise a family in a suburban setting during a period of escalating building costs. The new room is light and bright and features a couple of paintings on the walls plus pictures drawn by the eldest daughter, who appears to be a budding artist. There is also an abstract painting by an Australian artist from the 1970s, another present to the family from “Nanny Judith,” as the kids call their grandmother. The dining table is in the center of this room, and the mother has arranged it this way. As they eat at night, she can see that every seat at the table offers a different view of the walls’ colorful paint marks and pencil strokes. There are plenty of opportunities here for the family to remember the various milestones and experiences as well as the loved ones who have brought them together over the years to share food with each other.

Fried Cauliflower with Tahini Sauce

This recipe serves cauliflower with the sauce, which is too often considered a bland vegetable. However, any favorite vegetable or fried fish can be substituted.

To prepare the cauliflower:

1 cauliflower, separated into small pieces

Boiling water, for soaking

½ teaspoon of salt

2 cups olive oil

1.Put cauliflower in a bowl, cover with boiling water, and leave for 5 minutes. Drain and pat dry with paper towel, then rub in salt.

2.Heat the oil in a frying pan for 3-4 minutes. Add the cauliflower pieces and fry for 6-7 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel. Serve hot or at room temperature with tahini sauce.

To prepare the tahini sauce:

½ cup of tahini

½ teaspoon salt

1-2 cloves garlic

¼ cup of water

¼ cup of lemon juice

1 tablespoon of chopped parsley

1.Place the tahini, salt, and garlic in a bowl and slowly add the water, stirring continuously.

2.Gradually pour in the lemon juice and stir until smooth, then mix in the parsley. Add more water if you prefer a thinner consistency.