Mouthful

What in the world are you eating?

A discussion on the influence of Australian food bloggers.


It's fairly common for other food writers and editors in Australia to overlook the Australian food blogging scene as a credible source of food criticism or recipes. So why do local food blogs hold so little sway over the local offline media?

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Kimchi season

22 October 2008 | 10:50 - By Phil Lees

Korea's national pickle, kimchi, is about to come into season in late October; to be exact baechu kimchi, (diced Chinese cabbage pickle) and tongbaechu kimchi (whole cabbage pickle).


There are hundreds of Korean pickles that fall under the kimchi moniker ranging from bland radish to explosively spicy squid but the main season for Kimjang (or kimchi-making) starts just before the onset of winter, both as cabbages come into season and the weather begins to cool to the perfect fermenting temperature of 5°C.

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Makin' Bacon: A guide for city slickers

15 October 2008 | 9:50 - By Phil Lees

I thought that I'd write a follow-up post on David Shennan's Paddock to Plate blog, on making bacon given that I'm pretty keen on making bacon myself, and really, anything thing at all that involves pork belly.


The only real difference is that I live in an inner city apartment and don't grow my own pigs, lest I scare the neighbours and void my lease.

Globally, bacon is one of the few meats in the world that gets treated by the futures market as a generic commodity. Futures contracts for frozen pork bellies have been traded in 40 ton lots on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange since 1961 and was the first frozen meat to be treated as thus.

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Today marks the end of Kin Jay, Thailand's vegetarian festival, the most half-hearted display of vegetarianism that the world has to offer. Slightly more half-hearted than semivegetarianism.


For the nine days after the first new moon in the ninth month, much of Thailand's ethnically Chinese population forgoes meat for vegetables in the name of purification and annual atonement. To use a mixed religious metaphor, it's Lent for the Taoist apostate. On the island of Phuket, ascetics also practice self-mutilation but for the bulk of the believers giving up meat is enough.

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How much food is 700 billion dollars?

01 October 2008 | 9:37 - By Phil Lees

When Wall Street Journal makes the pronouncement that Wall Street is dead, it is time that food writers take the crisis in the Western economy seriously. The 700 billion dollar amount pitched as a bailout is bound to bring out a food metaphor.


700 billion dollars buys an unimaginable amount of food, which is why the apple pie metaphor sticks. It breaks it down into a more manageable number. 2000 commercial pies brings forth an image of a man with a large but conceivable pile of steaming Americana. It brings it back to a human scale. As a small aside, America only produces around $1.6 billion worth of apples every year, so it would take until the year 2445 for them to grow $700 billion worth, all other things being equal.

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About this Blog

A blog about what the world eats, when and where it eats it, and why it matters to us all. Only much less ambitious than that sounds and with more excruciating puns.

Phil Lees grew up in rural Victoria, the first generation in his family to not have lived on the farm and thereby not slaughter their own meat.

In 2005 he moved to Cambodia and started the nation’s first food blog, Phnomenon.com, named after the best pun that he has ever made. It turns out that Cambodian food is delicious and unlike the warnings in most guidebooks, is not likely to kill you with any immediacy. Gridskipper called him a “national treasure”. Lonely Planet’s Greater Mekong guide called him “the unofficial pimp of Cambodian cuisine”. The New York Times laughed at a funny hotdog he saw.

Phil makes a mean sausage, a hoppy pale ale, a modest laksa. He owns three barbecues and is in the market for a fourth.

 
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