Mouthful

What in the world are you eating?

Michael Jackson: Beer Hunter

01 July 2009 | 22:35 - By Phil Lees

The other Jackson was concerned with beer.

The other Michael Jackson, unlike the singer, had a career that didn’t ostensibly end in 1993 when pop music fractured and collapsed upon itself nor did he become a constant and unwavering source of media spectacle. The other Michael Jackson was the Beer Hunter.

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 Root vegetables in ice cream? Beetroot in cocoa?


This week I put seasonal vegetables in ice cream. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time and I’m sure that I promised somewhere that I would risk something vegetarian

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A brief history of cabbage

17 June 2009 | 12:53 - By Phil Lees

 Where did cabbage come from?


Home gardening in winter is depressing. There is little in the way of instant seasonal gratification: vegetables in Melbourne grow at a slow and infuriating pace.

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 You don't need fancy equipment or complex ingredients to create ice cream.


With the sudden cold snap in the Southern states, it is possibly the least seasonal time of the year to be talking about ice cream or investigating it as happened on episode three of the Food Investigators.

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Chicken Tikka Lasagne from Iceland

03 June 2009 | 1:30 - By Phil Lees

 This week's edible fusion food freakshow, Italian meets Indian


Not merely the sort of accident created by combining leftovers in a boozy haze, but a real, processed and frozen meal that substitutes Indian curry for Italian Bolognese. It’s made by a British food processor named Iceland not to be confused with the volcano-ridden nation of the same name.

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Mince.

27 May 2009 | 11:47 - By Phil Lees

What is the least culturally specific food that is not a staple like bread or rice?


These are the sort of questions that plague me. Of course, calling bread or rice a staple without elaborating ignores variations within those staples, which do become specific to certain region and even towns. It's a little ludicrous to compare the long slender strands of basmati rice with the starchy stubbiness of arborio rice; or the foamy pancakes of injera to a leaden pumpernickel. I also think that it is fair to rule out essential commodities like salt.

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 Ottoman Empire street food as examined through the medium of hip hop


Any street food that has been covered by a best-selling hip hop artist is worth your attention. The rapper in question in this youtube clip is Slovenian and dropping rhymes about a savoury pastry remnant of the Ottoman Empire really does seal the deal for me. Norway can keep their Eurovision win.

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Budget Eating

13 May 2009 | 9:04 - By Phil Lees

There is a small hope the Federal Budget will change the way that we eat.


Yes, it’s the one day of the year where journalists whom are otherwise disconnected from fiscal policy are legally obliged to slip the word “hip pocket” into every single article that they produce. My work here is done. So how will the budget affect food?

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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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