Aussie bloke and activist Rohan Anderson tells it as he thinks it, without fear or favour: supermarket produce is rubbish and what you get from chains is sh*t. You don’t need low sugar/salt/fat, just food with no labels. And you don’t need prehistoric food, either. Just real food, be it vegetables, meat, dairy, pasta, beans, fish or wine. Food which people have been living happily on for centuries.
He’s also the real deal. Living and eating sustainably isn’t convenient, it’s a choice he makes for himself and his family, and he works for it every day by growing, hunting, catching, foraging, preserving and cooking from scratch the food they eat. With a mixture of wit, realism and rage, plus cool photos, Rohan shares the fruits – both physical and figurative – of a sustainable lifestyle on his blog, Whole Larder Love, this week’s Blog Appétit pick. Over the years, the blogger has amassed a small army of followers, including Australian culinary luminaries, and gone on to become a guest speaker on the food symposium circuit around the county and the world. Here’s an extract from his cookbook Whole Larder Love (Penguin). With dishes like rabbit with mustard sauce, dill-pickled cucumbers, zucchini slice and pasta with freshly caught crabs, you’ll get a taste of Rohan’s spring favourites, and what life’s like living green.
“There are two basic ways to view food. On the one hand, it’s merely a necessity for our survival, a source of energy to fuel our bodies. On the other (more exciting) hand, food can be appreciated for the indulgent pleasures of taste and texture. For many years, I’d been content with these two understandings of food. That is, until I started studying natural resource management. I learned a great deal about the management, or more accurately the mismanagement, of our precious resources and consequently the current unhealthy state of the natural world. I started asking myself where my food came from and what impact my consumption of said food had on the world around me.
“The complex issues surrounding food production weighed heavily on my mind, and the more I thought about it, the more frustrated I became. I realised something had to be done; I had to take action! It was clear that I was a 'food victim' and it was time to take back control. I discovered it’s possible when you grow your own fruit and vegetables, raise your own meat, and know what to eat from the wild. So I made the switch.
“The recipes are also peasant-style cooking; the style I’ve seen Italian nonnas cook with. Nothing is strict – a glug of oil, a bunch of sage, and sprinkle of salt – measurements for me are always approximate. So if I don’t give a precise measurement, just use what you think will work, taste it as you work and especially before you serve it, and adjust as needed. Cooking is like life: it should be free of rules, wild and free, like a naked hippy prancing in a meadow. Welcome to Whole Larder Love…”
I started my blog to... “I guess it was initially a way to share what I was learning in regards to food. I still love writing stories about what’s happening in my food world and I can’t help but add a little bit of my food rage.”
The must-cook recipe on my website is... “I don’t put recipes on my website. I like to talk about what I cooked, and about the story of the food. I think that’s more important than what ingredients and processes were involved. I think we tend to focus on just the taste or the presentation, but the real important thing is how our food is affecting our health and the health of the natural world. I believe we’ve come to a point in time where we can no longer overlook the bigger issues in favour of simple culinary pleasures.”
I can’t wait to go back to... “Spain and explore more ancestral food and drink more Rioja.”
I get excited about cooking with... “Real food, food that I’ve made from scratch or that I’ve grown, raised or hunted. I just ate a plate of French flageolet simmered in the broth left over from cooking pigs’ head to make pâté de tête [braun], and on top of the beans I dropped some fried homemade chorizo from a new batch of sausage I’m making today. Now if I was to have one food obsession, it would be about making your food, the way it was done in a poor rural Mediterranean house a hundred years ago.”
Nugget of cooking wisdom... “Make it up as you go along, and dispense with most of the rules.”
Friends always ask me to cook... “I normally just cook with what I have, so there is not much regularity. But a mate asked me to cook him my kangaroo pie the other day. He remembered the dish from years ago. That’s a fair effort. I’d forgotten how I made it. Guess I’ll have to make it up again. I’m sure it will involve cloves.”
The one thing I can’t cook is... “Anything baked. I have no time for baking. The only thing I bake daily is a loaf of sourdough. I have a problem with patience and fine measurements.”
Food means... “A happy life. There are three things that keep adults happy: food, drink, sex.”
If I ever met... “Jamie Oliver, I’d ask him why I saw his name on pre-made sandwiches sold at Boots chemist in London.”
I always have... “Smoked pimentón in my pantry, chorizo in my fridge and a wide range of hunted animals in my freezer.”
My favourite biscuit to dunk in a cup of tea is... “Churros, of course! And it would be a cup of hot chocolate, not tea.”
My most sauce-splattered cookbook is... “The CWA cookbook my mum gave me from the 1980s.”
Beyond my own blog, some of my favourites reads are… “My girlfriend’s blog Lunch Lady always makes me laugh. Or cry.”
Here's a whole lot more:
Readable feasts: Whole Larder Love
Whole Larder Love is written by Rohan Anderson, with photographs by Rohan Anderson (Viking, $29.99). Portrait photography by Kate Berry.
Blog Appétit editor Yasmin Newman
Blog Appétit is our curated list of go-to food blogs we love, with a focus on high-quality photography, trusted recipes, strong editorial themes and a unique voice and personality. View previous Blog Appétit entries.
