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A gochujang chicken recipe inspired by a trip to Australia
Summary
A search for wholesome meat pie, pork belly and fish and chips dissolves into a discovery of the culinary treasures brought in by migrants who have transformed the cuisine of a vast island continent
When I landed in Sydney on a cold 2 degrees Celsius night, I went looking for Aussie food—sausage rolls, meat pies or grills. There was no sign of it.
Instead, for the first day’s dinner, I had passable beef noodle soup in a grimy, Chinese hole-in-the-wall. The second day’s dinner was at another tiny, Sichuan restaurant, served by a mother and—disturbingly—her 10-year-old son. The fish was swimming in oil and Sichuan chillies.
It looked like the first world, but felt, as far as the food went, like the third—well, alright, the second. Don’t get me wrong, much of this Chinese food was delicious, but this is not what I was looking for. One night, after spending the day at the conference that got me down under, one of our hosts asked if we were game to walk to what he said was an exceptional Thai restaurant.
I was, but as we passed storied 19th-century Aussie hotels, I tried to point out their cosy looking pubs and grills. No one stopped. Thai it was on the third day. The pork and chicken were indeed exceptional in the small, heaving restaurant. I could not complain.
My first taste of Aussie food came four days later on an 11-hour train ride. My old college buddy, Roger Galway, had flown to Sydney to take the train back with me to his home in Melbourne. After spending a night in a hotel with a shiny, disco ball in the lift, 1980s music everywhere, psychedelia on the walls, and a golden ceramic poodle in a bathroom without a door, we boarded the train.
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For most of its journey, the train trundled between expansive hills, farms and forests of eucalyptus—or gum trees as they are called in Australia—touching Shatabdi-like speeds only on a few straight stretches. Cow, sheep and—yes—kangaroo bounded away from the train, as we sipped wine and ate sausage rolls bought from the dining car. The pastry was light and fluffy, the sausage moist and appetising.
Melbourne felt like home, primarily because Roger and his wife Liane—who welcomed me with the warmth that you can only get from old friends you can take for granted—drove me across the city and outside over the next couple of days to show me jaw-dropping beautiful art emblazoned by local artists on giant grain silos.
It was out in the back country, in small towns, some struggling, some prosperous, that we were returned to pork bellies, fish and chips, and pies, honest Aussie food of traditional Anglo-Saxon persuasion. The new cuisine is an effervescent celebration of various food cultures of its migrants, celebrated in a famous Aussie song which says, “from all the lands on earth we come". In its most evolved stage, you could call it MasterChef Australia cuisine.
That kind of food was not very cheap, and I did not come across very much of it during my two-week sojourn. As I said, what was easy to find was authentic Asian food: Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Burmese, all of which I enjoyed. One of the finest Mexican meals I have eaten came one night in Sydney, washed down by a fruity Syrah.
Beside my electric-blanket-warmed bed, Liane had—knowing my close relationship with food—very thoughtfully kept three Aussie cooking magazines. I carried only one back, given the 20kg luggage limitation, but the preponderance of Asian food again struck me.
When I leafed through the magazine, appropriately produced by a leading Masterchef sponsor, Coles, I read on the first page what Aussies called “acknowledgment of country", verbal restitution made to the indigenous people from whom the settlers stole the land. This acknowledgment was made verbally before the seminar I attended, on airplanes, is imprinted on plaques on Parliament, offices, and shops. “Coles Group respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, traditional owners and custodians of the lands where our store support centre in Hawthorn East, Victoria, is based," it said.
The magazine itself did not refer to Aboriginal food, filled as it was with mainly Asian cuisine. Eventually, I made my peace with it. The Asian food I ate was fresh, creative, and delicious, which is why my recipe today is an adaptation of one that I found in the magazine I brought back. I didn’t find any meat-pie recipes, which was just as well. The pies I ate, I have to confess, were heavy and lumpy. Sorry, mates.
SOY-MAPLE-GOJUCHANG GRILLED CHICKEN WITH PAK CHOI
Serves 2
Ingredients
Half kg chicken, curry cut, with skin
6 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
2-inch piece ginger, julienned
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil (I used sesame seed oil)
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tsp gojuchang paste (substitute with chilli sauce or sriracha or grilled red chillies mixed with the chicken juices)
I head of pak choi, steamed
Salt to taste (the soy already has salt, so be careful)
Method
Steam the pak choi. Marinate the chicken with garlic, ginger, soy, maple syrup, salt, sesame oil, vinegar and gojuchang paste for about an hour. Place in an ovenproof dish and grill at 180 degrees Celsius for 40 minutes taking care to baste the chicken with the juices every 10 minutes. Remove, add steamed pak choi and serve with steamed rice
Our Daily Bread is a column on easy, inventive cooking. Samar Halarnkar is the author of The Married Man’s Guide To Creative Cooking—And Other Dubious Adventures. He posts @samar11.
