Day 1: Gourmet Farmer

I wish I could say better things about the food on Qantas.  However, while sitting like a packed sardine on a 16 hour transatlantic flight we did make a great local food discovery on the endless stream of movies and media that you can chose from on your individual screen.

On Australian “reality tv” series an ex Sydney food critic, Matthew Evans, buys a farm on Bruny Island in Tasmania in order to learn where his food comes from.  While he knows nothing about farming, he does know how to eat and cook (having previously been a chef as well as a food critic).  From episode to episode of “Gourmet Farmer” he focuses on a different aspect of his rural life – with an emphasis on making high quality food.  In one show, on prosciutto, we see everything from buying/ raising slaughtering the pigs, the process of air curing prosciutto, cooking dishes with all pig parts (heart/lungs/liver) to making sausage and bacon and selling it in the local food market. 

Other episodes include raising and killing chickens (yes they even show how the chicken is humanely killed), apples, fishing, making ice cream from goat’s milk, wood burning stoves…..In each show he engages other local food producers to show him the best techniques…and it always includes a feast with others of the products produced.   I apprecicated how the show covers not just the eating and cooking – but the realities of making a living and all the technical skills needed to farm.  Of course, the show makes it look easier and quicker than it is, I’m sure.  The other really appealing aspect of the show is seeing the countryside of Tasmania.   The idyllic, undeveloped land reminds me of New England crossed with California farmland….rolling wooded hills that are brown in the summer time – rough coast lines and tiny little hamlets.  

Gourmet farmer, in its second season,  and while in Australia you can watch episodes online, you can't from the US.    Matthew Evans is very endearing in a modest way with a charming ability to laugh at himself.  I hope to find some way to keep up with the show.

I did make one other delicious discovery on the plane – vodka and Bundaberg ginger beer (similar to ginger ale, but with a stronger ginger flavor and made in Queensland Australia). It was quite a refreshing alternative to a gin and tonic.   Bundaberg also makes a wonderfully smooth rum.  I had some both in hot chocolate and over ice on the flight home while watching the rest of season 1 of Gourmet Farmer.  Not a bad way to help pass a 13 hour flight.