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The sky's the limit…..
New Asia Cuisine Scene - Issue 19 Sep/Oct 99
As creative culinary professionals, whether in Australia, Asia or any other corner of the globe, we should accept no limits or boundaries. For the past 10 years, my company - Australian Culinary Consultants - has operated a foodservice marketing programme around the globe, and in particular the ASEAN region. Encompassing hotel promotions, seminars, education programmes and major foodservice trade shows, the program enables Australian beef and lamb exporters to network with chefs and end-users worldwide, providing them with exposure to foodservice markets.
This programme, supported by companies such as Meat and Livestock Australia, has taken myself and a number of other Australian chefs to many parts of the world, showcasing Australia's emerging cuisine from Asian and European influences to cuisine, featuring Australian indigenous foods. Each chef's cuisine reflects the Australian lifestyle, and more importantly, it gives international gourmets and food-lovers and insight into the diverse multicultural influences and styles that Australian cuisine is becoming known for. The travelling has also enabled me to experience the cuisines and changing food styles of may different cultures and countries throughout South East Asia.
At a time in my career when everyone was using the traditional varieties of herbs with wine sauces, creams and butters, I was looking for something different to enhance the flavours of Australia's premier food products and make them taste like they came from Australia; ingredients such as eucalyptus oil, lemon myrtle, wild rosella, wattleseed, lemon grass, ginger, wasabi and chillies with Australian red meat and seafood. These ingredients are now an integral part of all the menus I prepare, in kitchens at home and abroad.
As a consultant chef, I use these menus to introduce my colleagues and their clients, in prospective markets around the world to the delights of Australian red meat, seafood and other fresh produce. My menu portfolio was created using fresh Australian products and to complete the truly natural taste of Australia, it was necessary to research a wide range of indigenous Australian foods.
Another trend popular with chefs in Asia has been a cuisine style known as New Asia Cuisine. As our chefs have done with Australia's indigenous ingredients, chefs are taking traditional Asian tastes and flavours and combining them with western techniques to develop a new style of Asian food. At the forefront of this developing style are Otto Weibel at the Westin Stamford and Plaza Hotel in Singapore and Peter Knipp - Editor of New Asian Cuisine Scene and chef extraordinaire.
I see a very big future for Australian chefs, our produce and our country on the culinary world stage. The world's media will begin to focus on Australia as we approach the year 2000. Australia's lifestyle will be a major part of this, as it is now in the media. Having visited many Asian countries and sampled their traditional cuisines, young chefs in that part of the world should take Australia as a prototype and follow in our footsteps, with no boundaries or limits.
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