“Blah blah blah,” said the chef about his new menu at Restaurant Merde. “Blah blah local, seasonal blah blah blah…” and I don’t know about you but I’ve switched off. Started thinking about washing the dog.
When PR spin is reproduced as journalism, the entirely worthy goal of using local and seasonal food becomes a meaningless cliché through overuse. “Local, seasonal” is what a food operator has to say in order to be taken seriously, apparently. Along with words like “fresh”. Or “sustainably sourced”. Except this is a currency that’s been radically devalued.
A few months back, astounded by the frequency with which the phrase local, seasonal “happened to drift through my transom”, in the immortal words of Spinal Tap’s David St Hubbins, I set up a Google Alert for the phrase. And now, every day in articles and press releases and general meaningless waffle, I receive a flood of reports of how “local, seasonal” is being applied around the world. Under headlines such as “COP26 Delegates Will Have a Local, Seasonal Plant-Based Menu”, the benefits of which might have been just one thing Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull agreed upon in Glasgow. Maybe.
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Some of these alerts point to people clearly making an effort to work with forward-thinking farmers and growers to create food that truly is local, and in-season locally (unlike the “local” chicken stock I bought in WA a few months ago, from Preston, Melbourne). But a lot of it is hogwash, or greenwash, such as: “Executive Head Chef Andrew is just four months into his career at [insert any restaurant name here] where he has created a menu packed with local, seasonal produce, cooked simply and elegantly.”
Apparently Roger Daltrey’s favourite restaurant, La Bella Vista in Hastings, UK, uses “fresh, local, seasonal ingredients, including fish landed by Hastings’ beach-launched fishing fleet,” according to The Bexhill-On-Sea Observer. On it goes.
In the beautiful The Borough Market Cookbook (Hodder & Stoughton), a copy of which a friend kindly sent me recently, there’s an essay entitled “Seasonal shopping” by the award-winning food writer Sybil Kapoor and it reminds us that in Britain particularly, seasonality extends far further than merely what happens to be at its best in the gardens and orchards. “It’s easy to be seduced by the fat, hand-dived scallops on a bright January day, but then there is sweet-fleshed cod, not to mention pheasant and partridge, both of whose seasons end on 1 February,” she writes.
Yes, for the lucky Britons who can afford it, there is a plethora of game available within strict seasons. For example, The Glorious Twelfth – the twelfth day of August, start of the shooting season for red grouse – is a day of great excitement among certain folks. “Summer mackerel, tart sorrel and unpasteurised cream… are all in season at the same time as gooseberries. Even for those unfamiliar with traditional British cooking, they suggest themselves as natural partners… just as venison, pears and wet walnuts lend themselves to the downy quince.”
Indeed, the entire book is built around the seasons and if you’ve ever been to Borough Market, it will make sense to you when I say this book does this glorious pocket of London complete justice.
I checked my local Coles and Woolworths for hung, feather-on grouse and they were all out. Fortunately, my friend Will Studd, the Cheese Slices bloke, had sent over a slab of Marcel Petit La Couronne Royale comté, surely one of the world’s great cheeses, from the Jura (eastern France), and for some reason, a recipe for comté soufflé sits in the “Spring” chapter of the Borough Market book. Experts like Studd will argue that cheese reflects the seasons directly via their feed, when the cows on spring mountain pastures in eastern France are doing their best work.
Here, we can get local eggs, butter, flour and milk any time of year, the mustard comes in a jar all the way across the world, and the nutmeg? The Banda Islands of Indonesia, I believe. Who knows when it’s harvested but it keeps very, very well; a sustainable, no-waste produce.
And it was a glorious soufflé. Good eggs, great cheese… But Jura is 14,000km away. And the cheese came out of the fridge. I’m calling it neither local, nor seasonal. Sometimes, that’s OK too.
lethleanj@theaustralian.com.au
Melbourne
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Local, seasonal? Sorry, you’ve lost me - The Australian
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