Decadence & the dagwood dog

What happened to the real chefs? Masters, celebrities or even Iron chefs are a dime a baker’s dozen these days. Everyone needs a pigeonhole, someone referred to me as the Australian Jamie Oliver because I was championing healthy food in the outback, and others have called me the fat Matt Moran, Why? Well I can answer the second one, but why does one chef have to be like the other chef? What about the guys, the team, the brigade that work hard day on day, shift on shift who may never deconstruct and reconstruct a shepherd’s pie or present twenty courses and end with gilded dwarf with a fairy floss beard climbing out of a chocolate fountain. Where are the prizes for the sous chefs’ confiting leg upon leg of duck, what about the chefs starting before dark and finishing way after, being first in and last out and caring, really caring about the punters, the food and each other? My sous chefs and chef de parties are still my best friends; they came to my wedding for ducks sake!
I watched with mixed emotions the last course of a degustation in Alinea in Chicago, rated the 7th best restaurant in the world. Beautiful, inspiring, brilliant and on YouTube which is handy! Two expert chefs plated dessert on the tables’ actual surface in front of four astonished Joes, setting brulee on the table, swirling beautifully smooth ganache in and around piles of chocolate dirt, dropping poached blueberries and smashing freeze dried parfaits to everyone’s amazement. It’s interactive, inventive and expensive.
I teach commercial cookery, and loved the possibility that I could use some of these crazy ideas in classes or for some of my personal chef clients and then Bam! My other sensible half kicked in, I’ve spent the last month in rural NSW exploring the food security of people from low socio-economic backgrounds, during my search stumbled across the shocking fact that in 2006 the number of obese people in the world overtook the number of people starving. Now hold on,
I have to ask myself how I feel about this obvious display of decadence and luxurious self indulgence as a juxtaposition to a large population of fat people struggling to get healthy food in the opal fields of Lightening ridge. Good job I’m a Gemini.
In rural NSW I spent some quality time in establishments that would only deep fry their food, from the freezer, I even discovered a cheese filled, bacon flavoured sausage.
Anthony Bourdain says that his food experience of Alinea was one of the longest and least pleasurable of his life. So why then spend all that hard earned cash on something that is simply designed as fuel, and why are kids eating two dollars of chicken salted chips for their only hot meal of the day. I’m confused and am not sure where to start. I could start at course one at Alinea and lap up what could be the most incredibly decadent meal of my life or I could go bush and show these kids that their future doesn’t have to include heart disease, diabetes or obesity. What a choice!

Paul McDonald is a personal chef, commercial cookery teacher & really bad breakdancer
http://www.freshenup.com.au