The Inspector-General of Misconception

by Frank Moorhouse

  It can be removed with the point of your knife or by using a wooden toothpick or by using the corner of a clean silk handkerchief.

  Restaurants sometimes use a brush but it should not be too wet nor used too vigorously.

  About the temperature at which oysters should be served, there is gastronomic argument.

  Oysters can be served on ice for the look of it but it is not required for preservation; however, oysters are ambient creatures – that is, raw – and perhaps they are happiest served in the temperature in which they normally live.

  Pacific oysters should perhaps be served nearer room temperature.

  The eating of each oyster is to be followed by a mouthful of wine (not a fruity wine, more a sancerre or chablis, or a sauvignon blanc or champagne, or as Sandra Grimes would argue, beer). The time between the eating of each oyster should be punctuated by quiet conversation, singing, or humming, for ‘the oyster is a gentle thing, and will not come unless you sing’ (we have no earthly idea what Hazlitt meant when he said this).

  Time should also be used to contemplate the oyster and its strange existence, perhaps by reverie or by recalling oyster experiences in distant lands, or experiences of another nature from personal lust.

  Rock oysters: A pedant’s guide to eating

  The first oyster is to be eaten au naturel as a way of honouring the creature and savouring the immersion in the sea experience.

  The second oyster is to be eaten au naturel if the immersion in the sea experience still beckons.

  The third oyster is to be eaten with ground pepper (or if the immersion in the surf still beckons, eat the third au naturel, or continue until the salty experience palls).

  The fourth oyster can be taken, again, with ground pepper.

  This is the point to take in bread. Protein sometimes seeks the company of cereal grain as a refreshment to the palate. The fifth oyster may be the point to introduce the squeeze of lemon or lime.

  The sixth oyster may also be taken with a squeeze of citrus.

  At the seventh oyster the diner should return to taking the oyster au naturel as a way of re-establishing connection with the fundamental oyster flavour.

  The eighth oyster is the time to take the leap to the sauce or vinaigrette.

  Likewise with the ninth, sauce or vinaigrette.

  The tenth may be taken any way you wish.

  Likewise the eleventh.

  The twelfth oyster is to be taken au naturel always, as a way of honouring the creature with whom you have been communing and to mark your departure from the dish.

  Now that regional oysters are often available at restaurants as a mixed plate, the order of eating is important. We suggest you seek the advice of your food and beverage attendant.

  Pacific oysters generally require sauce or citrus juice after the second oyster because sometimes the Pacific leaves a heavy footprint on the palate.

  We came across further troubling matters in the jurisdiction of national identity.

  We found that almost without exception, Australians claim ‘the best oysters in the world’.

  We also found that, central to the Australian identity and the Australian belief system, is the tenet that ‘Australia has the best seafood in the world’.

  Why was it that Australians would want to claim this as so important a part of their identity?

  Why of all the great achievements – our battlefield record, our fine civic arrangements, and the other wise components of our culture and nationhood – should we seize on this particular boast?

  Even if it were true, if there were a ‘measure’ by which seafood could be graded and ranked, or if we alone of all the nations of the world had a coastline and a fishing industry, it would not be to our credit as a culture.

  It would be our good luck but not something we could claim as an achievement.

  But it is true that cultures do boast of natural wonders which land in the lap of their birth place.

  But ‘seafood’?

  And to boast of having the ‘best oysters’!?

  We looked, firstly, at the claim that Australia had the best oysters in the world. Especially, that of Sydney people that the Sydney rock oyster was ‘the best in the world’.

  We sent out an AOA (All Oyster Alert) to Interpol and gastronomic authorities around the world and received an interesting result.

  All cultures think their oysters are the best in the world.

  Further, that all the reports received at Our Office about the worth of their oysters on a universal scale were from men.

  What had we stumbled on here?

  Readers will recall that in the examination of oyster abuse we confronted the oyster-eating inhibition which comes from the resemblance of the oyster to human semen.

  The most encouraging interpretation of the boast about having ‘the best oysters’ which our team could come up with was that the boast came from men whose gender esteem, at this point in history, was shaky.

  It would seem that men who are suffering an anxiety from the ongoing redefinition of the male role, at least still cling to a harmless primitive pride in their national ‘oyster’.

  That is, to spell it out, a pride in their own manly essence.

  We go too far you say?

  While on the matter of lubricity. The oyster more than most food (perhaps the fig, date and banana compete) is seen as a point where the human body and food symbolically meet.

  While we do not have any brief or jurisdiction about the cooking of oysters, we do wish to place on record a dish invented by the late John Abernethy, one of our great publishers – the barbecue dish of the Abernethy Oyster Sausage.

  The Abernethy Oyster Sausage is a dish where the beef butchers’ sausage is half-cooked, taken from the barbecue and slit open, oysters are placed along the slit, and the sausage returned to the barbecue until fully cooked.

  It is eaten in the hand.

  The phallic sausage absorbs the oyster flavour, and creates something resembling the flavour of the vagina running with sperm. One might speculate that it provides something for everyone’s taste.

  (Oh, have we said something wrong, again?)

  It is only natural to make associations between foods and parts of the body – where the food and the body become poetry – lubricous or not.

  We do not wish to dwell on this but comprehensiveness demands a few more notations.

  For example, Barbara Holland in her book Endangered Pleasures mentions oyster-eating as being ‘lubricous’.

  So does Tim Herbert in his wonderful essay on the anus in Australian culture – he refers to the ‘lubricous oyster’ (the Sydney Review, August 1995).

  A Toast: ‘To the Memory of the Sydney Review’.

  AN INQUIRY INTO THE FAILURE OF AUSTRALIANS TO EAT ENOUGH CHEESE

  In recent weeks there has been some questioning in parliament and the media of the terms of reference of the Office of the Inspector-General of Misconception.

  We believe that the Prime Minister has suggested that we are engaged in some sort of political ‘stew’.

  We are disturbed about the Prime Minister’s disparaging use of the word ‘stew’. We believe that the stew is an honourable dish. He has to realise that when he speaks like that it makes it difficult for stews everywhere to advance in the society.

  This month Our Office has been pondering the paradox that while Australia is one of the great dairying nations of the world, we have been slow to understand cheese or, what is called gourmet cheese; to distinguish it from those over-processed, incorrectly made yellow dairy products.

  Misconceptions about cheese abound and these involve the Australian identity and gracious living which is why The Office was called in.

  Furthermore, as usual, we are alarmed.

  The history of cheese in this country is not a happy story.

  May we be permitted to illustrate with a personal reminiscence? As a child in the heart of the heart of the richest dairying country in Australia, the south coast of N
ew South Wales, in a family which invented, manufactured and supplied machinery to the dairying and cheese-making industry, the only cheese we tasted as a child was Kraft cheddar and smoked cheddar; neither of which were made in the district in which we grew up.

  Now we want to say this quite emphatically, as with tinned food, Kraft cheddar is not bad in itself.

  As for smoked cheese, we believe this could, at a pinch, be defended. It does combine something of the elemental bland solace of milk (the breast) with the comforting smell of warm, snorting farm animals in a barn, combined with the smells and flavours of the smoky open wood fire.

  That is, elemental flavours of the hearth and of Times Passed and Lost. But we do not wish, as a statutory body, to defend smoked cheese at this point in our gastronomic history.

  May we begin the Inquiry’s indulgence and continue our personal nostalgia?

  In the thirties, our father installed vats and Ronaldson and Tippett diesel engines at the cheese factories on the New South Wales far south coast in places such as Yatte-yattah, Bodalla, Kameruka, Moruya, Tilba Tilba, Central Tilba, Candelo and Bega.

  And we had one of our first lessons in gastronomy from him. We had bread and cheese for lunch when we accompanied him on one of his business trips down to the farms and dairy factories of the south coast and we said how much we liked the bread and cheese.

  He said that bread and cheese was a simple dish but one of the finest.

  Back then these factories found little domestic market for their cheeses which were exported or perhaps used industrially in food processing.

  Except for Bega cheese, the cheeses sold under these names no longer come from small, local cheese factories and single breed dairies.

  Their honourable names have been taken up and applied to cheese made in mass-production factories elsewhere. The Bodalla cheese, for example, sold in the supermarkets is not made at the village of Bodalla; although there is a cheese factory at Bodalla which sells locally to passing customers.

  Legend has it that the cheese from these old coastal factories was enhanced by seagulls who nested in the rafters above the vats. If there are any seagulls reading this column we wish to say that no offence is intended.

  In the eighties, Chef Bilson made goats’ cheese in the cellar of the nightclub/restaurant in Sydney called Kinsellas, and again, similar environmental factors enhanced his cheese; although the ambient flavours were more human than avian.

  Certainly the goats which were kept in the cellar were often a source of much amusement late after the show had finished. But there is no need to go into that and, anyhow, we cannot use the names of the goats because it is prohibited under the Family Law Goat Act.

  First Indictment: The ghastly misconception about cheese which this Inquiry is addressing is this: cheeses, as with oysters (groan), are a living thing and should not be refrigerated although Bilson suggests using refrigeration to slow down the development of a too-quickly-ripening-cheese.

  Real cheese is alive with micro-flora and should remain so during the eating.

  Although cheese in Australia is made, regrettably, with pasteurised milk (that is, dead milk) bacteria is introduced into the cheese-making processes to bring it back to life.

  Ideally, you buy the fresh, living cheese and eat it that day or the next and do not need to store it. The cheese shop from which you buy the cheese will, of course, keep the cheese in its cool, dark, earthy, cellars beneath the shop.

  And if you have cheese left over you too will put it down in a covered cheese holder among your wines in the cellar, won’t you?

  Now that the Cold War is over, you could convert your nuclear fall-out shelter to this use.

  Second Indictment: As all customers know, but very few restaurants do, cheese should never be served chilled.

  The late Joss Davies, a Welsh bon vivant, and a well-known lone diner once in a restaurant took a frigid, solid Camembert cheese which had been served to him and pressed it against the cheek of a waiter. To make, presumably, a point.

  And it must soon occur to restaurants that individual servings of mixed cheeses (and the serving of single-serve desserts) are running against the dining practice of Australians.

  In Paris, that remarkable salon host Monique Delamotte, pointed out to us that visiting Australians take more cheese from the cheese plate than they can eat, leaving the excess on their plate uneaten.

  Not only is this wasteful but cheese is seen as a crafted product in a French household and is used appreciatively, not off-handedly.

  Where does cheese fit into the configuration of our meal?

  The French meal pattern goes appetiser/entrée/main course/CHEESE/dessert/coffee.

  The English tend to have dessert and then cheese which we believe has something going for it in that the conclusion of the meal with a savoury dish such as cheese leads to after-dinner drinks and jollities.

  The Americans eat cheese before the meal as an aperitif. Now look, this Office is not ‘anti-American’ but, unless the meal which follows is clearly to be without cheese, it is untimely and something of a misuse of the beauty of cheese.

  A tasty cheddar with pre-dinner drinks could perhaps be defended.

  Frustratingly, a whole cheese-eating culture has to exist before cheese can become a happy, easy part of our gastronomy.

  That is, there has to be a high consumer demand. Cheese has to be a customary part of the domestic, as well as the restaurant, meal.

  Cheese could then be bought in small quantities at any number of places for the immediate meal.

  It would mean too, that the turnover of the stores would then be high and the condition of cheese in the store would be sound.

  Why should we eat cheese? The introduction of varied small courses into a meal, domestic or restaurant, makes the meal itself more stimulating and, at the same time, prolongs the meal, allowing the face-to-face conversational situation of a good table, and the delight in the bountifulness of the planet, to be extended in an exquisitely structured way.

  Such a meal is also a reward for our labours that day or a consolation for the trials of that day.

  The leisurely meal with touches of grandeur in its food, napery, glassware, cutlery and wine also nobly defies the busyness and exigency of the crudely functional view of life (if you need the name of our naperer or cutler please contact our secretary).

  For two hours or so, we can live well.

  If you do not wish to extend the face-to-face conversational situation in your present domestic arrangement, please call our secretary and make an appointment.

  First Finding: The National Food Authority (there is such a body) is hereby ordered to acquiesce to the demand by the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association (nor are we inventing this body) that raw-milk cheese be permitted to be made in this country.

  Second Finding: The National Heart Foundation at present places cheese on the ‘Avoid Where Possible’ list. The National Heart Foundation is hereby instructed to remove crafted cheese, appreciatively eaten, from this listing.

  DINING ALONE AT CHRISTMAS

  We now wish to address the question of Handling Christmas Alone intended not for those who are genuine waifs and strays but more for Those Who Do Not Believe in Christmas and Those Who Do Not Believe in Families and those other malcontents of the world who, because of having been given too many ‘educational’ presents as a child, find Christmas Gloomy Beyond Words.

  In particular, we wish to focus on the etiquette difficulties experienced by those who prefer to dine alone at Christmas in five-star restaurants.

  On being pitied

  The first problem is a gross misconception by Normal Society, that on Christmas Day the lone diner is to be treated as a focus of some pity.

  Those who pity the lone Christmas diner assume that he or she is either a stranger in a foreign land or has no one in their life who would wish to dine with them.

  The lone diner appears to others as a poignant, if not heartbreaking, sight.r />
  The lone diner is likely to receive notes sent from the other tables requesting that he or she ‘join’ a table of generous, joyous, pitying strangers.

  Or sometimes the staff of the restaurant, unable to bear the sight of a seemingly friendless soul seated there amidst all the ‘gaiety’ of intimate and loving tables of people, will invite the diner to the staff table in the kitchen.

  This may have the motive of removing the lone diner from sight.

  Naturally, the lone diner will refuse all these invitations.

  Dressing

  It goes without saying that dressing in tails, white scarf, and a homburg is the most snappy shield against the pity of the world. Or anything else from the world.

  At any time of the day or night.

  For men and for women.

  On meeting the accusing question

  Upon arriving at the restaurant, the maître d’ will, as he or she removes one’s overcoat, inevitably ask the indelicate question, ‘Is sir or madam dining alone?’

  It is important not to flinch at the question and all it implies. Social outcast, social outcast, social outcast.

  It is important not to ‘over answer’. Avoid rushing out with an over-elaborate excuse such as, ‘Oh, my brother Don and his wife were supposed to meet me but his child is ill with a new strain of virus which he caught while on a school excursion to Mongolia and which is puzzling Western medicine and which involves half-hourly administering of a herb which can only be found in Antarctica and has to be flown in by airforce helicopter and which causes convulsions which requires the child to be held down forcibly by both parents. And so they couldn’t join me for dinner.’

  No. When asked if you are dining alone, simply say, ‘Most assuredly.’

  When you enter the restaurant, you may be asked to put on a ‘jolly’ paper hat. You may choose to wear it in the spirit of the occasion or you may choose not to wear it. But take the hat. It could be of use later in the meal (see below, under the heading Inaudible Sobbing).

  At the table, the table attendant will also say, ‘Dining alone are we?’ with the stress on the ‘we’, sometimes with less aplomb than the maître d’ because the table attendant knows that he or she will have to ‘put up’ with you, the lone diner, all evening.