Since I published a photo of a whole kangaroo being cooked on a campfire as aborigines have been doing for many thousands of years, the vexed question of Australian cuisine has been crossing my mind. When you see a kangaroo being cooked like that, there is no doubt about the provenance of the meal, it is pure outback Australia. But can anyone think of a dish that screams loudly and proudly, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi?

More than a few would suggest lamb is a national dish, but really, what do we do with lamb that makes it particularly Australian? Roast it, barbeque it, grill it, you could be in any country in the world. Just because we eat a lot of it doesn't make it a national dish. Our bakers have tried to do us proud, lamingtons are identifiably Australian, some would also suggest pavlova, but our near neighbour New Zealand probably has a stronger claim to it. When you look at New Zealand cuisine they seemed to have embraced their native foodstuffs in a way we never have. Sure some of us have eaten witchetty grubs (have you?), but where would you go to buy them, not in a supermarket that's for sure.

Over there, the Kiwis are eating native ferns and making whitebait fritters, things that would almost have you doing a Haka if you were from Aotearoa (The Land of the Long White Cloud), but here in Australia we are almost in denial over native produce and have been ever since Europeans first set foot here. There is a rising tide of interest in some native foods, mainly herbs and spices, but these exotics are only sought by those wanting to try something different and in one major food specialist store that stocks them there is only one little cupboard with half a dozen items. But think of plentiful produce like kangaroo, emu and crocodile and how many of us can say that these are regular features on our tables? Dogs probably eat more kangaroo than humans and what about the markets for wild boar and buffalo. Even though they're not native, it seems we aren't all that keen on them and send the majority overseas.

But even if we haven't taken our native produce to heart, what really sticks out is that there doesn't seem to be a dish or series of dishes that is distinctly Australian, say in the way gumbo is American or more particularly Louisianan. Wherever you go and encounter food in Australia, what you find is a style. In Queensland for instance every other dish is Asian style and as you move down to the southern states you have Mediterranean styles encompassing Greek, Italian and Middle Eastern cuisines, followed by European styles including French and Spanish. Now even though a lot of the dishes being thought up are almost Australian in the sense that they are very often fused in some way to other ingredients and techniques that wouldn't be done in the country that inspired the dish, they really aren't Australian at all in that a person from another country would think, "Ah, I must be in Australia."

Cheong Liew is probably the foremost chef cooking Australian dishes in the country, but if you look closely, a lot of his food is clearly made using techniques from other lands. His signature dish, Four dancer's of the sea, is a combination of Malay, Japanese, Australian-Asian and Greek influences. As sophisticated as it is, does it make the dish Australian just because it was thought of and conceived here? To my mind it's the sort of dish that could have been thought up anywhere on the Pacific rim and would be just as much at home on the west coast of America as it is here.

Before a dish can be considered indigenous, it has to speak unequivocally of its country of birth, in a way that connects you to that place. Think of the Spanish tortilla and even though potatoes are not native to Spain, they have come up with a dish made primarily from them that in no way reminds one of any other country that loves potatoes, it is totally unique. In Australia, even though the larder is full to overflowing with just about every conceivable food stuff, including items that are found nowhere else, it should be possible to create a culinary icon, which sadly, has so far failed to materialise.

Sure we have our superstar chefs in the likes of Neil Perry, Kylie Kwong, Stephanie Alexander et al, but have they done anything uniquely Australian or have they just madly borrowed their influences from overseas, producing nothing that is heart and soul Australian? I wonder when Cherry Ripe wrote her book, Goodbye Culinary Cringe showing we were more relaxed and at ease with food, did she realize that it wasn't really Australian food that everyone was oohing and aahing over?

Why is it in a country that has as many good cooks and chefs as we do, there is no dinki-di dish? And no, I'm not talking meat pie.

Labels: Australian cuisine