I’VE JUST PUT A TEAM together of your 17-year-olds who’ll be sick of living up in the land of the falafel in western Sydney playing in front of a 12,000-seat stadium that’s still not put up…

That was Eddie McGuire, Collingwood’s house ghost, describing the alluring attractions of earning a high income and playing football in Western Sydney.

I recall not understanding the jibe at all, at the time. Western Sydney has some fantastic felafel, and if I had heaps of money and a team nutritionist telling me to eat lots of carbohydrates, hell, wouldn’t I eat the stuff daily? I mean, certainly, it’s a bad ethnic joke at the expense of Lebanese and other Arabic migrants, who the AFL certainly purports to be interested in luring away from rugby league. Certainly it was one more step away from a genuinely respectful discourse of multiculturalism in Australia. Certainly, it was yet another example of the Sydney media beating up a stupid statement by a highly-paid buffoon—bread and butter for the lazy self-obsessed creatures who once a day beat their fists to a pulp for an hour on their keyboards, squinting through their cocaine and pinot noir hangovers, and call the product “journalism”. But really, when you get down to it, what was the joke more than simple ignorance about a delicious bit of food?

Eddie, I’m as much of a skip as you yourself are. We share a lot in common. We’ve both got stereotypical Irish names, and a folk memory of a Celtic history of which neither of us have any direct experience. We both make good suits look like seconds from Kelly Country. We’ve got hairlines moving in the same direction. We both hate Essendon and their sleazy Victorian Liberal Party self-absorption. We’re good blokes, you and I. But Eddie, let me share with you the secrets of the skippy felafel, prime ingredient in the whitefella kebab, and you can at least enjoy the fruit of Australia’s best-loved multicultural practice: whiteys watching a show once on SBS, pinching ideas from other people’s food, cooking it badly, and calling it their own.

It’s as Australian as Mongolian Lamb with rice cooked by a teenaged ranga in the Sutton Forest roadhouse.

Liam’s Skippy Felafel

Ingredients:

• Raw Chickpeas
• Fresh Coriander
• A Bit Of Fresh Parsley, Not Much
• Lebanese Culturally Appropriated Seven Spice Mix: Ginger, Allspice, Cloves, Cumin, Paprika, Cinnamon, Nutmeg
• A Small Onion
• Garlic To Taste (ie. about four cloves in my case)
• Salt & Pepper
• Hot Vegetable Oil

Before you start, congratulate yourself on your respect and tolerance for people of all nations, indulge yourself thinking of the boundless plains to share of this great country, and stop for a bit of religious duty: beer for the cook. It’s Friday, after all.

Mmm. It certainly does.

Food-process the chickpeas (this is a mandatory stage, and in future, will be conducted offshore if the beans have entered through the Legume Excision Zone) and add the Culturally Appropriated Seven Spice Mix, the coriander, parsley, onion, salt and pepper, and garlic. A few drops of water helps to grind it all up into a chunky paste.

Now heat up some vegetable oil about two knuckles deep—very, very hot. Get two soup spoons and make little felafel balls. Drop them in the oil and take them out when they’re done.

Serve hot, with a dash of mint sauce in yoghurt, and garnish with limited, exclusionary, bureaucratic egalitarianism.

No queue jumping, now!

« Political Quickie: Sartor vs. Obeid, Centre Unity Ultimate Fighting / Embrace Labor's Delight »