Category Dad Recipes

• Whole Hog Barbecue

  READ THIS YOU MUPPETS, on cooking and intangible cultural heritage: the rocket scientist who's also a whole hog pit master.

  Whole hog barbecue is different from other styles of barbecue. The hog is cooked in one piece, versus cooking it in parts. It’s considered the oldest form of barbecue in the United States, with roots in the cooking styles of the indigenous peoples of North America. However, the process gained traction in the American South, where enslaved people would cook whole hogs on plantations for celebrations and political gatherings...

  “When I cooked in the ground in 2017 … it was the first time that anyone in my community had done that in 40 years,” he says. “If I don’t recreate that, then it would be lost. I wasn’t going through a WPA narrative to recreate it.” [WPA stands for the Works Progress Administration, a government program that documented local life from 1939-1943.] Instead, he says, “I asked my dad to recreate it. If it hadn’t been done, then I wouldn’t know first-hand."

  Posted 20 January 2020 | Author Liam Hogan | » Read more

• Gravy

  IT IS DECEMBER, SO Australians cannot escape bushfires, workplace lethargy, and Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy. Even for a nation of authoritarians and cop lovers, it’s notable how many of the country’s most beloved cultural touchstones involve someone going to jail, or refusing to. If Banjo Paterson’s swagman had actually got to cook and eat the sheep he stole, I like to think he’d have roasted it and retained the fats somehow.

  Posted 9 December 2019 | Author Liam Hogan | » Read more

• Rissoles

  EVERY CULTURE HAS RECIPES where everyone gets to be an expert. They’re the ones where there’s no particular recipe, but you kind of know what to expect, and where the whole exercise in cooking becomes a self-reinforcing cliché. Clemenza’s meatballs in The Godfather are are the perfect example; the roly-poly gangster gives a cute little New York Italian lecture on criminal patriarchy, he sugars the chopped meat, then they go and kill some people. It’s culture, self-representation and wrapped in a fork-sized meat ball!

  Posted 20 September 2012 | Author Liam Hogan | » Read more

• Tortilla Española

  THIS MORNING I HAD MY upper front tooth surgically removed and replaced with a temporary bridge. In a couple of months, once the bone has solidified and the dentist is prepared to put it in, I’ll have that bridge replaced with an implant and another more permanent bridge. It’s all from being kicked in the face when I was 15, and apparently my upper jaw is now a bit of a dental curio. They tried to hide the excitement, but all of the other dentists in the surgery came around during the procedure to have a look down my throat to see what was going on—I’ve never seen so many eyes peering over white masks. Honestly, about halfway through I felt like the middle of a two-up school on ANZAC Day. “Hand me those forceps and more gauze. No more bets please. Come in, suction!”

  Posted 6 July 2011 | Author Liam Hogan | » Read more