Category Meats Of The World

• Marrickville Meatball Roll

  IN THE MOST RECENT AUSTRALIAN Census, I registered myself as ethnically Australian, non-religious in outlook. Despite my stereotypically Irish name and culturally Catholic background they’re the most accurate descriptions of how I live my day-to-day life. This morning, though, I spent outside the office of my local Member of Parliament, there to take part in a battle of rent-a-crowds, and received a short sharp lesson in—for lack of a better phrase—the genealogy of my morals.

  “Tolerance is Our Demise”. Marrickville’s Convoy of No Confidence, 1 September 2011. Image copyright Anthony Albanese MP.

  Posted 1 September 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Concordia Club Pork Knuckle

  AT THE HEART OF AUSTRALIAN multiculturalism lies a willingness on the part of migrants and migrant communities to self-organise. Yes, it’s true, there’s a lot more to it than the notorious three Fs—folkdancing, fashion and food—including a much larger discourse about the role of the State in endorsing, forbidding, legitimising and co-opting multiple linguistic, religious and cultural identities as aspects of the national habitus and the post-Bretton Woods political economy, but every Council has to have a Festival, and everybody needs lunch.

  Posted 21 August 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Red Risotto

  THE PREDOMINANCE OF ASSIMILATIONIST CONSTRUCTS… meant that questions about how Australian institutions had responded to an influx of people of non Anglo-Saxon origin simply did not come to the surface. There was no ‘decision’ to rule such questions out of order. They did not arise; they were not ‘confronted’…¹

  That’s your favourite Australian domestic sociologist and mine, Jean Martin, describing non-decisionmaking in action—when something’s simply ruled out of public knowledge as a subject to have ideas about.

  Posted 7 August 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• The Conference Chinese Meal

  ON THE WEEKEND OF JULY 9-10, the august sovereign body of the Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch), the State Conference, met at the Sydney Town Hall. It’s been a while between drinks, and we were all hoping, I think, for an uneventful two days out. If you’ve never been to one, you’ll have to imagine a cross between an undergraduate debate, a dissenting Protestant worship service, Modern Times, a crowd scene in an Altman movie and Thunderdome. But, you know, in a good way.

  Open microphone, with Johno at the head of the queue

  Posted 12 July 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Live Animal Exports

  AUSTRALIA IS SUSPENDING ALL LIVE animal exports to Indonesia. This is remarkable not because it’s a good thing, which it is, but because it’s an example of a political effect with significant policy and financial implications being forced by an outsider-body to the political process. I’ve seen estimates printed of the value of the trade between $300 million and $1 billion yearly, and it’s been cut indefinitely—with, presumably, entailing loss of jobs—after a Four Corners programme. How often do you get to see that happen?

  Posted 8 June 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Empanadas

  AT SOME POINT IN 1997, at about 1.30am, in a loading dock opposite Railway Square in Sydney, I swore a sacred unbreakable oath. “As God is my witness,” I said to myself, “I’ll never work in the food industry again”. It’s one of the few promises to myself amongst the many I’ve made I can honestly say I’ve kept. Should any freebooting restaurant manager come sauntering up the steps of Rancho Estanmore, out to press-gang me into kitchenhand or service work, I’d not hesitate to defend my honour.

  Posted 18 May 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Amatriciana Rovinata

  I’ve been thinking, it’s all the fried crap you’ve been eating.
  Now. Show me how you can ruin a pasta dish and do it in style.

  When a witch tells you your diet isn’t up to scratch, man, you’d better listen. I listened. At least I think I was listening, but at some point I blinked and found myself mentally wandering down Norton Street for a short black and a couple of almond biscotti, taking in the fumes. Sorry about that.

  Posted 28 April 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Appointment In Parramatta Road: El-Jannah Chicken

  PORT JACKSON, SYDNEY’S NATURAL HARBOUR, appears in all of the tourist brochures and Lonely Planet guides as the centre of the city, and its spiritual heart: but they are all wrong. The harbour has a rather good-looking Bridge (though the Gladesville Bridge, the Cinderella stepsister arch of the city, is always overlooked). It’s got a freaky egg-shaped warehouse for elitist affairs. I admit, the ferries are good fun, but what’s left? A Navy base or two, the Casino, a few bits of National Park, and the rest is pure pleasure garden for fund-manager multimillionnaires and shiny stockbrokers gorging on derivatives.

  Posted 14 April 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Feijoada

  TAKE FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF cross-Atlantic commerce and movement of people, voluntary and otherwise, stir in massive amounts of energy, add misery, guns, money, Portuguese forts in unexpected places, and scorched earth everywhere else, leave it be for the benign neglect of time to assimilate everything, and you might just wind up with something as good as feijoada.

  Posted 6 April 2011 · Author Liam Hogan