Image: via Tasting Australia
It was brought home to me this week how important the connectors are in our communities. For Margaret River locals Ian Parmenter OAM, who sadly passed away last weekend at the age of 79, was a regular sight around the region.
I’d spot him by his trademark beret, most often at the weekly Farmers Market, where there would be an all too brief chat. Now and again he’d drop me an email in response to one of these newsletters, or a Facebook message, imparting a little story or a thought from his life in food.
When I first met Ian at a lunch in around 2016 he was most interested in the fact that I’d been taken on as the WA critic for delicious. and was also writing for the likes of The Australian and Halliday. He too had written for delicious - a column I think - but most Australians would know the ebullient Brit for Consuming Passions. He produced around 450 of the 5-minute culinary television shows at a time when being on the television meant you were in the nation’s living room.
As noted with affection by another local Sean Blocksidge, Ian wasn’t shy about a letter to the editor on local issues, and was fond of reminding you that he’d been the director of Tasting Australia (one of the best food festivals going). But there was always an inquisitiveness, a gathering of information, and a need to connect people.
Connection is so often digital these days, but Ian did it from his regular table at Blue Ginger. A few years ago I’d received an invite for myself and Sarah to meet him for coffee. We’d been trying to organise a lunch but from memory it was around the time that covid started to spread in WA and it was a stop start arrangement.
Arriving for coffee Ian was sat at the head of the table, his stack of papers in front of him as another five or six people arrived. Amongst the group, Walkley Award winning photojournalist David Dare Parker, photographer and artist Martine Perret, a farmer who regaled the table with recent livestock prices, and a local tradie who’d written a letter to the editor that had caught Ian’s eye. Over a couple of hours the table talked. I got to bore David with my love of the work of Sir Don McCullin, and amongst other things he talked about a recent assignment for The New York Times.
There was a moment when I looked round to see that Ian had left the table to chat to some other customers, his voice booming around the cafe-deli. I remember thinking that this is why local cafes as hubs are so important to communities but actually the key ingredient is people like Ian, who care about where they live, and realise that connection often has to be facilitated. If I take one thing from that morning it’s to remember to be a connector not a gatekeeper.
Image: Sean Blocksidge
The Pineapple Debate
My recent piece about where people fall on the issue of the Hawaiian solicited an overwhelming swing to pineapple with little or no descent. I loved this comment from Tuscany based food writer Emiko Davies and I thought it was worth sharing:
“I am with you, Max! With you all the way. After 20 years of living in Italy, I can only say that when it comes to the Italian food police there is literally no rhyme or reason to the things that can cause outrage! Fig and prosciutto on pizza are totally acceptable (and delicious). I've even seen apple on pizza here. So why not pineapple?
Pizza should be the kind of thing you can feel free to put anything on (and indeed here, really anything -- other than pineapple -- goes. There's a pizzeria near Bologna that puts tortellini on their pizza and there's a place in Pistoia that does sushi pizza and every average pizzeria in Italy has frankfurters and french fries as a topping option!
I just came back from an event where I was listening to Nancy Silverton talk about her career and (to a room full of Italians) explain why she has a pineapple pizza on her menu -- it was her late son's favourite pizza when he was little and she wanted to do a grown up version that she would eat (it sounds very much like the one you describe, hers has speck, fresh pineapple and jalapeno peppers). When she also explained "food always tastes better with a story" I think that also pinpoints why, for me, anything has the potential to go on pizza if if it has a meaningful story behind it.”
And finally…
So, while one week I might be hooked on finely crafted black and white noir tinged tele, the next it’s watching survival experts unravel in the wilderness, suffering days of diarrhoea, and bludgeoning possums to death in the dark.
Top marks if you guessed that I’m into season two of Alone Australia. So into it that I may have dipped into the accompanying podcast as well.
Reality television isn’t very real these days. There’s a feeling that those who participate have seen so much of it that they know what the expectation is, and it thrives too much on false jeopardy. All reasons why I don’t really watch much format heavy television anymore. But the Aussie iteration of Alone does at least feel like there’s jeopardy by virtue of the setting, and what seems at the moment to be a scarcity of food - bar some dodgy berries, low calorie ferns, a few fish, and that very unlucky possum.
My Alone viewing style isn’t quiet contemplation, more armchair survivalist, as I pontificate on the mistakes the participants have in my expert opinion made. I did after all own a copy of the SAS Survival Handbook as a teenager.
I live and write on Wadandi Boodja, home to the Wadandi people, Traditional Owners of this corner of south west Australia. Saltwater people, their connection to land and sea is deep, and continuous. I acknowledge their elders past, present and emerging.