AUSTRALIAN Culture and Language Help - II

[OliveOil_Med]

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the beginning of the year feast at Hogwarts, and I have noticed that it all seems very, very British to me (and apparently to Fleur, as well).

Well, about the food that would be served at Australian school(s), what would be some very 'Australian' foods that could be served at this school? Don't forget to include vegetables and desserts!

[jenny b]

I think that for a feast, an Australian school would still probably have traditional roast dinners. They're quite common over here. Roast chicken tends to be quite popular (in my family, at least ) but you'll still have traditional roast beef and such, with vegetables like potatoes, pumpkin, carrot and often corn/peas/beans. At Christmas it's common for people to have a cold leg of ham and various cold salads, since it can be quite hot. Potato salad is a good one (and my favourite, yum) as well as pasta/rice salads.

As for desserts, the only really 'Australian' one I can think of is pavlova. It's originally from New Zealand, but Australians have a habit of adopting NZ things and claiming them as their own. (Don't hurt me, guys!) I don't know if you eat it overseas, but it's a kind of meringue-type cake/dessert thing that you decorate with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Wikipedia might give you a better explanation. Neenish tarts are also pretty Australian (even though I hate them ). And lamingtons, of course, although they're more of a snack food than dessert. Those mini fruit mince pies and that dark, rich Christmas cake (I don't know what it's called!) are pretty popular during the holidays. Oh, and White Christmas, which I think I've made every single December with my mum since I was a kid.

You're probably better off Googling them rather than listening to me give long-winded explanations. And I just realised that if you're basing your magic school on the Australian system of schooling there won't even be a Christmas feast, so I've just provided you with a lot of useless information. >.>

Hope I helped anyway!

--Jen

[U-No-Poo]

Molly,

Well, Jen's pretty much said it all. I would highly recommend Pavlova - I absolutely love it, and it's about as Australian as you get. Also, I completely agree with the ham and salads - not a Christmas goes by without my family putting on one of those! However, there's some other things she hasn't mentioned.

I'll start with the dessert. Cheesecake is even more common than Pav, mostly because it's easier. I don't know if British people eat it, but its basically a gooey mixture in a biscuit-y base, pretty much like a jam tart. There's so many varieties - chocolate, caramel, vanilla, etc. However, the one I absolutely love and always have on special occasions is Lemon Cheesecake. My grandma used to make it for us every birthday/Christmas/Easter, and now I make it!. Other than that, normalish deserts would include ice-cream, apple pie and fudge.

Now, to dinners. If this is a summertime feast, you'd definately be looking at ham and salads (green salads, ceaser salads, potato salads). Because we're so multicultural, we don't actually have our own traditional dishes, but have adopted them from other countries. Also, we have barbeques a lot - its not just a cliche. My dad barbeques everything, from sausages and steak to chicken and rissoles. We hate eating kangaroo meat, and are fiercely protective of our two-legged marsupials, so don't put that in there! You might get a bunch of angry Australian reviewers. Also, we eat a ton of pasta/spaghetti dishes here. Spaghetti Bolognaise is basically a rite of passage in Australia. Also, we love macaroni cheese, tuna pasta and lasagna. Also, fish is another thing we eat frequently, simply because we all live in coastal regions (I live four minutes from the beach). In winter, we love casseroles, rice dishes, more pasta and meat, and roast meat and veggies. We don't have all those roasted things in summer unless you're family's British and want a traditional Chrissy dinner.

As you can tell, we eat mostly fresh and light meals, not heavy dishes like you Brits! I hope that this [essay] helps!

Jordana

[OliveOil_Med]

I suppose I'm just trying to get that same mouth-watering, "if I eat the book, will I taste it?" feel that we got when all the food was described in that chapter of PS/SS. Admit it; you wanted to go to Hogwarts just so you would be fed like that every night.

I suppose I want to create that same feeling without creating epic fails that natives would recognize, like having fried chicken or chile.

So I need you to tell me the food that would make your mouth water, but still sounds like something that would be found in Australia.

[U-No-Poo]

Well, right now, my mouth is watering cause I'm cooking chicken in the kitchen. Maybe that's just Australians, but we have this huge thing for chicken and we can't get e-freaking-nough of the stuff! But you want to impress the Brits?

Well, we love to say things like 'juicy steak', cause over here its our main meat product and we cook it so all the juices run. THAT makes my mouth water (you can totally tell that I'm not vegetarian, can't you?). Well, anyway, I think its because Brits and Australians have a big difference in their appetities. When we think of 'mouthwatering,' we think of fresh foods and tasty sauces... (my God, I am so bloody hungry now!)

Jordana

[The Salt Lake Queen]

Seconding the 'juicy steak' and 'barbecue' suggestions.

Seriously. It is virtually impossible to overstate the importance of the barbecue. It's a summer thing, a very social thing, a very very Aussie thing. We throw a barbie on special occasions, or just when we fancy being friendly.

Aside from that, we really are very multicultural and it shows on our menus. Fresh, simple foods are the go, and fussy elaborate dishes aren't seen much except in posh restaurants or fancy upper-class dinner parties. I swear I've never met anybody who eats offal here, for the record, although for all I know they're out there. In summer, we stuff our faces with mangoes and pineapples and nectarines and peaches and various berries.

Oh, wait, has anybody mentioned the famous Aussie meat pie yet?

Served slathered in tomato sauce, obviously.

[Annalise28]

Yeah, I agree with everything said above.

I can just imagine massive plates of sausages and steak and kababs and everything that can be cooked on a BBQ. We used to have BBQ potato chips and onion as well, which were great. Vegies are lovely, peas and corn and beans and carrots and broccoli and cauliflower and *mouth waters*

Salads are really common, too, and great with BBQ meat. Leafy green lettuce and tomato and dressings and whatnot.

And, I agree with everyone about the multiculturalism. Australia revolves around all of our Chinese and Thai and Japanese and Mexican and Indian and Italian restaurants.

For deserts, ice cream and cupcakes and mud cake and cheesecake and apple crumble and tarts..

I don't think I helped much, but I thought I'd have my two Knuts anyway.

~ Annalise x

[U-No-Poo]

Oh, wait, has anybody mentioned the famous Aussie meat pie yet?

Served slathered in tomato sauce, obviously.

Oh my god, that is a necessity! If you don't mention the meat pie (slathered in tomato sauce, NOT KETCHUP), then your story is un-Australian!

Oooh, I just realised. LAMB! Have you heard of Sam Kekovich? He's hugely popular in Australia for his advertisements on lamb for Australia Day, and just whenever they feel like marketing it. I don't think I'm allowed to put in an external link in here, but I would strongly recommend YouTubing one of them! He goes on about 'being un-Australian' and he's basically a legend here! I'm pretty sure that most of the Australians here will agree.

Jordana

[OliveOil_Med]

Something I just wonder about the multicultural food. At Hogwarts, we didn't see a great deal of that, despite Britain being quite multi-cultural as well. (The Patils are probably one set of a fair amount of Indian students, yet there was no curry being served).

I wonder at this. Do wizarding schools see themselves as more traditional, even when it comes to their food? Do they not even recognize 'multi-culturalism' the way Muggles do? The subject of planning a menu just got excedingly more complicated!

[AidaLuthien]

Do wizarding schools see themselves as more traditional, even when it comes to their food? Do they not even recognize 'multi-culturalism' the way Muggles do? The subject of planning a menu just got excedingly more complicated!

It would depend on how quickly British wizarding settlers got to Australia and what their attitude towards multiculturalism is. I would imagine that they, at least initially, would have been none too friendly to the Aborigine population much less other immigrant groups.

Next question is when various other immigrant groups got to Australia and if these groups included pure-blood wizards, or if Muggle-borns were just... born to immigrant groups.

If the former is true, and the government included some form of power-sharing between the immigrant groups (I'm thinking specifically of the Confederation government from Inverarity's Alexandra Quick series), then it's more likely that the menu would be somewhat multicultural, because the other groups would be seen as a more integral part of Australian wizarding government.

If the latter is true, and non-ethnically British students are mainly Muggle-borns, then I would think it would be unlikely that the menu would be particularly multicultural.

Though I suppose if the wizards that deliberately came to Australia were radical and deliberately left Britain for political reasons, then maybe they would be more interested in multiculturalism.

It all depends on how you think wizarding Australia was settled.