AUSTRALIAN online retailers are learning that the key to online sales success is to expand their brands offline into bricks and mortar. Insightful statistics gained online make the decision a no-brainer. “Australia is a backwater when it comes to online shopping,” dStore chief executive and local pioneer in online shopping Andrew Cooper says. He says the main reasons are that high-street merchants have not gone online and because global online retailers put the relatively small Australian market at the end […]
journalism
12 Cheesemakers To Watch
From goat’s curd to gruyere, these cheesmakers have winning formulas sure to impress discerning cheese lovers. Holy Goat Made at the Sutton Grange Organic farm near Bendigo in Victoria, Holy Goat (at about $130/kg) is universally regarded as one of the best cheeses in Australia by top chefs, including Michael Ryan from Provenance in Beechworth. The cheeses, which include fromage frais and curd cheeses, are made using organic goat’s milk from the farm and use slow lactic acid fermentation. The […]
How To Make Cheese
There are many perceptions of the rustic, bucolic lifestyle of the artisan cheesemaker. But the reality is very different to how the mass dairy marketers would have us see it in their advertising and promotions. Even the most boutique of cheesemakers in Australia has more in common with the hygiene of an operating theatre than a rustic shed in France. The reality is shiny, spotless stainless steel surfaces, an environment that can be hosed down, white rubber boots, white coats […]
How Cheese Got Its Stink
Cheese has been around a long time. Nobody is quite sure how long but perhaps 5000 to 12,000 years, probably originating from the Middle East where milk products were curdled and drained of whey and preserved with salt making something a bit like the fetta we know today. In Australia, cheese has been around since the first fleet. It is a mere 160 years since the first cheesemaking equipment arrived from England and the first dairy co-operatives formed in the […]
The Raw Milk Debate
Raw milk dairy is one of those touchy subjects that decays into political debate. It is difficult to get to the bottom of whether or not raw milk products are a danger to anybody. Many artisan cheesemakers, such as Nick Haddow at the Bruny Island Cheese Company [pictured], say not; the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association says raw milk is irrelevant; and Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FANZ) says it is downright dangerous. The truth is that in Europe raw milk […]
Boss has his head in the cloud: data back-up
CUSTOMER databases, accounts and records are critical to business and if this information is lost a company will grind to a halt. The problem for many companies is that backing up information is often too complicated and expensive to do properly. But Ruslan Kogan, founder of the online stores Kogan and Milan Direct has made it easy by storing everything the company does on servers on the internet, the so-called cloud. He says while many IT managers see the cloud […]
First In, Fresh Dressed
The most copied chef in the world isn’t necessarily one you’ve heard of. But when a chef talks about using fresh, locally foraged ingredients you can be pretty sure the influence is Michel Bras of the eponymous restaurant now run by his son Sebastien. Based in Laguiole, the restaurant is a three-hour journey from the nearest city and relies on seasonal produce from the Bras garden and ingredients indigenous to the mountains and plateau of the Massif Central in the […]
The Quest for Authentic Mexican
Authentic Mexican food can be difficult to find in Australia and is often mistaken for TexMex, a Texan interpretation of the cuisine. According to the food crowd, Mexican in the new emerging flavour in Australia but so far there are few restaurants getting anywhere near the freshness of authentic Mexico cuisine and escaping the clichéd tortilla smothered in stodgy, cheesy sauce. The winner of the UK version of Masterchef in 2005, Thomasina “Tommi” Miers, opened Wahaca restaurant in response to […]
In Conversation with Chez Pim
Pim Techamuanvivit, one of the most famous food blogger in the world, was in Melbourne for the Food and Wine Festival last month and she had one thing on her mind: an Aussie pie. Not just any old bakery pie but the best. And I helped her find it at the Middle Park Hotel; it was a belted Galloway, slow cooked in white rabbit ale and with a ring of bone stuffed with marrow poking out the centre. It was […]