Warwick Thornton (bite-sized)

Film maker and director Warwick Thornton is about as creative as you can get. He's also a dinky-di foodie at heart. 

On the menu: discovering ethnic culinary delights at local IGAs, discovering Asian cuisine after Cyclone Tracy, and a three year journey to an epiphany about chocolate! 

If you liked this, tell you friends and listen to the full episode out tomorrow! 

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Email us at threefoodmemories@plated.com.au, we'd love to hear from you! 

TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Now, food for you is an outlet. Does food create moments away from these realities that give you the opportunity to be you?

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

To be singular and happy, as you once said.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Yeah. And you know, I I am an incredible uh a big foodie. I have a lot of trouble going to restaurants because um you're paying for food that's actually generally not very good. So, you know what I mean? And it's sort of like, why are you a chef? You know what I mean? Out of the freezer and into the fryer is not, you know, and charging way too much. You know, I'd anyway, I'd sort of I have a I'd rather cook than go to a restaurant. What does cooking give you? It's about my mental illness, I think. You know what I mean? I well, let's start with, I I spend 90% of my life away from home. And so I've got two choices. I either can when I I don't stay in hotels, I stay in apartments, so I have a kitchenette. And this could be a tiny little town like Cooper Pete, or it could be Sydney, you know what I mean? And I can go out and eat, and I'm sure, you know, there are amazing chefs in in around around both of those places. But it's mo there's more dodgy ones than there are good ones. And generally the good ones are damn expensive, you know what I mean? And so I'm always away from home. And I generally, this is really interesting. I my I've worked out that, you know, generally whoever an IGA, you know, it's because they're family-owned. You you can work out if the IGA is owned by a Greek family or a Vietnamese family or a Chinese family or an Italian family, you know what I mean? A uh a Polish family, because there's an aisle of their favourite stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

And you can hunt you can smell that out straight away.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

You can smell that out straight away, and then suddenly, you know what I mean? Like um, you know, if it's a Greek family, there's an Austrian, there's all this sort of amazing oregano, you know what I mean? And you go, okay, this is a Greek family owns this place. And then for that week or two you're shooting in that town, you will start cooking Greek. You know what I mean? And the produce, you know, they've got all the right things. You know, you can get soy sauce and two-minute noodles and whatever, but there's a massive, you know, uh or if it's Indian, you know what I mean, you've got you you'll see that okay, there's a lot of ghee, there's you know, the the the the herbs that uh are not those little plastic, you know, little things of serious herbs and you know what I mean, and chilies and and I love that, you know what I mean? So I work incredibly hard. I get up before dawn, I have to go to set, and then by generally the end of the the the last scene I'm shooting that day, I'm actually planning what I'm cooking tonight.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Oh well, actually, interesting. My mother couldn't cook. My mother would burn water, seriously. And she was just a bit too busy, you know. I mean, I never had a father, you know, and and she was building an empire and just didn't have time to cook. We just really couldn't cook. So if we wanted night's food, we had to learn to cook it ourselves, me and my and my sisters. And we did, you know, and because from being from Alice Springs, I'd say we're close to Darwin, but Darwin's still 1400 kilometres away, and that Asian influence of soy sauce, rice, ginger, you know, chili, shaoxin, all that kind of stuff was drop coming down and and actually uh it's coming down from Darwin, but it actually came at a very specific time. We were very separated from Darwin, from Alice Springs. You know, Alice Springs is very much corned beef. You know, all the meat's boiled, and then you you make a white sauce or a uh, you know, a gravy and you have it with boiled potatoes. That was Alice Springs, cabbage, you know, carrot, you know, boiled. Everything was boiled. Very, you know. And then what happened was Cyclone Tracy went through Darwin and wiped out Darwin. And everyone from Darwin, you know, and there was probably about 40,000 people, had to be relocated, and half of them came down to Alice Springs to, you know, because there was no Darwin left. It was blown away by a cyclone. And they brought rice and they brought soy sauce and they brought blood chunk, balakant. You know what I mean? All these amazing things. Light soy sauce, dark soy sauce. What do you mean there's a light soy sauce and a dark source? All that kind of what's rice? Well, we knew what rice was, but it was not a part, it wasn't a stable. And they introduced that to us, and then from there, sort of terri the multiculturalism of ter the territory, sadly, because of a natural, a massive natural disaster, was we this flooding of different tastes and new foods came into Alice Springs. That was happening at the same time as I was growing up. You know, Tracy was in the 70s, I think, like yeah, 70s. And so that when that was happening, we were trying to learn how to cook. So we had this new in all these new ingredients and people to teach us. You know, people with families were billeted out to other families who had spare bedrooms. And we had some people who stayed with us who were very good at cooking rice and stir-fries and you know, made blood chocolate. Oh, this would have been this would have been amazing for you. Yeah, coconut. What the hell? It's coconut. Really? Yeah, like that kind of, you know. But we're talking 70s, you know, even I I'm sure in Sydney, you know, there's probably only there was probably only a couple of Thai restaurants, or you know what I mean? Or that there was no sushi, at least, you know. Well, if there was, there was probably only one. So it's kind of that beautiful understanding of uh multiculturalism and other people's cultures through food is, you know, it's the it's the greatest barrier breaker in it as far as I'm concerned, food is, you know. So mum couldn't cook. We had to learn how to cook if we wanted something nice.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

You're talking about tapping into sensory stuff, you're talking about sort of out-of-body, you're not talking about you're not learning it from books. This is stuff that you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

You know, we we've got no social media, obviously, you know, with kids of the 70s, and there was one cookbook in in the household, and it had no cover, but it was called the Empire Cookbook. Wow. And it was like that thick. But you know, we're talking Beef Wellington and and just, you know, that high-end British food in a way. So it was it was sort of un unobtainable, and it I don't think it had any photos, you know what I mean? It was pre-photos, you know what I mean? It sounds like it was just left behind by some uh uh no, it was my grandmother's cookbook, and and she bought it to, you know, because that was part of trying to be trying to fit in with this Western world. She's Aboriginal, you know, full-blood Aboriginal woman. But she I think she bought that book to try and fit into the Western world that was coming. You know what I mean? She was born under a tree, had never seen a of a um a white person until she was eight, you know, a tribal life, you know. So but she yeah, she had that book. And so that's all we had. So it was kind of like, you know how you hone your skill about uh, you know, the secret herbs and spices in a way? You actually honed your skills because you weren't watching cooking shows. You know, the first cooking show we saw was Peter Russell Clark on the ABC, you know, can't we get it, come in and get it. That was our world, that was, you know, and that was much later. So we actually honed our skills on tasting something and understanding what's in it, and then replicating it for free that way. I remember I spent a bit of time down here at film school, and I used to go uh every I was I was living in Blues Point, and I'd catch the ferry with my son Dylan, you know, in a in a pram, and we'd go across to Chinatown to Sussex Street, and there was a soy chicken place upstairs, uh, in one of those food courts, and I just fell in love with this soy chicken. And so, you know, very quickly uh you understand, so there's light soy, dark soy, shell chicken. I could taste this in it. Um Five Spice, you know what I mean, which is you know, five spice is basically, what is it, cinnamon star andese blended with something else I can't remember, you know, and that's that's that's the stock. They make that dark stock out of that. But there was something missing that and I was I stayed there for about three, four years, but there was always something missing that I could not pick out of this stock that they were making this uh chicken out of. And it was tr it drive me mad. And obviously, um there's brown sugar or palm sugar in it. And it drove me mad for three years. I just could I could taste it. It was something velvety and something quite unique. And then one day I discovered and it was just a epiphany, they were putting chocolate in the stock. Just sweet, camel, you know, just chocolate. And then I went, of course, there's something it was almost like almost like it was it was Chinese, Cantonese, soy chicken, but they were they were creating like a a a a Mexican mole. You know what I mean? They had chocolate with star and ease, five spice, g you know, cinnamon with the soy and and and light soy, dark soy, ginger, garlic, but they put chocolate in it, and that that was a real amazing piphany for me. And now when I make my own soy chicken, you and it doesn't matter, just don't don't worry about the you know the 99% bloody wank, you know, bitter shit. Get cheap ass cheap nasty chocolates, even better if it's one of those kind of Cadbury ones where it's chocolate and it's got caramel in it. It's for sugar. Yeah, and you just crack off, you crack off, you know, like six little things of that and chuck it in your pot. Oh my god, the difference of uh how the soy chicken and that was their secret, their secret, and I find it took me three years of eating their food to work out what the bloody hell they put in it.