🍴Jess Miller (bite-sized) 🏢

On the Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney's menu: brown lentil spag bol, fine dining in Canberra, and Grow it Local 2013 with Jill Dupleix

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Let's start with your first food memory. Brown lentils, spaghetti bolognese. Yuck.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

So bad. So look, I grew up on a herb farm in um down on the Mornician Peninsula. And most of the herbs we grew were legitimate. We had about we grew about there about at the time, because this was pre-bunning, so bunnings did some pretty funny things to the nursery and garden industry. And one of those was that it really shrunk the diversity of herbs that became available. So like when at Miller's Herbs, grown the old-fashioned way down in Somerville, we had about 13 types of herbs that we would sell at the market every weekend and on Wednesdays. So there was like apple mint, variegated apple mint, Corsican mint, spear mint, peppermint, eau de cologne mint, common mint, thyme mint, sweet basil mint. Like there are so many kinds of mints. You know, all kinds of like there are five or six varietals of thyme. Like so there's all the there's this amazing herbaceous palate that is radically unexplored. Now this was all completely wasted on my mother because she could not, would not cook. It was awful. Like she was really bad. And my dad was really afraid of flying. So, and we also didn't have a lot of money. So come, and we also were limited by when we could leave the farm because you couldn't go on big holidays in summer because someone had to water the plants, and you you know, so it was a bit limited. So it usually meant that around Easter time we went to this place called Otos, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It was it was an it was a it was a health retreat and it had woofers, willing workers on organic farms, and you there was no TV, there was no radio, there was there was like like the there was a few luxury cabins, but mostly it was like non-luxury cabins, and that's where we stayed. And it was all vegetarian food, and it's kind of out near Bucking, East Gippsland, kind of area. So beautiful place, heaps of bush. It was actually quite magical, but you would spend your days going on bushwalks, listening to Johnny Didge, and then they had a meditation temple where you do, you know, yoga and meditation, obviously. But the highlight of Otos was breakfast. So they had this really beautiful kind of wooden, sort of cathedral-feeling communal space where everybody ate together, all the guests and all the workers ate together, and it smelt great and it had beautiful views over the bush. And the two chefs there were Neil and Carla. And they could do things with vegetarian food that, you know, beyond people's wildest beliefs. And included in their over of work was a riff on spaghetti bolognese using brown lentils.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

This is a point we can dip into your box now. Yeah. So which one would we take? I think. I think we take the legume. We can take, do we take the little cannoli tori, do you think? Or the we take the little cannoli. So chomp away, make the noise, give everyone FOMO listening to it down the track. So back to Neil and Carla.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

So Neil and Carla, like their breakfasts were off the hook. It was like millet and compost and beautiful. Like their food was really, really, really nice. And you know, after you kind of stay at Ontos, you know, you'd leave and on the checkout, there'd be like near a copy of Neil and Carla's cookbook. And so, of course, Mum pays the $8 for the self-published copy of um Neil and Carla's viral band. Yeah, sure was. For hand-drawn pictures, that's great. And then, like, you know, you know, we we'd had our beautiful week at ONTOS, and you know, Mum comes back all inspired with Neil and Carla's bloody cookbook, and she decides that no longer would our spaghetti bolognese contain any kind of meat or anything remotely okay. And like her spag bowl at the best of times was not that good. Um, but it got progressively worse. So initially it began where she followed the directions in Neil and Carla's cookbook, and you know, the the brown lentils which formed the base were softened somewhat. Um, and you know, she'd chop the tomato, you know, make it nice. But then it just got worse and worse and worse. So ultimately, spag bowl at our place consisted of like half-cooked brown lentils with a jar of Dolmeo, friggin' brown spaghetti, not like the brown spaghetti, not even white spaghetti. And my brother and I just don't look at it and go, oh shit. Oh no, mum's made spag bowl again. And the only way, the only way you could even remotely rescue it was with like half a bloody thing of cheese and tomato sauce. Jess, why did you choose this? You were so bad.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

You have a you you you have a memory in association with it, you know. So why you choose this? Why did you why does this one stick in your pocket?

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Oh, because it was just like, I think, like, I I I blame and I point to that memory because my brother's now a chef. And I believe firmly that the reason he's a chef is because of that bloody brown lentil spag bowl, because it was so bad. It was terrible, it was just beyond salvation. Um, but yeah, I think it just takes me back to a time where, and I also I think in hindsight, appreciate now that like she was just doing the best she could. It was full of good intentions, but the execution was flawed.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Let's move on to your second food memory. This is your time in Canberra when you were walk working in fine dining restaurants. Oh yeah. A range of them, Jess. So many. Tell us about this particular memory in the restaurants that you were working in.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Oh, so which one? So I was I was at I was at the Street Theatre Cafe, and then I was I did Water's Edge, Rubicon.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Atlantic.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Atlantic was the one. So I'd so my girlfriend and I had driven the Subaru all the way from Melbourne without sleeping. And we arrived in Canberra, and I was just like, you know, first first job, first thing you've got to get a job, like you've got to get a job. So I literally wandered into um, like, because I've been working at a winery, fine dining place in the peninsula beforehand. I was like, oh, this will be easy, I'm gonna go where the big tips are. And so I walked into Atlantic because I just God, I don't even know. I certainly didn't Google it. I don't know how I found out. I might have read the good food guide and looked at which ones had the hats, and I'm like, oh, that one's got the hats, I'll go there. Um anyway, walk in there, probably I think they were just about to start lunch service, and I walk in, and there's this man who is coming down the stairs holding a bicycle with this beautiful red hair, and I'm like, oh, okay. Um, and I walk up to him, he's so incredibly rude. I'm like, oh hi, you know, my name's Jess. Um, I just wanted to drop a resume. Are you? And he's like, Oh, I'll take it. And you know, he's really rude. I'm like, a bit of a dickhead, maybe I don't want to work here. Um I'll come around and say, but anyway, I got the job at Atlantic, they gave me a trial. As it turned out, um, I was like, you know, my initial impression of this like guy being, oh, he's so sporty and so cool. He's got to, you know, he rides his bike and he had like this little black puppy. I'm like, eh, he's okay. And then I realized the only reason that he had the bike is because a week earlier he'd lost his licence during driving. Um yeah, so I worked at Atlantic and that's where um that guy I ended up marrying because we bonded over football, obviously. And he's he was actually quite sweet. Um, but we had it was a very, I mean, I uh the place that I remember like Dave Wood was a brilliant restaurateur. Like getting getting two hats in Canberra circa 2003 is no mean feat. Like it was a beautiful, small, very beautiful little restaurant, um, and it felt like a family. There are only a few of us that worked there. We had to maintain the hat, it was high pressure. It was when it was good, it was very, very good. When it was bad, it was awful. Um but we had it, we had it like many restaurants in Canberra, there's always a private room. And so one of the highlights was um that Goff and Margaret would come and have lunch at Atlantic, and you would just wish that you got to be. Like usually Dave, the boss, would um serve them, but sometimes he'd let you take a dish. And but they were so beautifully sweet, they were the loveliest couple, like the ultimate Doyen of Monica. Um, yeah, Margaret was just sweet. She was so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

And they're huge figures, aren't they? They're tall.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

They are very tall and commanding, yeah. And they know you and and they and they don't deviate from what they want, they know what they want. There is, would you like nope, we'll just have what we like. They didn't want to try anything new. Um, and that was like in very stark contrast to the other kinds of people that would come in, particularly during sitting weeks. And I remember in particular, one so at the time we had Ruddick was immigration minister, Costello was the treasurer, and there was, and yeah, there was a it was a it was a time in politics, let me tell you. And I was studying politics, and so it was a very unique position, and and sadly it was pre-Twitter because my like tweets from the floor of my oh my god, they would have been so good. Um, because they get quite, you know, and then they say stuff.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Can you tell us some of the stuff they said without naming names?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Oh, I can oh god, what can I remember? The one I remember, the the one I really remember was Ruddick. Ruddick was sitting on the side of the table. Michelle Grattan, the political journey, was at the head of the table. I don't know whether she was bored or drunk, but her head keep kind of like moving into her soup. So Nick and I were looking at each other, kind of ready to pull the soup out at any moment. But I remember Ruddick. Um, we were doing it, it was a set menu, and you had to just go and ask them, would you like fish or would you like um meat? And he was just I he refused to engage. So I'm trying my best, and I'm like bloody 19 years old, trying not to like my only job at work every day was to not lose the hat. I was I just didn't want to be the one to lose the hat. Like that was it. So I tried so hard, and he wouldn't look at me. And I was like, anyway, he rather than tell me whether he wanted the fish or the beef, he whispered in the ear of his aide, who then told me. And I'm like, who the fuck is this guy? And then I was like, then I was like, is this oh that's immigration? I'm like, oh yeah, that'll be right. Um and I but it was very uncomfortable because you were like, I'm trying my best to serve you, and you're making it really hard. And I'm scared of getting in trouble because I know that you the power imbalance here is so incredibly obvious. Um, but then about like 20 years later, somebody sat me next to Ruddick at um a Channel 7 Youth Award dinner, which was a long dinner, and I'd probably had a couple, and I said, You might not remember this. And he was the mayor of Hornsby at the time, Mayor Rudddock. But when I was 19, you you I just was like, I just so like And his response. He was he was horrified. He was like, Oh, I don't remember that, I'm sure it I'm like, it happened. It happened, and then Costello would like order these $400 bottles of wine, throw down the Amex and not tip. It was so insulting. So it was so bad. So like that was Atlantic, and then we were also moonlighting. Um, I think Atlantic closed eventually. Dave and his wife went to be fabulous over in LA, and that's where they are now. But then we worked at um Ottoman, which is run by the most gorgeous Sharif Kyer. Like, he's just this beautiful, beautiful, he and Gubaha, like we thought we had a family at Atlantic, and then we moved to um to Ottoman, and it was like, oh god, now we've got a Turkish family, and it's thick.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Your third memory, build it and they will come. It's the TEDx Sydney Food Curation.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

That's all Remo's fault. That's all Remo's fault. That was so nice. Yeah, that was such a nice memory. Tell us about it. Well, I was at Republic of Everyone, and we would and we we applied for a grant from Waverly Council on composting, and so the challenge was to think of a way of getting data for composting, and so me being me decided not to do the the straightforward, easy thing. I concocted this elaborate thing because it sounded more fun, where we it was, I don't know why that, I don't know who said yes. It was weird, but I sort of was like the the the theory was that if you grew your own stuff, like if you grew your own herbs or veggies, there's a good chance you're gonna be a composter. So that was the logic. And so we had to find and map all these people who grew stuff in Waverley Council. So the bribe was that if you put your patch on a map, then you would score yourself a ticket to a grow it local dinner. And that dinner was gonna be prepared by the three blue ducks who then and now are still the hottest, the hottest things in uh, you know, well then who knows where they are now, they're all over the shop. But at the time, you know, they were they were awesome, they were lovely young blokes that had a great restaurant in Bronte, and so they would cook you dinner, and you would get to meet all your neighbours and blah de blah blah. So that was the only way you could score an invite, and they had to make a menu based on the stuff that people brought, which is a real creative brief. And people bought some random stuff, and so you had to drop off your staff at the the Bodai Farmers Market on the Sunday, and then they cooked it up and made this beautiful dinner on the oh no, you dropped it off on a Saturday, dinner was on the Sunday night. Um, and that that was the that was the campaign and the trick, and we did that. Now, the bit that I the funny bit of the story was that the dinner, and I do not have a photographic memory, but the dinner was planned to be on March 30. The dinner was on March 30. I was due to have a baby on April 6th, and uh everyone was like, they always come late. The first one always comes late, and I'm like, yeah, this is no worries. Um she didn't come late. So there was this like there was this phone call, like, oh god, it was funny. So she came on March 26th, four days before the event. So I went into Labour on the 24th of March, it took a while, um, and I was basically like, okay, guys, we've talked about the contingency plan, and I'd written it because like the best bit of being pregnant that last bit is like you've got really good superpower hormones and you can get shit done. And I was just like never been clearer in my life. Um, and it was basically everyone, the contingency plan is going, it's you, and then just for like good measure, I was like, and if you're reading this right now, it means that I am having a baby. So, as inconvenient as this might be for any of you, I am in the middle of having a baby, so do not disappoint me and don't let me down. And they didn't, it was a beautiful night, and Remo was there, and I went with Jeremiah, who was four days old, and we dressed her in a little carrot suit, and we've got this gorgeous, gorgeous and Costa was there, and Kinky the Chicken, his chicken at the time, um, pulled out the Lucky Door prize like out of a colander. So cute. And he like holds his little kinky chicken like this, and I had my little baby like this, and it's a really cute picture. And um, I must have been delirious because like Remo had this great idea. He's like, this is great. And I'm like, yeah, it's great, isn't it? We had a hundred people, maybe two. We had more, maybe two. So we spilled out on it, it was gorgeous. And the beautiful thing about it is that people who came, like, they didn't know each other, and but they got to know each other because they had it in, which was like, Oh, what did you bring? What did you? And there was one woman who was a forensic um scientist by day, and she was like a a gleaner by night. So, like she she brought like a bag of shit she'd stolen from other people's bags. She was great, she was glorious. Um, but yeah, and it was Remo's idea that said, like, okay, you've done it for 200. Can we do it for what was it, two thousand, two and a half thousand? And I'm like, yeah, of course we can. And that's and so I joined Jill DePlay, um, who's obviously the godmother of food in in Sydney then and now, um, and together we figured out how to make this stuff work. And so instead of asking people for like gleaned lemons, um, we had people like Jan who donated an entire Angus cow, which was broken down on the heritage purple carpet of the forecourt of the opera house, um, so people could see the point was it everything came within a 100k radius. Um, Peppy Saya was hand churning butter. Like this is when, or like it I invited a lot of them to come because these like then these were kind of the new kids on the block, and they these are now the like have gone on to do just such beautiful things. Like Michael from Brassery Bread was doing, you know, baking everything on the house. Matt Moran was the head chef with Simon, um, who's now at Baronia Kitchen, and you know, they didn't that it was very interesting because they didn't know what they were gonna get. They knew bits, but the constant tension was between us who were the pain in the ass curators, but we also then had to manage the logistics because you couldn't get the food too quick, otherwise it would spoil. So there was this very tiny window within which everybody had to drop their stuff off. And we had Milkwood bought, you know, kilograms of handmade potatoes from the Blue Mountains. There was a guy, young Henry's like there's a video with um Oscar without a beard and with short hair and rich, and they found a guy who grew hops out in the western suburbs, and they made a beer using that. Um, yeah, but then little people would like there was a big thing. We put a bloody, what do we put? A bloody um a beehive in the botanic gardens. Yeah, so every element of the it was very, it was very hard and the spreadsheet coordination, like, because every time you just go, oh, we're gonna do this thing, but at every junction it's like, oh shit, how do we pull this bit off and how do we do that? And oh my god, it it was epic. And just asking, uh I was just constantly asking people for stuff, and so it would be like, oh, okay, how do we so logistically like I asked Bruce from Go Get if we could offer our growers um a chance to, you know, use a Go Get for free to drop off to take stuff, and then he said yes, and people just said yes.