It’s astonishing just how offensive people can be about vegetarians. That’s what Richard Cornish discovered when he flipped his daily meat habit on its head and went cold turkey on all forms of richly flavoured sins of the flesh. He managed to stick it out for a full year.
Richard Cornish’s My Year Without Meat, a new-release paperback documenting his experience, is in my humble opinion, one of the best food books written in a very long time. I’m willing to bet it’ll go down in history as a cult classic food bible, just like Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion. This is a book for every food lover, chef, restaurant worker, hospitality owner, food producer and or vegetarian or environmentalist. While on one hand it’s entertaining and educational, sections of it are seriously gut-wrenching, painful and distressing. The proof is in the pudding as the battle lines are clearly drawn: meat-lovers against vegetarians, a shocking yet very truthful awakening.
Chapters of the book are broken into detailed experiences, life moments, discoveries and revelations. I was so utterly offended by Richard’s Country Pasty Nazi, I wanted to seek him out and destroy! I truly felt like vomiting from shock and distress when Richard told his tale of hosting the Melbourne BBQ festival without so much as sampling a hint of cooked beast. How could he continue the lie and simply get away with it?
Through all the desperation, fear, anger and chaos, Richard is thankfully blessed with smarts, commitment and a solid choice backed by utter determination. This pushes him forward and allows him to seek out, for example, perfection in the preparation of vegetables and legumes. Three-hat chef Jacques Reymond helps him discover the full width and breadth of expertly slow-cooked parsnip and how the quest for flavour can be rewarded by little-known cooking methods. His research into seaweeds and Japanese tradition propels him along a path to crafting the flavour umami from layers of mushroom, kelp and soybean. It’s not all esoteric: simple items such as crispy cooked, slightly burned cheese and vegemite also get a look in.
If there’s one part that lifts the educational element well above the molecular education chapter – which is fascinating reading – it’s the information on how oysters and oyster waterways are true indicators of a pristine or damaged ecosystem. They are filter-feeders and therefore are forced to digest everything in their liquid home, be it health-giving or damaging to them. Spoil the waterways, even in minimal ways, and these beautiful creatures can no longer survive. It is a lesson we must learn.
In a new world where food fanatics instagram their experiences from every street corner, those who post owe it to themselves to learn where all their food comes from – and that includes knowing who exactly is responsible for raising and killing the cows, sheep, pigs and fish we eat.
Richard Cornish is an award-winning food writer who pens the much-loved and irreverent Fairfax column Brain Food. He has co-authored the best-selling Movida cookbooks with Frank Camorra and Phillippa’s Home Baking with Phillippa Grogan. His journalism explores where food comes from, how it gets to us and why some foods taste better than others.
RRP paperback $29.99, eBook $13.99.
Published by Melbourne University Press
Available now at all good book stores
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