Our Community »  Simon Bryant

As far as describing a food philosophy, these days I just want the most ethically sourced, local and fresh ingredients. I reckon my job is just to get these onto a plate with the minimum of fuss and let the produce shine.

Forget about chefs getting all the limelight for a moment, it’s about the product and the producer these days for me. The chef is just a vehicle to get their hard work on the plate. If you grow your own food I am sure you will agree, you just want to cook simply and honestly to do justice to the amazing flavor that good produce exudes.

Being able to cook for someone is one of the nicest thing you can do, but (and this is a big BUT) the choices you make when you shop are as important to me as the cooking.

Fish farming! Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

I have real concerns about catching wild schooling migratory species and ranching them. The protein conversion for growing them out in pens doesn’t add up (i.e. roughly 20kg of pilchard is needed for every kilogram of weight on bluefin tuna). The fact that they are a migratory species with a strong drive to follow lunar and tidal changes bothers me when they are put in pens and unable to follow this strong genetic urge. On the other hand species bred in captivity and farmed may offer a partial solution to easing the burden on our wild stocks but the concentrated levels of effluent, the use of antibiotics and the density ratios bother me.

An end finally to intensively farmed meat, dairy and egg once and for all. We simply don’t need it in an affluent country like Australia: we should pay more and eat less and utilise all cuts of animals. We don’t have the right to eat chicken breast/middle bacon and beef fillet willy-nilly, day in and day out. It just puts too much strain on production. Prolonged lot-feeding of beef cattle, high-density poultry meat bird and egg farming, factory farmed pigs all are things that one day I hope are just shameful history.

I am lucky that I have a network of a couple of hundred farm gate producers of sustainable, ethically produced free range, low density, grass fed and organic produce that I can draw on for my menus. I can sleep a little straighter at night knowing that the back story to my menus are sound.

Lentils.

I just urge people to buy from producers that do the right thing by their land/their animals and the surrounding environment and encourage anyone who wants to make their footprint that little lighter to ask a few fundamental questions when they buy their food. I love farmers markets for this: the everyday shopper can front up and ask the producer exactly what happens to produce their food. That’s accountability.