A YEARNING to take care of your family more is what Curtis Stone attributes the whole celebrity chef phenomenon to.
The restaurateur and recipe author, now a household name both in Australia and overseas, says the shift in dinner time culture may be what is fueling the enormous cooking and chef following.
Speaking at an industry forum hosted by Meat and Livestock Australia at Beef Australia in Rockhampton yesterday, the affable cooking ‘rockstar’ said he saw himself as a tradesman - “I have a craft and that’s how I make my money.”
But he acknowledged the celebrity chef sensation had probably exceeded all expectations and said it seemed to have grown very quickly.
“I grew up in a home with very little diversity in cuisine and now we have a culture of talking about plating up,” he said.
“It was only a generation ago that two people in the home started working. Until then, we had one-income families and someone was at home to take care of food.
“Culturally, it’s a big difference.
“Feeding your family is a broad topic. You can do it out of a pizza box in front of the telly or kids can get home from school, smell dinner being cooked and see some work has been put in and there is an appreciation and more of an event around the family unit sitting down together hearing about each other’s day.
“I wonder whether the celebrity chef thing - the reason I can sell cookbooks at the level I can compared with if I tried to do it 50 years ago - is because culturally there is something missing when everyone gets home at 6 at night and dinner comes out of the microwave.”
MLA brought Mr Stone to Beef Australia to join fellow chef Tarek Ibrahim and their own celebrity Sam Burke in demonstrating the quality, versatility and nutritional benefits of Australian beef.
So how does Mr Stone respond when people ask him why Australian beef is the best?
“Of course, I talk about the diversity of our landscape and the environment and the rising nutritional growth planes,” he said.
“But the culture is also really important. We have a lot of family farms, there is a lot of care about our industry.
“It shows here at beef - there is something really cool about how brought-to life the spirit of the Australian countryside is.”
Mr Stone also spoke about how transparency could flow through to positive outcomes for today’s foodie culture and in particular, give beef an advantage.
“You start thinking about what it means to tell people everything,” he said.
“From the biggest producers to the little butcher shop - you figure out ways to be very good.
“As soon as you start thinking that way, you start making changes and adaptations to what you do and then when you need to compete, whether it’s with pretend proteins or other proteins, you’re much more confident walking into a fight knowing you can throw a punch,” he said.
He also revealed he was on somewhat of a mission to create the ‘great Australian barbecue.’
Australian life centres around barbies but what we actually cook on is ‘horrible’ from a chef’s perspective, he said.
“We cook on gas barbies with hot plates, that really serve no purpose apart from the fact you can stand around it having a stubby,” he said.
By comparison, US barbies are low and slow, suiting cuts like shanks and brisket, and then there are grills which are much hotter and suit steaks, he said.
He believes the great Australian barbie should be charcoal or wood burning.
“The fuel has to be different. You need some sort of smokiness.
“If you’re cooking something like a nicely marbled steak, you want the rendering fat to come down and hit the charcoal or wood and get those little licks of smoke that come up and add flavour.”