From her home in Compton, on the limestone coast of South Australia, Cindy Bunt has made a living sharing food from different cultures at her Post & Rail cooking school.
Despite never having traveled abroad, the 46-year-old has an obsession with exploring flavors different from those she experienced when she grew up in rural Australia.
Ms. Bunt teaches cooking and gardening classes from her home in Compton. (ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham)
Getting an early love for her German father’s rye toast and pickles, it wasn’t until the start of the internet that Mrs. Bunt was really able to venture out of meat and three vegetables.
“As soon as I could look for recipes and see a magnificent picture of food … I would work back and forth [the dishes]said Mrs. Bunt.
“I can travel without going anywhere, to my kitchen.”
Ms. Bunt is able to share a world of flavors from her rural cuisine. (ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham)
But it wasn’t until Cindy and her husband then welcomed backpackers through a farm worker program that their world really opened up.
Between 2011 and 2015, Ms. Bunt had 150 people from around the world stay and work on the family farm in Apsley, a small Victorian town with a few hundred people.
Accustomed to feeding a large number, Mrs. Bunt had a nursery and a cafeteria at the time.
At the end of each day, they often had a dozen people around the table, sharing a dish cooked with fresh ingredients from the garden.
A farm worker Matthias prepares a table for a French meal in an Australian forest setting. (Provided by: Cindy Bunt)
“We would talk about it during the day, ‘What country should we visit tonight?'”
“It was such a joyous time.”
A Japanese visitor was so determined to make Cindy a traditional meal that she got her mother to send recipes for udon noodle soup, raw salmon sushi and chicken katsudon.
“I really hoped I liked it. And it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.”
Backpackers from France and Wales act as Mrs Bunt’s pasta drying rack. (Provided by: Robyn Verrall)
Then there were the two Taiwanese women who made Cindy a 40-pound garlic soup, a supposed remedy for menstrual pain.
“Boy, oh boy, that came out of your pores the next day,” Mrs. Bunt said.
Making it yours
Inspired by everything she has learned and seen, Ms. Bunt opened her own cooking school in 2018.
Since then, his weekly workshops have taught people how to make Lebanese-inspired food, Koreans, Japanese, Moroccans and beyond, often for the first time.
“Because [a lot of these people] rural living, the possibilities of [them] getting this food or trying this food is not limited to any, ”Ms Bunt said.
“I can really feel the light bulb go out on the lovely people I cook with.”
Hummus from Mrs. Bunt’s Lebanese party class. (Provided by: Cindy Bunt)
When it comes to selecting dishes, Mrs. Bunt tends to stick with the best-known dishes.
“In the beginning, I will do the popular things we think [that culture’s] the food is, ”Mrs Bunt said.
“[But] then I have to give it my turn. I’m always a person with one less dish, one person with one less step to get the same result. “
“I like to add some techniques that may not be the same as that country. So it’s my version of this food.”
Some of Ms. Bunt’s regular classes, such as macaroni, Vietnamese parties, and Spanish paella. (ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham)
Ms. Bunt’s awareness of offering something slightly different is a good approach according to food anthropologist Trang X Ta.
In addition to not having cultural ties to any of the places where she cooks, apart from the friends she has made on the farm, Ms. Bunt will never be able to completely recreate these dishes.
“The taste will be characterized by the ingredients you have access to,” Dr. Trang said.
“You are limited by [the ingredients] … and that deeper historical knowledge of how you put certain flavors together. “
Dr. Trang X. Ta, pictured in India, is happy to see the dishes appear outside of their usual surroundings. (Supplied by: Dr. Trang X. Ta)
Sharing food in distant places
That said, the Australian National University professor believes there is a place for people to “capitalize” on food from outside their culture.
Growing up in Seattle but born in Vietnam to Asian parents, Dr. Trang is an “advocate of difference.”
I would rather see a white woman sell Chinese food than have no Chinese.
“Not everyone has the privilege of having the resources to travel to these regions and taste these distinctive flavors.
“It may not be the best [Chinese] but it has elements, it has some characteristics of this flavor profile “.
Dr. Ta visits often visits China for work, as well as other Chinese-speaking countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong. (ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham)
The important thing is to avoid any claim to authenticity.
But again, who has the power to define what is authentic?
“Kitchens around the world have always been a fusion of different ingredients that come from different parts of the world,” Dr. Trang said.
It’s a world with endless opportunities for Cindy Bunt.
“[I’m] Always learning, that’s the most exciting thing for me, ”Ms. Bunt said.
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