I have just arrived home to chilly Queanbeyan, from God's country (Queensland), where I spent Saturday wandering around in a t-shirt and shorts. While I had some great ribs on the Gold Coast at an early mother's day celebration, the gastronomic highlight of the week was undoubtedly a carpet bag steak I had in Rockhampton on Thursday night. More on that soon.
Yes, your intrepid sausage correspondent was in Rockhampton this week doing some research that just happened to coincide with Beef Australia 2009 - or "Beefweek" to the locals. Beefweek is one humdinger of a trade fair. It only happens every two or three years and it leaves other regional fairs I've seen, like the Henty Field Day or Kalgoorlie's Diggers and Dealers, for dead.
Why?
Because you can't eat dirt and/or gold.
Yes, it's all about the meat. And not just any meat. But the king of meats. Beef.
Am I wrong, Mr Bedak?
Imagine, 50,000 or so like-minded foodies, committed to producing the best beef they can, crammed into a town of 70,000 people for a week. Now slap on a few thousand Akubras and enough RM Williams to shoe an army and you're getting close.
As for the steak? Well, it was a rib fillet taken from a Laglan Pastoral Co. Brahman, stuffed with half a dozen fat Pacific oysters, drizzled with a red wine jus and served with vegies and mashed tatties at the Great Western Hotel. What an absolute cracker of a steak. I just had to wave my knife in its general direction and a slab of gelatinous goodness would fall away faster than a Treasury Department revenue forecast. Sure the vegies were a bit on the overcooked side, and the mash was a little lumpy, but let's face it, the vegetable items were there either for decoration or to assuage the Catholic guilt that comes from eating 400g of pure ecstasy-inducing, buttery, beefy goo.
So when next in Rocky, I can't commend to you strongly enough to get along to the Great Western, where you should order the biggest steak you can find. You can't miss it. It's the big pub on Stanley St that has an indoor rodeo arena attached for your viewing pleasure. Next time, I'm sampling the place on a Friday, to see the bullriders in action... that's what I call an interesting take on "paddock to plate".
