Pip Courtney

If You Can't Stand the Heat

Broadcast: 20/09/2010 10:33:45 AM

Reporter: Pip Courtney

If You Can't Stand the Heat

If You Can't Stand the Heat

ANNE KRUGER, PRESENTER: September is a busy month in the Royal agricultural show circuit. The Royal Adelaide finished last week, the 10-day Royal Melbourne Show started this week and even before it's done and dusted, the Perth Royal will kick off.

And nowhere is competition at this level more cut-throat than in the cooking categories. Everything from pickles and preserves right through to breads and biscuits.

RITCHIE O'NEIL: That'll do me; that wins first prize anywhere as far as I'm concern.

PIP COURTNEY, REPORTER: Retired Queensland dairy farmer Ritchie O'Neil must be one of the luckiest men in Australia, for his wife Edna's an award-winning show cook.

The biscuit and take tins in their Murgon home are never empty.

RITCHIE O'NEIL: They're there all the time for me. I take what I want and eat what I want so that's the main thing.

PIP COURTNEY: How lucky are you?

RITCHIE O'NEIL: Oh, very lucky.

PIP COURTNEY: Has she always been interested and fascinated with baking?

RITCHIE O'NEIL: Always has been. I've never known her to be anything else but be baking and it's just constant.

PIP COURTNEY: What do the grandkids think about that?

RITCHIE O'NEIL: Oh they think it's great.

PIP COURTNEY: How competitive is she?

RITCHIE O'NEIL: Very competitive. A lot of people sort of shudder a little bit when they find out she's competing.

PIP COURTNEY: Edna O'Neil competes at lots of country shows but the biggest, most prestigious cooking competition of the year is the Royal Queensland Show, the Ekka.

This year was her 27th Ekka and she nominated for more than 20 classes.

She makes jams, plum pudding and fruit cakes in the weeks leading up to the Ekka. It's the day before judging when the workload ramps right up.

EDNA O'NEIL, SHOW COOK: Well that will be the sponges and probably the tea cake and small cakes in the morning and then I'll ice them all in the afternoon and then I'll leave the muffins for Tuesday morning.

I'll be up at four o'clock cooking.

PIP COURTNEY: Nearly three decades on, Edna's as serious about the Ekka as ever.

EDNA O'NEIL: Oh, yes, yes, yes, I love competition. When you don't win you just try again next year.

PIP COURTNEY: So you're not going down there to come second?

EDNA O'NEIL: No! (LAUGHS) Probably will get a few seconds just the same.

PIP COURTNEY: Edna O'Neil's learnt a few tricks in 60 years of baking. Here's a tip for scones.

EDNA O'NEIL: Use partly cream; cream gives them a nice light texture. And always add a little bit of salt.

PIP COURTNEY: And what about butter versus margarine?

EDNA O'NEIL: Oh, go butter. I mean margarine's out. You don't get the good quality cake with the margarine.

Well it all started before I was married. I was in the Junior Farmers, which is called Rural Youth and we used to have displays in the produce hall and I cooked for that and the judge said "oh, these are too good, they should be over in the other hall among the open class."

So that sort of triggered me off. I started off with two and then five and then I think the next year I went up to 20. So I really got into it.

PIP COURTNEY: The morning of judging Edna's up early cooking muffins and packing entries. Then it's a 270 km drive south to Brisbane.

(arriving at show)


EDNA O'NEIL: Exhausted!


PIP COURTNEY: And if you think the domestic arts are some quaint throwback to kinder, gentler times, think again; the competition is cut throat.

How are entries this year compared to last year?

SUSAN HENNESSY: Oh, they're up beautifully by about 180 entries. We have 897 entries this year.

We have juniors, we have novices and we have got, you know, children as young as eight and six who have actually entered this year.

Actually I think we've even got a four-year-old this year.

PIP COURTNEY: There's even a new section for pesto.

UNKNOWN: I think we're wanting to have contemporary foods.

Everybody eats pesto now but I think bringing it into 2010 is a great way of introducing new things like this and I'm sure that this and we'll bring in other classes as time goes on as well.

PIP COURTNEY: Susan Hennessy says there are many talented male cooks.

SUSAN HENNESSY: Yes, the men up here are just brilliant and not just well-represented but they win and they win very well.

PIP COURTNEY: One of the Ekka's top show cooks is Geoff Beattie.

GEOFF BEATTIE: I think it's probably therapy, you know, just keeps your mind sane. I used to be a bit depressed after I lost the wife and that's how I started, after Elaine died. It's always been in our family.

My mother was, my grandfather was a showman, Mum was and some of my rellies tell me I'm just a show-off.

PIP COURTNEY: With 46 entries this year you can see why it sometimes takes him half an hour to unpack his fruit cakes, pickles, jams and his specialty - sponges.

GEOFF BEATTIE: When I started I was only doing jams and a plum pudding and then I just started doing butter cakes and then I started doing slices, I started doing biscuit and then I said I reckon I could do sponge cakes.

One thing I can't master is pikelets, I cannot make pikelets. They're hopeless.

PIP COURTNEY: Show cooks generally guard their recipes but after 20 years at the top, Geoff Beattie's starting to pass them on to younger competitors.

EMILY CAMERON, JUNION SHOW COOK: I've entered fruit cake, marble cake, chocolate cake, pikelets, scones, Anzac biscuits, patty cakes and marble cake.

PIP COURTNEY: One of the young guns at this year's Ekka was 14-year-old Emily Cameron. She started competing when she was 9.

EMILY CAMERON: I've spent a few a lot of time getting all the recipes ready and stuff, so I'm hoping it's going to be good.

PIP COURTNEY: Her dad does her washing up.

EMILY CAMERON: The hardest thing would definitely be the fruit cake because of all the cutting up all the raisins and stuff like that and the easiest would be the pikelets, definitely, except for getting the sizes, that's pretty hard.

WOMAN (to Geoff Beattie): Do you put them in a double case to hold the patty shape?

GEOFF BEATTIE: No, I don't put them in a case. I butter and flour, no patty papers.


GEOFF BEATTIE: Not allowed to use Paddy paper.

LIZ HARFUL: In this class you're not. No.

PIP COURTNEY: Edna O'Neil and Geoff Beattie are just two of the stars cook book author Liz Harful wanted to meet at this year's Ekka.

A show cook expert her The Blue Ribbon cook book featuring recipes, stories and tips from prize-winning country cooks, was recognised at the Gourmand world cook book awards in Paris last year and was short listed for the world food media awards this year.

LIZ HARFUL: I grew up just across the paddock from a small district show and show day was the most exciting day of the year and I love to cook and I learnt to cook in the same tradition as show cooking, traditional baking and preserve making and so to have the chance to write about those two worlds where they come together was something that was really important for me.

PIP COURTNEY: Featuring cooks from 50 South Australian shows, the book's become a surprise best seller.

LIZ HARFUL: I think there's a yearning out there for tradition and the old-fashioned way of doing things and reconnecting with the past and this tradition of show cooking, you know, actually exemplifies that for a lot of people.

PIP COURTNEY: It's been so successful her publishers want a national version.

LIZ HARFUL: On my search for the Queensland candidates for the book for the best show cooks in Queensland and to see how shows are run here and how the cookery competitions are run and if there's any differences or regional variations that will help me make a decision about which recipes from Queensland I end up using.

PIP COURTNEY: One Queensland recipe she wanted to find was for pumpkin scones.

She was also intrigued by the peach blossom cake, something she hadn't seen down south.

What sort of people are you hoping to put in your book? Do they have to be the best?

LIZ HARFUL: Not the best in terms of how many prizes they've won, how many ribbons they've got at home in the cupboard. It's as much about their own story and the passion that they have for their local show and for show cooking and their willingness to share their knowledge.

Not every show cook is prepared to hand over a prize-winning recipe or indeed the tips that go into making that recipe work. So I'm looking for people with, I guess you'd call it a generosity of spirit as well as the skill.

PIP COURTNEY: The tools of the trade for a cookery judge are a knife and a ruler and they always bring their own.

JUDGE: Make sure your knife's always clean.

PIP COURTNEY: The queen bees of the Ekka's judging team are Shirley Hawkeye Elsdon and Val Cathcart. Nothing, not flour on the bottom of scones, a tiny skewer hole in a peach blossom cake or the wrong food colouring, escapes them.

JUDGE 1: They should only have ice on top. Icing all over covers too many multitude of sins.

JUDGE 2: Okay, well you can put that in the schedule if you like to.

JUDGE 1: I reckon just ice on top only.

JUDGE 3: And they're too hard to handle.

JUDGE 1: And no coconut.

JUDGE 3: They're a batch of scones and cut with a knife, they haven't been cut with a cutter.

JUDGE 1: Please use cutter.

JUDGE 2: Too much flour. Bad creases on the bottom.

The pastry's very fine but it's almost too fine for the amount of jam that she has in it. It would be an absolute disaster when you bit into it.

GEOFF BEATTIE: Well actually that's a good; I have made a better one than that in the plain sponge. I reckon it could have cooked a little bit long. It's sticky but that could be the weather, too.

LIZ HARFUL: It's a very fine thing with a sponge, isn't it? You've just got seconds between perfection.

GEOFF BEATTIE: Exactly right or you go over.

PIP COURTNEY: Liz Harfull says top show cooks are obsessive.

LIZ HARFUL: You know you hear stories about show cooks who in the days of lining cake tins with brown paper would iron the paper to remove every single crease, would get out a ruler and measure things down to the last millimetre.

JUDGE 1: You don't look at them you eat them, do you. That's made with cochineal this is made with food colouring. Never use cochineal.

JUDGE 2: And why never cochineal?

JUDGE 3: It throws off more of a dirty pink. Whereas food colouring, you've got to be very careful with food colouring, it's so strong but it throws off a beautiful pink.

PIP COURTNEY: Liz Harfull wants to capture the show cooking world from the Shirleys and Vals and the Ednas and Geoffs before they bow out.

LIZ HARFUL: I think it's extremely important that they're captured for future generations and for people who don't, you know, not lucky enough to have a grandmother or an auntie or neighbour that they can learn how to make this type of food from.

PIP COURTNEY: And she's been stunned at how many secret show cooks have parted with.

LIZ HARFULL: I was overwhelmed with offers and primarily because a lot of show cooks are desperate for others to discover the joy of taking part in the show and they're very keen that their shows keep going and thriving and a new generation of people on board and have that experience.

They don't want to see the country shows die. So for that reason alone most of them were very willing and keen to help me out.

JUDGE 1: Look at the lumps in the pumpkin.

JUDGE 2: Yeah, not been strained. Must strain the pumpkin.

LIZ HARFUL: A lot of them are very humble and will say to you quite frequently "I have no idea why you want my recipe or want to follow what I do, it's nothing special," but actually it is. They have skills that they take for granted because they've learnt them as children or from neighbours and they've been practicing them for many years but they're fundamentally, it look like the simplest food in the world it's the hardest to get right.

PIP COURTNEY: For the next few months Liz Harful will visit royal and country shows around the country chasing recipes, baking history and kitchen characters.

She's happy to report the show cooking scene is on the upswing.

LIZ HARFUL: But it's amazing how healthy a lot of the country shows are and I think some of them are going through quite a revival. Again part of this eagerness of people to reconnect with the traditions of the rural Australia and keep them alive and well.

PIP COURTNEY: The Ekka impressed her with the standard of cooking and especially the judging.

JUDGE 1: That one's not too bad.

JUDGE 2: They haven't done their pumpkin either.

LIZ HARFUL: The judges here are ferocious.

PIP COURTNEY: Ah yes, but they're giving you lots of tips, Liz. How about this one for the new book.

JUDGE 1: Well if you make a cake and you take out the oven and you think is it cooked, put it to your ear, if it's still talking to you, put I back into the oven until it stops talking.

JUDGE 2: Until it stops singing.

JUDGE 1: Sometimes they sing a nice song but mostly they just yabber away.

ABC Landline on iView

Connect with ABC Landine

ABC Landline on Twitter ABC Landline on Facebook ABC Landline on YouTube ABC Landline on Flickr

Blog: The Overflow