A Quick Note on the Legacy of the ex-Prime Minister of New Zealand

This is actually not about politics.

Instead, it is about food.

Tinned spaghetti pizza. With pineapple.


Back in May, the recently defeated New Zealand prime minster Bill English posted on social media about his family meal. It was quite the scene...

The Internet reaction was immense. What I'm calling Pizzageddon  - since Pizzagate is taken - started with mass shock, followed by mass disgust. Then perhaps even mass laughter and mass contempt directed at a national leader, whose only crime was cooking for his family a traditional delicacy from the ends of the country at the ends of the Earth.

My initial path upon discovery of the pizza was basically the same.

I like good food. As of 2016, I’ve been to 21 hatted restaurants in the SMH Good Food Guide. I think that's fairly impressive for a person with three small kids and zero time. And while I haven't checked the latest Good Food Guide released earlier this week yet, I think I've got enough improvement in me over the last year for a substantial blog update.

But then I realised something. I also like dodgy food that causes sophisticated people to sneer. 

I remembered tinned spaghetti jaffles being an all-time favourite from my childhood. So if you replace the white bread with a pizza base, and add some melted cheese and tinned pineapple, it actually sounds like an improvement. This assumes you can avoid sogginess. (Bill's advice... drain some of the liquid from the tin. Genius!)

Then it got me thinking, what other unfashionable foods do I really like? There are a lot. Here are the first ones that came to mind, in rough order of dodginess...

1. Pancakes with condensed milk
When I was a kid a weekend treat was pancakes for breakfast. There were three options.

1. Whatever jam jar was open - usually strawberry, but sometimes raspberry or plum;
2. The simple classic lemon and sugar, generally preferred by parents; Or
3. Carnation sweetened condensed milk squeezed from the tube.

I always assumed condensed milk on pancakes was a normal and extremely delicious meal, until as an adult literally everyone I talked to about this had never heard of it.

Apparently condensed milk is actually used in cooking, not as a spread.

2. Fish finger sandwiches
Fish finger sandwiches are quite versatile. Do you toast the bread, or leave fresh? Tomato sauce, mayonnaise, or tartare sauce?

But the biggest question is, do you settle for three fingers on a sandwich or ambitiously squeeze on four fingers? Four is obviously better than three, but it comes with the risk of spillage.

3. Breakfast cereal at night
When I was a kid there was a commercial where the teenage son is eating cereal at some random time, because "your taste buds don't know what time it is."

You know, he was right!

If I'm left to my own devices and I'm not hungry enough to cook, there's a strong chance I'm eating a big bowl of cereal for dinner. Or if I'm still hungry after eating properly, I might have cereal anyway, for dessert. It probably has more sugar than dessert.

4. Chiko roll
The Chiko roll is as Australian as Vegemite and Holden cars, except that the Chiko roll is still made here.

It is a deep-fried stick of mostly cabbage encased in thick, gluggy batter. It somehow sounds more appetising than it looks.

A couple of years ago three politicians had an argument about which town could lay claim to being the home of the Chiko roll. Bizarrely they each advocated their own town, instead of trying to shift blame.

The Chiko roll will never be my first choice, but if they ran out of pies and sausage rolls at the footy, I'd still eat one and like it.

5. Tinned sardines, mashed on toast, with tomato sauce

Yeah not sure I can defend this.