The Global Kitchen in 2024’s Culture Mix will dish up a feast for the senses. There’ll be music and dance, free cooking demonstrations and workshops, and a menu featuring four multicultural taste sensations: South American asado, Vietnamese fresh rice paper rolls, Karenni banana sticky rice and Persian Joojeh (chicken kebabs).
The festival – which last year drew 10,000 people to the heart of Wollongong – will be held across several city venues on Saturday, 19 October. The Global Kitchen will pop up in the Service NSW forecourt on the corner of Kembla and Crown streets from 12pm to 6.30pm.
“All the tastings of the Global Kitchen are free, thanks to council,” says the event’s Argentinian MC, Sylvina Beleniski.
Sylvina – a dancer, English teacher, publicist and, most recently, amateur stand-up comedian – moved from Buenos Aires to Helensburgh shortly before the pandemic. Now a city dweller, she has been part of the Culture Mix advisory group for the past two years and the Global Kitchen will open with a dish she’s most homesick for: South American Asado.
From 12 noon to 2pm, Uruguayan, Argentinian and Brazilian volunteers will be slow-grilling meat, including home-made chorizo.
“They want the asado to be passed to the next generation,” Sylvina says. “Because it's not like the Aussie barbie. It's not that you throw on a sausage and that's it. The barbecue is a ritual, it's a ceremony. They know how to slowly move the charcoal to make the heat go at the right temperature. So nothing is going to be burnt and, the most important, it's going to be tender.”
Sylvina plans to interview the chefs about the meaning of asado. “We honour the food … It's not like you have your burger, your chips, and just leave. No, no, no. It's a ceremony to enjoy, to give it time, to taste it.”
In Argentina, she says, with evident nostalgia, asado is an all-day event for family and friends, who gather to cook, eat and talk deeply about life.
During the two hours of the South American section, dancers will entertain the crowd. Look out for tango, Afro-Peruvian fusion and performers dressed in feathers like the Incas.
In between food displays, there’ll be a half-hour break for the next group to set up. Then, from 2.30-3.30pm, the Vietnamese community will take over the Global Kitchen.
“They are going to do the rice paper rolls and, at the same time, there will be an invitation for people from the audience to come and do it themselves,” Sylvina says.
Alongside the workshops, dancing will continue, with performances by women moving as if throwing water for the rice, to show the value of the harvest.
From 4-5pm, festival-goers are in for a sweet treat when the Burmese community dish up sticky rice in banana leaves for the Karenni Showcase. “They are going to bring the rice cooked – with the coconut flavour and the brown sugar and a tiny bit of salt," Sylvina says. "That will be like the dessert.”
From 5.30-6.30pm, the day will wrap up with a Persian theme. To add authenticity, people will be playing backgammon and performers will showcase Bahar Persian Dancing, while volunteers cook Persian Joojeh.
“It's like a chicken kebab,” Sylvina says. “The trick is that they marinate it the previous night, with salt and pepper and olive oil and lemon – but they use saffron. For you, saffron is a tiny, super expensive can in Woolies, but [for the Persian community] it's a flower.”
Saffron is cooked in water to release the aroma and golden colour, she explains. “That's why it's different. It’s so exciting.”
Sylvina hopes to create the kind to atmosphere where people are happy to linger all day in the Global Kitchen.
She encourages everyone to stop for a minute and think about how lucky we are to be celebrating food and dance. “How free we are to do that. We can enjoy, we have the privilege to be fed by these beautiful people – food that we would have never tried before.
“That's the richness of the Culture Mix.”
Culture Mix is on in Wollongong from 11.30am to 8pm on Saturday, 19 October. For more information, click here.