‘Better smash it down before she comes back, stop mucking around with it’ we would muster to each other as kids.
There were eight of us kids at one point, and even the big Milo tin never lasted long, especially when we would eat whole spoonfuls of the stuff, bone dry!
Even though it was forbidden at nine Guilford road!
That feeling of pure bliss when you stuck a huge spoonful of the gear strait into your flavour basin was one of my best childhood memories, it was also one of the first ever times I had to think logically about eating something. It was well risky but worth every spoonful!
You couldn’t just shove the stuff in and chew away. You needed technique to pull it off, or there was nothing to enjoy about it!
A deep breath, shove it in and close your gob around it, then press up with your tongue. Your sylivial juices would then gradually moisten this dry as a bone delicacy. Just enough for you to gradually let it lose, smear it around with your tongue, then work it down your gullet!
If you stuffed it up, the dry granules would get spat strait back out, all the while getting unpleasantly stuck all over your tonsils and throat! I’m sure most Aussies can relate. At least the ones with game anyway!
The oldies would cut sick if you got caught and we couldn’t have cared less. Any chance we got, we were into it.
We had Milo on or in just about anything sweet and creamy when we were growing up. Ice-cream, milk, cake recipes, you name it. It was usually in there.
This trusty delicacy is one of our true national food icons! With most Australians being made of the stuff!
Check out my milo pudding recipe here
Our native hosts have damper that is somewhat of an icon! Apart from that, though, Vegemite is about all else that is uniquely Australian that comes to mind.
Just about everything that we call our own, from parmigiana to pavlova, Sunday roasts, or rissoles with gravy, these can all be traced back to cultures from other regions in the world that migrated here at one point or another.
Schnitzels are German, Europe has been eating everything with bread since before Spartacus was slashing it up over the Italian countryside, rissoles with mash and gravy was brought over from the Queens state back in the day with the convicts. We are a nation of immigrants, and so is the food here.
This delicacy was created by a chemist and inventor named Thomas Mayne way back in 1934, and he named it after some historical tough dude slash athlete remembered as ‘Milo of Croton.’
My profession affords me a skill set that allows me to mix, blend, and twist anything that I want customers to consume and hopefully enjoy.
It doesn’t always work out the way I plan it, yet I’m sparcly discouraged.
Practice, practice practice, and then practice some more is the way of any other chef worth his pearly white jacket!
F%$k what the haters say. Their really just scared and lack the clout to try something themselves.
I’ve never really tried to try to play much at work with Milo until a couple of years ago!
Milo is among a few traditional Australian food type’s, that are frowned upon by the hospitality industry of Australia.
For some bullshit reason, milo is considered a cardinal sin in professional circles. Rissoles are the same, yet we do do rissoles, we just call them koftas.
Hot chocolate is what got me stuck into creating something special out of this Aussie household stable after my boss enquired about maybe doing something to attract customers over winter!
The suggestion of Milo only got me a frown, though.
There’s a good reason why a bald pommie guy call Heston wrote about the effect that a cup of hot chocolate has on someone in one of his books I had a browse through a while back, The fat duck cookbook!
How nice is a warm, hot chocolate brew once you have returned home from splitting wood or fishing on a shitty Tasmanian winter day?
I enjoyed a fair few growing up, mainly after ferreting, fishing, or splitting wood, and they always hit the spot.
When we were kids, if it wasn’t raining, or you had no homework to do, you were outside, usually moving around as much as possible to get the body fire place pumping, all the while trying not to freeze as the arctic winds rolled through you!
It wasn’t hot chocolate we were sipping when we came back it inside though, it was milo.
I’m sure most people can attest, well, anyone that grew up before the current technological revolution. Winters were and are cold and hazardous, and you had to suck it up. All the while, it is actually good for you.
While are immune systems are better suited to having to suck up a bit of cold weather in order to make us stronger when we grow up.
There is surely some sort of sociological connection to a warm cuppa on a cold day, though, apart from just getting some sort mobility or warmth back into your purple fingers when you get home!
When you finally got inside, there was typically nothing better than a hot cup of Milo!
I have worked in a few places that liked to do numerous types of flavoured hot and sweet beverages. They were always popular, yet I never came across a cup of milo for $3 on any drinks board.
My ex-wife was a pretty handy barista, and we were pretty popular up in Georgetown for tricked out hot chocolates. All different kinds of berry hot chocolates! They sold well and gave the place a different element to others around the local landscape!
Most places these days have their hands full with 16 different milk varieties these days, but I think milo would be a solid option to have on a few drinks boards. Plus it is traditionally Australian.
Good food is all about good times, and I’m sure most Aussies can relate to good times with a BIG spoon and a tin of Milo!
Get yourself some Milo here 👈
Tales of a Tassie Chef 