Get Your Grill On

Just prior to last Australia Day, I was pondering what I might cook in celebration. Something that could go on the barbie and had a uniquely Aussie tang. Prawns are always good, especially cooked in the shell, which lends a smoky, concentrated, seafood flavour. The ubiqitious lamb chops were another contender, but we eat them all the time and whilst tasty, they’re not really all that special. But there is a dish, quite old, that stands up and salutes the Australian flag, a classic combination of surf ‘n’ turf, the carpetbagger steak.

It is a simple dish to prepare. In a thick piece of eye fillet steak, simply cut a pocket in the centre and stuff in as many seasoned oysters as you are able, two or three should suffice and if you wish to be careful, close the hole with a toothpick to retain the oysters inside, for as the meat cooks and seizes, there is a tendency for the oysters to be squeezed out. Then it’s just a matter of cooking to your preferred level of doneness.

That was the easy part, for when checking provenance of carpetbagger steak, there are in fact two peoples claiming the recipe, Australians and Americans. According to The Food Timeline, the first recipe for carpetbagger or carpet bag steak is attributed to Louis Diat in 1941, though Americans had been eating steaks topped with oysters since the 19th century. One problem for the American claim, is the term carpetbagger, means something else entirely, while in Australia it means only one thing, a steak stuffed with oysters. Tellingly, in an American publication, the Time-Life series, Foods Of The World, in the Pacific And Southeast Asian Cooking edition, carpetbagger steaks are attributed directly to Australia.

Though once very popular, in Australia at least, it seems to have all but disappeared. Indeed, I read one blog where it was said the dish doesn’t work very well and it’s hard not to agree; many recipes abound that add quite a few other things including wine, blue cheese and onions perhaps in attempt to better marry the protagonists. If I was to do it again, the oysters would be marinated with a few drops of Worcestershire sauce plus a little finely chopped parsley to tie the two ingredients together. Even looking at the photos, it seems as though the oysters are doing their level best to get out of the steak. Still, it was fun to do something that my parents probably ate a few times and it was great to cook something that speaks of my country.