Fred Mora of Long Prawn jokes that sometimes he’s the prawn’s head and sometimes, the tail. He’s not quite artist, not quite cook, somewhere in between.
Fred and his creative collaborator Lauren Stephens are Long Prawn, a collective using food as a springboard to start conversations that traverse big ideas and observe parts of culture that have fallen out of focus. They have held various events and happenings over the past 8-10 years, working with chefs, artists, musicians and growers of food.
Growing up, the energy at the Mora family table was theatrical, warm and chaotic. Yum cha every weekend was a solid ritual and cheekiness was a core value for some family members. Fred’s grandmother, (treasured artist Mirka Mora) was apparently treacherous at the dinner table, especially when dining out. She would demand dessert first, then steak.
It makes sense then that Fred has pursued his own creative food interests. Tax Vinegar is a project he toiled away at for some time, with beginnings as curious experiments during one of Melbourne’s numerous pandemic lockdowns. He tells us that the breadth and depth that vinegar can add to your meal is huge - “it’s like turning the brightness up on your phone screen”.
Fred’s recipe is mayonnaise and you can hear our genuine excitement in the interview - we were so delighted by this as we had seen the film ‘Monsieur Mayonnaise’ by Fred’s uncle years ago and loved it.
The film is the true story of Fred’s grandfather Georges during the French resistance. His spy name was Monsieur Mayonnaise, due to his rescuing and smuggling of children over borders using mayonnaise as his weapon. With artist Marcel Marceau, he discovered that if you could put enough mayonnaise on a baguette you would be able to hide documents in it and smuggle it past the gestapo. As the gestapo were fastidious about not getting their uniforms dirty, every time Georges passed a check point he was able to smuggle documents through. The trick was that there needed to be a certain amount of mayonnaise on the baguette - if you passed a certain threshold of it, the guards wouldn’t bother to check it.
You can find Fred's mayonnaise recipe on our website!
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Links to anything we chatted about:
- Long Prawn
- Tax Vinegar
- Australian Food Timeline
- Collingwood institution Raffles
- Stefanino Panino
- Ruthie Rogers and Rose Gray of River Cafe
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52 mins