A good Sunday to you Dear Readers! Guess where I am taking you to today? Why we’re headed to Tasmania. Did you ever wonder how the food got from the seedling to the farmer to your plate? I have and being a city born and raised kind of gal I had pretty much no idea. So let me take you on a tour where you will learn how Australia’s best ocean trout is harvested and where it swims, how to pick a good onion, which country prefers larger carrots, how wasabi, saffron and tomatoes are grown and see sapphire potatoes and banana eschallots all in the one story!

Hill Transplants

We are truly starting from the very beginning at a place where all of the above ground produce like lettuce, celery and cabbage come from. Did you know that most of this produce is actually grown from seedling rather than seeds directly into the ground? Obviously under the ground vegetables like potatoes and carrots are grown straight from the ground but these above ground vegetables start from seedlings. And Hills Transplants is where they create seedlings for farmers. They start with a Canadian peat moss which they believe to be the best and a tray is filled with aerated peat moss and then a machine picks up single seeds and deposits them in the centre of the peat moss. It must be a single seed only to grow ideally.

Daly Gourmet Potatoes

“Don’t get too excited” I say quietly to myself. “People tend to back away from people that get excited over purple potatoes” I reasoned. There is a recipe that I have been waiting to make for almost a year and the key ingredient missing is purple potatoes that keep their colour after cooking. I’ve tried several in vain and so don’t hold much hope that these will retain their colour. But after my enquiry they confirm that these are indeed purple potatoes that keep their colour! Joy! Bizarre food joy yes! Embarrassing food joy yes!

Gerard and Susie Daly explain to us how they came to discover the purple potato. They harvest 35 tonnes of potatoes a year and every year they incorporate an heirloom variety of  potato. This year is the purple “Sapphire” potato which was found at the back of a storage shed that belonged to the local university. They decided to give it a go and here we are months later with actual purple potatoes! When cut open the potatoes have a little white ring around them and a purple inside and to retain their colour as they lose a bit of their vibrancy, they advise to boil them with their skins on. They’re grown at Marion Bay in the South East of Tasmania.

Milton Farm

Our next stop is a Milton Farm, a wasabi, saffron, cauliflower, onion and cabbage farm where the sixth generation Parker family takes the long process of harvesting wasabi, a process that can take up to 2 years.  They sell to restaurants such as Cutler & Co and Quay who also purchase their flowers which they post up in ziplock bags. The wasabi is what everyone wants to know about though and as it is such a time intensive product compared to cauliflower that takes 3 months, the prices are expensive. Harris Farm sells the wasabi stems for $180 a kilo and as they’re sold in small quantities they package them up so that they aren’t easily pinched! The stems are grown year round whilst the wasabi flowers and baby leaves are available during winter.

Here they grow in the ground whereas in Japan they grow in water. Is there a taste difference? Apparently they held a blind taste test with chef Tetsuya and he couldn’t tell the difference. Notice the green on the wood in the picture coming up below? That comes off the wasabi naturally over the years! We try some of the wasabi which is freshly grated on two types of graters, one that they make and sell here and a fascinating one from Japan which is made from sharkskin which is a very rough surface with small “bubbles” on it. You can also use a ginger grater or a very fine Microplane grater.

Melina Parker talks to us about the saffron which is a short flowering season from the end of March to the beginning of May. It can be backbreaking work as the flowers fall on the ground and are quite intermittent (and why “child labour” in this case is appealing to them as children are much closer to the ground!). Saffron to us are the three pronged, dried red stigmas of the Crocus Sativus flower. In their first year they harvested 3 grams from their basketball court sized plot of saffron and it it takes about 200 flowers to make one single gram of saffron. And did you know that bees can get drunk off saffron?

The wood turned green from the wasabi!

Wasabi leaves and wasabi with smoked trout

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If you look at the wall of photos in our apartment you will see a few photos of Mr NQN and I growing up and some present day ones with friends and family. One thing that people love to comment on is the fact that the lanky, tall Mr NQN of now used to be the fattest, podgiest baby ever with copious rolls of fat on his arms and legs. More surprisingly was the fact that until he was about five or six years old he only drank breast milk and ate raw food. His mother delighted in the easy preparation of raw food that back then also entailed not cutting the food and eating it as whole as possible. Dinner would be presented as a whole cabbage with each child tearing off a leaf.

I told you the Elliotts were unusual didn’t I?

Raw food isn’t quite the same today as it was back then and has thankfully gotten a lot more exciting than raw cabbage leaves or raw potatoes. I know the idea of pitching the idea of a cold dessert while we’re in Winter here may seem doomed to fail when all one  wants is a pudding. But please allow me to stand at the podium and give you a hard sell. In my corner, or should I say in my kitchen at home I have Skye Craig, Masterchef Season 2′s dessert gal who wowed the hard-to-please judges with a dessert. Not only that but it was a gluten free, raw chocolate dessert made with avocado.  And here she was in my kitchen to show you and I how to make it!

Skye has just launched her new range of ice creams and dessert under the name of “Wild Sugar” which are now available at Thomas Dux stores in Sydney as well as a range of stockists in Brisbane and Queensland. A former graphic artist she closed down her own business to go onto the show and pursue her dream of working in food. Her focus is on desserts with an emphasis on raw desserts and native produce and her favourite native ingredients are wattleseed and lemon myrtle.

One sunny afternoon Skye arrived at our apartment. And I should add that she’s a nice guest ignoring the mess and the boxes and boxes of things Armed with a roll of knives and all of the necessary supplies she is ready to make her famous raw dessert, a chocolate avocado mousse, said to be her signature dish and one that sums up her personality. Given how popular the raw chocolate brownies were on the blog people are becoming more curious about raw food!

A former vegan of one and a half years she now eats meat but eats raw food as much as possible. Like many she finds eating raw during the warmer months easier whilst during Winter she craves rich items like stews. And having been through the whole Masterchef process she is used to the cameras and stops and positions things for me to photograph them (a dream subject!).

“A version of this dessert saw me through the first round of auditions for Masterchef in Brisbane” she says. “Then for our signature dish for the Masterchef top 50, I created a plate with two desserts on it. The chocolate avocado mousse and Lemon Myrtle and raspberry semifreddo (made of cashew cream). This dish saw me in the top 7. There was a certain amount of intrigue with the green stuff going into the blender and then pure delight from George once he had tasted it.”

You do need a blender or food processor in order to make this (she recommends Vitamix for smooth purees) and can’t really be done without one as you won’t achieve that super smooth consistency. The flavour of this rich chocolatey avocado dessert is delicious and unusual. Like the brownies you can’t taste the avocado but it lends the mousse a creaminess along with the coconut milk. The raspberry layer adds tang although if it’s too much of a production I’m sure you could just have the nutty cashew layer at the bottom topped by the voluptuous mousse.

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever tried a vegan, raw food or vegetarian diet? And did you feel better for it? Have you kept to it?

Chocolate Avocado Mousse with Raspberry Cream

Skye says: Let yourself truly indulge and delight yourself with this silken smooth chocolate mousse with raspberry. Super easy to make, all you need to arm yourself with for this adventure is a blender, a food processor and a spatula. If you’re someone like me, you may feel compelled to eat sweets every day. I have created this chocaholic style dessert for people who want a healthier option using whole ingredients that function as natural medicine for you. That way you can take care of your body while taking care of your tastebuds.

The most important thing to remember is to have fun in the kitchen. I often end up with splatters of Chocolate avocado mousse on the ceiling of my kitchen. Think decadent, think yummy, think wild! Smiles for miles x Skye

Serves 8, prep time: 30 – 40 mins

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For a dairy free version, just leave out the dark or milk chocolate.

Macadamia base

• 2 cups raw macadamia nuts
• 3-4 tablespoons light agave syrup or honey

Chocolate Avocado Mousse

• 4 avocadoes
• 220ml light agave syrup or honey
• 1/2 tbsp coconut oil
• 100g 70% dark Lindt chocolate or milk chocolate (whichever is your favourite)
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 7-10 tbsp cacao powder please use Power Super foods cacao powder if possible (start with 5 tablespoons and then taste to see if it needs more. Varying brands are quite different in their strength)

Wild Hibiscus and raspberry cream

• 1 cup cashews
• 2 cups frozen raspberries
• 4 Nicholson’s wild hibiscus flowers (if you can’t find the flowers, just leave these out of the recipe)
• ¼ cup light agave syrup or honey
• 50ml lemon juice
• 1/2 cup fragrance free coconut oil
• 1 cup of coconut milk
• 1/4 tsp celtic sea salt

Garnish

• 8 Nicholson’s wild hibiscus flowers (if you can’t find the flowers, no problem at all, just use a raspberry or chocolate shavings)

Buyer’s tips: Supermarket or farmer’s market: avocadoes, 70% dark lindt chocolate, raw macadamia nuts, frozen raspberries, coconut milk
Healthfood store: light agave nectar/syrup, fragrance free coconut oil, cacao powder
Specialty Delis and gourmet food stores: Nicholson’s Wild Hibiscus Flowers

Method

1. Garnish: Place 8 of the wild hibiscus flowers upside down on a plate and place in the freezer. The petals should be on the plate, and the base of the flower should be sitting up. This technique will freeze the flowers into lovely upright flowers so that you can use them as garnish without them collapsing.

2. Base: Pulse the macadamia nuts in a food processor. Once the nuts are about half the size of the original chunks, take half of the mix out and set aside in a bowl. Add 3 tablespoons of the light agave syrup and continue to process the remaining mix in the food processor until it forms a smooth paste. Pull the smooth nut mix out of the food processor and combine with the nuts set aside in the bowl.

3. Mousse: Place Lindt dark chocolate into food processor and pulse until chocolate is in small pieces. Set aside in bowl.
Combine avocadoes, cacao, agave syrup, coconut oil, in a blender until smooth, creamy. Taste and adjust if need be, as produce is always very different. If you want your mousse to be more sweet, add more agave nectar. Less sweet, more avocado. More chocolatey, add cacao powder, less chocolatey, more avocado. Fold in Lindt chocolate for the yummiest chocoholic’s dessert.

4. Raspberry Cream
Place all ingredients into Vitamix blender and blend until you have a smooth cream. Strain and set aside.

5. Serving
Using a glass slightly larger than a shot glass, place about 1 tablespoon of the macadamia base at the bottom of the glass. Smooth the mix with the back of a teaspoon.

6. Spoon the mousse on top, ensuring that the glass is almost full and smooth with the back of a spoon or give it a few taps on the bench.

7. Pour the wild hibiscus and raspberry cream over the top of the chocolate mousse.
Cover with plastic-wrap or place all shot glasses into a large plastic container with a lid and place in freezer until the desserts are cold or semi-frozen.

8. Pull the wild hibiscus flowers out of the freezer and place one on top of each dessert for a lovely garnish. This dessert is best served semi-frozen.