Zumbo’s Willy Wonka tattoo

The first time I came into contact with Adriano Zumbo‘s creations was in November of 2007. I remember being so excited when I saw them in the store that we drove them home nursing them gingerly like newborns. We took them to my parents’ house eager to try them together and I then rushed home to write about them. It now seems like aeons ago that that happened and now Zumbo is a household name and not just with the food obsessed in Australia. So four years later, what is life like for Australia’s most recognised patissier abd Willy Wonka and torturer of MasterChef contestants? Is it all cakes, macarons, models in bikinis, sportscars and relaxing? The answer to that is yes, yes, sometimes, yes and no. Read on, Dear Reader!

7am

Zumbo in his lounge room

It is 7am on this Friday morning and Adriano Zumbo slips on his shoes in the lounge room of his Balmain house. He’s 29 years old, about to turn 30 in a couple of months as well as open a new place in The Star (formerly Star City), participate in the World Chef Showcase, be a major drawcard at Masterchef Live and has now been lassoed into Macaron Day, the yearly macaron extravaganza that coincides with his birthday where all of his stores carry 60 flavours of macarons and nothing else. He is the boy from Coonamble in country N.S.W. who arrived in Sydney at age 15 from a town of under 3,000 to a city of 3 million.

The wall of his study

And if you’re wondering, his house is kept tidy-the only notable exception is the kitchen which is being used as a temporary test lab with labelled boxes of ingredients on the island in the centre. The patissier is getting ready to leave for his day at work and before anything can be done, he must have his cup of coffee.

7.12am

Zumbo walks to Little Ethel’s cafe where he greets the barista. He is a regular here and while he waits another gentleman holding a baby starts talking to him in what I will learn today is a regular pattern. He is well known among Balmain’s residents and many of them are either patrons of the shop or have met him in one way or another. Cup of coffee in hand he slides into his turbo charged black Renault Megane, and with a deep growl of the engine, his start has begun while most of us are waking.

7:25am

His first visit of the day is the hub of the whole operation, the Rozelle kitchen on Terry Street where thousands of macarons are made a day. They’re aiming for about 20,000 macarons today-reinforcements for the busy weekend ahead. As well as these, there are cakes, breads, pastries, chocolates and just general sweets from the salt and vinegar chips coated in chocolate to nougat to “macaroni road” (rocky road made with macarons-oh so good, just don’t look at the calories per slice ). These are then distributed to one of his four stores ready to be bought and consumed by hungry sweet craving mouths or doled out by people seeking favour with others.

The factory shop is quiet at this hour save for the occasional customer buying coffee. The eating area in the factory has a large window and a few bar stools so that people can perch and watch the chefs making and filling macarons and creating cakes or try and catch a glimpse of him-the last time I was there with him and he was giving us a macaron making masterclass I looked up and saw a crowd eagerly pressed up against the windows and mobile phones taking photos of him.

Zumbo goes upstairs to the office which is his base for his activities and puts down his hessian bag with a large gaping hole. “I really need to get a new one” he says looking at the enormous hole where cords, cds and papers threaten to spill out.  He rests it on a long red banquette with a small built in table and this he calls his desk. Black and white Zumbo themed posters line the walls, all done by a local artist.

7:30am

Macaroni Road

First things first: he walks around the kitchen to greet the staff. He starts on the second floor which is where the chocolate room is located. Chocolatier Karen slices up pieces of the macaroni road. The kitchen goes through 11 tonnes of chocolate a year and currently it is all either Callebaut or Cocoa Barry with a move this year to use Cocoa Barry exclusively and for Zumbo to become an ambassador for them. He is somewhat wary of endorsements or ambassadorships but says that to be included in the list of ambassadors is flattering because of the company that he keeps with many of the chocolatiers or patissiers having a lot more experience than him. He also likes the idea of being loyal to a company.

7:35am

This second coffee for the day is delivered upstairs from the barista in the cafe. Zumbo makes his way downstairs where many of the staff are busy in the main kitchen. He greets his second in charge Dean who has been with him since the very beginning. Dean looks like he has been through the wars-the cake wars as his covered arms sports a spill mark and Zumbo chats to him about how the day has unfolded thus far.

Zumbo and Dean

Inspecting the cakes

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Hardy Suangin of Harrison’s

It was an offer sent to me via email a few months ago. As soon as I opened it I was instantly intrigued. It involved twenty four meals, six hours and the chance to imitate the daffy judges on Iron Chef Japan. Yes please! Answering the invitation to judge the Taste Paradise Food Fight at the Port Douglas Carnivale, was impossible to resist. I had always wondered what it was like to judge a food event and I was about to see it first hand. Would my fellow judges and I agree? Would there be disagreement arguments about whose cuisine reigned supreme? Would there be vast ratings swings with many of us unable to decide a winner? What about collusion or bias? Well I had to see for myself!

Ricky Jordan of Bucci

The Port Douglas Carnivale is a celebration of the local food industry and the “Taste Paradise Food Fight” is one of the more fun events. It’s part of the local scene and we’ve all made it into today’s paper too and prior to the event I also did some radio interviews.

Evan Seaward of Bistro 3

The brief was simple. I along with my fellow judges wine and food critic Winsor Dobbin and chef Nick Holloway were to sample and judge two dishes made by some of Port Douglas’s leading chefs. There would be three rounds, the first two with four chefs each and the third round the deciding round with the two winners from the first two rounds facing off. Each chef would be challenged to cook in an unfamiliar environment with a surprising list of ingredients and an entree and main must be prepared within the 40 minutes allocated. In a twist, the chefs were given mystery boxes and each box had five ingredients in them. They needed to use at least two ingredients from the mystery box and the more they used the more points they would receive. They would receive ten points for each of these categories.

1. Difficulty of preparation and skill proficiency of each contestant(10 points)
2. The creative use of the ‘mystery’ ingredient and if what was originally planned has been prepared (10 points)
3. The innovativeness of the dish and how it relates to current cuisine trends (10 points)
4. How good the dishes taste and look (20 points)

Along with this we were also given a judging guideline which described what a score of 0-10 would involve and under which circumstances we should award the scores. Still since many of us were new to the whole judging process we were nervous although there was agreement that we wouldn’t discuss scores in case that created bias. We’re given our score card for each round with the chef’s names as we talk as the crowds gather. Each of us has a different background so we were curious to see whether our palates would rate things similarly or not. Only time would tell!

Vikas Chandra of the Sheraton Mirage

Round 1: The Gentlemen

Mystery box ingredients: cream, hard persimmons, cardamom pods, chillies and soft coconut meat.

Jed Sneddon of Nautilus

Enter the four chefs who nervously pace around their station. The crowd is mild mannered, it’s 5:30pm on a Friday and they’re politely awaiting some food fighting action. There are four cooking stations, each with two gas burners and a barbecue and there is a shared deep fat fryer, oven and hand wash facilities. Chefs are allowed to bring in cooking utensils, pots, pans, knives and appliances and any crockery to plate up on but are not allowed to bring any ingredients.

Behind the four cooking stations there is a huge fruit and vegetable display from Blood Orange, a local deli and a fridge full of meat, dairy and other assorted necessities, a pantry and a fish and seafood display by Coles which includes banana prawns, live mud crab (but very sleepy!) and several types of fish like red emperor, trevally and Spanish mackerel. The chefs are allowed to beg or borrow items from each other and they can keep going back to shop for more items after the initial shop. However there may not be enough of an item and it is on a first in first served policy although points are deducted for wastefulness!

The four chefs look nervous. We are sitting on the left hand side to them and after introducing them and us  to the audience the two hosts, radio MCs Sal and Roy let them go for a shop. They’re surprisingly restrained and not in a hurry at all given the time constraints. They bring around their goodies to the station and we walk around and take a look and see how they are doing, what their knife skills are like, how messy and how ordered they are.

We note that one chef Vikas Chandra from the Sheraton has even written up plating instructions. Last year’s champion Tommy Young is on hand to defend the title in this round. Sal and Roy encourage the chefs as the crowd and we the judges look on. Any gaps in silence are punctuated by some bizarre Jamie Oliver sound bytes.

Dom Uhlig from Salsa

The 40 minutes goes surprisingly quickly for us and we’re just the judges – imagine how quickly this would go for the chefs! Before we know it, chef Dom Uhlig from Salsa is standing in front of us telling us about his two dishes.

Noodle salad

The three of us crowd around the dishes and we take some and put them on our plates to try them. The noodle salad was good although there was a bit of a presentation glitch when the lemon segment still had the sticker on it which prompted judge chef Nick to explain that if details like that are forgotten in his kitchen then one may wonder what else may have been forgotten. I found this a bit on the sweet side. With Thai and Asian style salads, there is that balance of sweet, sour, spicy and salty and this was a bit too sweet for me.

Lamb chops

The lamb chops are very well cooked and seasoned and come with a delicious mash, flaked almonds and greens. But no time to dawdle, we are tapping our pens onto the clipboard and writing down our scores before the second chef comes up to give us his dishes.

Jed Sneddon from Nautilus

Fritter

Chef Jed Sneddon of Nautilus is up next and he presents us with his two dishes. The first is a fritter and the texture is very soft and not crispy which is a surprise for us. It is paired with creamy exotic mushrooms.

Fish with salad

The fish is nicely cooked although Winsor finds the centre too raw for his liking but I do like the seasoning and the searing on the outside. It is paired with a salad which is a little tart for my liking and a creamy sauce as well as a couple of prawns.

Vikas Chandra from Sheraton Mirage

Grilled prawns served with salad of pomerieno, raw papaya and pomegranate with cream and green cardamom sauce

The third chef is Chef Vikas Chandra from the Sheraton Mirage and he presents us with a prawn dish. As soon as we all taste it we are in agreement, the seasoning for this is just right and the balance of flavour is great. The herbs used in it were very well balanced and the prawns had a good texture. There’s much scribbling and I’m curious to know how the other judges rated it but resist from peeking!

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Not a mountain of snow, but a mountain of salt…

I lick my hand. I taste salty. I taste exactly like Mr NQN does after he has been out all day sailing (although he usually also smells like rubber wetsuit which thankfully I do not). Where am I? I’m discovering how salt is made. A group of eight of us have taken the two hour drive east of Adelaide in South Australia to the area of Price where we will be seeing salt being harvested and the salt farm. Yes put your hand up if you were like me and thought that salt was harvested in salt mines!

First things first. What is the difference between table salt and flake salt which is seen as the more premium salt? The taste of salt itself is dependent on its magnesium content. Flake salt is made into a brine and it is then set and crystallized and then they crack it to produce the distinctive flakey shards. It is exactly the same original product as table salt (although some table salt can have anti caking agents added to it). But between the two types, the shape of the salt crystals and its ability to melt on the tongue determine the taste. Saxa’s flake salt is a softer salt than Maldon salt which is hard when rubbed between fingers. And where does the term salt mine come from? Well salt here isn’t mined, it is farmed but in the Dead Sea, salt is mined as the salt is locked into the ground.

So how do we make salt in Australia? The Cheetham salt farms at Price in South Australia take water from the pure, cold Southern Ocean and deposit it in one of twelve ponds. There are six processes that occur in these twelve ponds and they tell us that salt takes a year to create from start to finish. Each of these ponds are progressively saltier. The first pond is the least salty and has fish in it and  during the months of Summer when they make salt (they harvest it during Winter) the heat from the sun and wind evaporate the water in the ponds.

First of all litres and litres of water are drawn from the ocean into the condensation pond and it moves through the 12 ponds over the course of summer with movement coming from gravity and the evaporation process. The last pond is the crystallisation pond where the water is very high in saline as so much evaporation has occurred. Each of these ponds has a unique ecosystem that supports itself with marine, plane and bird life and humans cannot disturb it. Also the pond system can never go backwards as that would encourage bacteria growth.

One of the early condenser ponds with birds and wildlife

In the final crystallisation pond the salt drops out of the water as the water can no longer support the dissolved salt crystals and the salt settles on the bottom of the pond. The salt is then harvested and then washed with a saline saturated brine which is necessary to ensure that the salt doesn’t dissolve in the liquid. If they are using iodine, they will add it after this step. The washed salt is then placed into enormous salt stacks which resemble icebergs or snow covered mountains for a year. The harvest takes approximate three months to complete.

Magnesium chloride

A by product from the crystallization pond is a secondary deposit collected called magnesium chloride which they use to manufacture cosmetics and to thicken and set tofu. This looks like a clear spirit and is incredibly bitter in taste. You can find it in face creams where it absorbs moisture from the skin and air but gives the skin a moist, dewy feel. Sneaky buggers these cosmetics companies are huh?

The ponds are about 1 foot deep which is optimal for UV light to get in. The ponds also have a “floor” of salt and to create this floor they sacrifice  one season’s worth of salt and then everything else grows over it. We pass samphire bushes which we pick and they’re similar to a very salty small budded cactus with moisture inside and also remind me of very, very, very green grapes. It gets so salty out there and there is so much salt in the air that if you spend a few hours out there you will taste salt all over you. The site is 10kms large and is bordered by national park and they own the surrounding land to that to ensure that they can control the product better so that there aren’t any additives or chemicals added to the soils.

Samphire

The whole process is an organic progress so it is all organically harvested but they point out that salt itself cannot be called organic as it is indeed a chemical called Sodium Chloride or NaCl.

Driving across the salt ponds

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