Quirky Tasmania

Tasmania has created a niche producing and exporting a range of boutique ‘quirky’ foods to mainland Australia and across the world.

Wasabi
Tasmania has the ideal clean and cool climate for producing wasabi – the hot green plant used extensively in Japanese cooking.

Farmer Ian Farquhar is the founder of the state’s wasabi industry and grows wasabi for restaurants on the Australian mainland and in Japan. Prior to 2000, the Australian restaurant trade did not have access to fresh wasabi.

Farquhar’s ingenuity and passion for wasabi led to the creation of a unique and quirky cheese – Ashgrove Farm’s wasabi cheese. What started out as an experimental product has turned into a huge success for Farquhar and Deloraine cheesemaker, Jane Bennett. After months of testing and refinement, Bennett and Farquhar’s wasabi cheese became a big hit in Japan.

Pepperberry
The pepper tree (lanceolata winteracia) is a native shrub that is unique to Tasmania.
Pepperberry has been used to spice up a variety of foods and drinks including seafood, liqueur, mustard, cheese, and ice cream.

The pepperberry industry was pioneered during the 1990s and developed into a small-scale cottage industry. The demand for the Tasmanian native pepper has been so great that the industry has entered the commercial realm, with the Tassie ‘bush tucker’ popping up on the menus of creative chefs the world over.

Truffles
Truffles are grown under oak and hazelnut trees in northern Tasmania. The first French black truffle was unearthed in northern Tasmania in the winter of 1999, the culmination of years of work to establish a truffle industry in the state. The black nuggets are now farmed by some 30 growers and hobbyists.

Tasmania is ideally positioned to produce the ‘black gold’. It is located at roughly the same latitude as France and Italy – where truffles originated. Furthermore, Tasmanian truffle production takes place in the European off-season, avoiding competition.

Wakame
The edible seaweed wakame (Undaria pinnatifida) was almost certainly introduced to Tasmania by accident, probably via ballast discharges from Japanese ships.

Wakame is found only in waters off the east coast of Tasmania and is harvested by divers during October and December. The production process is simple; after washing and trimming, the seaweed is dried naturally in special sheds.

Wakame is commonly used in Japanese miso soups, broths, noodles, mayonnaise and nori rolls. The seaweed is harvested between September and December and Tassie now exports wakame to Hong Kong, Indonesia and New Zealand.

Saffron
Pioneers, Nicky and Terry Noonan, believe they are the only saffron producers in the southern hemisphere. They grow and produce this increasingly rare silky gold - the world's most expensive spice. A recent crop weighed in at 1.5kg and was worth $70,000 retail value.

Geese
Flinders Island residents turned a problem into an asset, when the numbers of Cape Barren Goose climbed to unmanageable proportions. Licences were issued for raising geese and collecting eggs, and now geese farmers are supplying some of Australia's top restaurants with this gamey delicacy.

Goats Cheese
Thorpe Farm, Bothwell - produces what many consider the best goat cheese in Australia - Tasmanian Highland Cheese. John Bignell, a sixth-generation Tasmanian, farms the land of his forebears. He also produces old fashioned stoneground rye flour marketed under the name of Tasmanian Highland Watermill.

Tazziberry
The Tazziberry is a small bright red fruit that grows wild in Chile. The size of a blueberry with a taste described as a cross between pineapple, strawberry and apple, the berries are used for gourmet cooking, liqueur, in a gourmet range of smoked sausages and are being tested for use in cheeses and icecream.

Water
When you breathe some of the cleanest air in the world, as proven by the scientific air monitoring station at Cape Grim, and have a reputation for clean and fresh products, why not bottle the water from the heavens?

Several innovative water manufacturers in Tasmania are doing just that. Laboratory tests show that some of these waters have a mineral content 400 times purer than World Health Organisation standards.

For more info on water see www.cloudjuice.com.au and www.tasmanianrain.com