Plateful of Memories

With archrivals India and Pakistan set to clash during the ICC Cricket World Cup match at the Adelaide Oval on February 15, it is a good time to travel to South Australia. The state is fast becoming a much sought after destination for passionate gastronomic travellers, as Neena Bhandari discovers very distinct local flavours inspired by the region’s rich heritage and strong traditions

The apple weighs heavy in my bag as my eyes fall on the billboard displaying strict quarantine restrictions at Adelaide Airport: ‘Fruits, Vegetables and Plants prohibited in South Australia. Fines apply’.
I promptly retrieve the ripened fruit and discard it in the designated food bin in the arrivals hall.

The state prides itself for its clean, green, fresh produce, zealously protecting its farms, orchards and vineyards against fruit flies and pests. This has encouraged a continual evolution of artisan producers from seafood and grain-fed meats to cheese and chocolates.

Nestled between the Adelaide hills and the Gulf St Vincent with the Torrens River meandering in between, Adelaide is dotted with more than 700 egalitarian restaurants, cafés and funky pubs. One can choose from the popular Gouger Street polyglot dining strip, pick up a picnic hamper and eat in one of the sprawling parks or stroll through the wide streets and town squares serving everything from tapas to Indian cuisine.

On Hindmarsh Square, Jasmin Indian restaurant offers Malaysia-influenced Indian food and is a particular favourite with every visiting cricket team. The indefatigable 83-year-old founder, Mrs Anant Singh, prepares her own spices, which are freshly ground by her kitchen crew hailing from Australia, India and Nepal.

She has reinvented her mother’s recipes like the freshly baked naan on the tandoor prepared with delicious blue cheese from the Adelaide Hills and onion filling served with date and tamarind chutney or the tandoori fish made from wild catch Barramundi from Port Lincoln, lightly marinated in her own blend of spices and cooked in the tandoor, accompanied by an eggplant chutney and a potato and coc-onut curry.

The mahogany red furniture and impeccable furnishings in this basement restaurant permeate warmth. Outside, the laughter of the kookaburra on the electric wire is competing with the din of the moving traffic below. A short walk away, in the heart of the city centre, is the largest fresh produce market in the Southern Hemisphere.

Growers from across the state have been coming to The Central Market since 1869, selling a sumptuous spread of ingredients from farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, oysters and olive oils, gourmet cheeses and chocolates, sweets and spices to hormone-free and smoked meats. I find native ingredients like the aniseed myrtle, sea parsley, native thyme, river mint, mountain pepper and saltbush, which were traditionally used by Australia’s indigenous Aboriginal people, but are relishing a revival in cafés and restaurants serving bush tucker (bush food).

The produce in the market is largely sourced from within 100km and sold direct to the consumer, thereby reducing the carbon footprint. From sushi and laksa to paella and pizza, there is something to satiate every palate. The 100-odd stalls are owned by people, many of them third or fourth generation owners, hailing from over 20 nationalities.

A good way to sample the produce and meet the owners behind the market stalls is to join Mark Gleeson’s Food Tours. A market stall holder for 23 years and a retired chef, Mark says, “The markets are a celebration of small acreage farms, cheeses and chocolates.”

About 15 minutes drive from the city is the newly renovated Penfolds Magill Estate restaurant. Head chefs Scott Huggins and Emma McCaskill convince me that their “complex preparations are never complicated on the plate or palette”. They explain the complex procedure in preparing the crab, artichokes and finger limes dish on the dinner menu. Live mud crabs are placed in a saltwater kitchen tank. Each night, about an hour before dinner, the crabs’ body parts are separated based on size and shell thickness. Each part is cooked separately at different temperatures for a specific duration. They’re then rapidly chilled and the meat is carefully picked from them. The picked crab is served with shaved raw artichokes, which are sliced to order along with native Australian finger lime and bronze fennel, grown in the kitchen garden and sunflower seeds.

As we steer away from the city, an hour’s drive north-east of Adelaide lies the world-renowned Barossa Valley. The landscape changes quite dramatically. Wild rabbits and hare gambol across vineyards and paddocks; sheep laze on the green meadows across barley, wheat and canola fields; and trees are heavy with ripened fruit.

It is here that celebrity chef Maggie Beer’s journey into food began. Her ‘no frills’ Maggie Beer Farmshop at Pheasant Farm, located between Tanunda and Nuriootpa, sits on the side of a huge dam surrounded by native trees. An orchard of 2,000 trees is just across the creek and the fruits from these trees are lovingly made into jams, preserves and ciders.

Maggie says, “It’s just a great foodie oasis where you can buy simple picnic food. Our Mediterranean climate gives us wonderful produce, where our farms are so close to the city that we have freshness on our doorstep, no matter the season.”

It’s the integrity, which sets the food here apart. As Hentley Farm’s young award-winning executive chef and restaurateur, Lachlan Colwill, tells me, “You may take a leaf from our recipes, but you cannot replicate the flavour and texture anywhere else in the world because we only use produce that grows naturally well in the Barossa Valley. It is Mother Nature that dictates our menu.” He is plucking wild onion from the Greenock creek, flowing just behind the historic restored stone stables-converted boutique restaurant, and fresh almond blossoms for the lunch menu.

Unlike the food havens of France and Italy, here, one finds chefs unbridled by tradition, experimenting and creating a distinctive multicultural flavour. Nearby on Tanunda’s main Murray Street is fermentAsian, which has its roots entrenched in the chef and co-owner Tuoi Do’s Vietnamese heritage and dishes inspired by her favourite Australian restaurants serving south-east Asian cuisine.

We are warmly welcomed into this cosy and spacious restaurant, housed in a period Victorian villa. It is buzzing with tourists and day-trippers from Adelaide. A taste of the first dish from the six-course degustation menu sets the tone for a sensory journey through the aroma of herbs and delicate tastes.

Victoria McClurg took her love for cheese to another level — cheese-making (caseiculture) — and launched the Barossa Valley Cheese Company in 2003. It offers a varied range of cow and goat’s milk cheeses, including its award-winning washed rind cheeses, encouraging visitors to explore their tastebuds. She sources milk from local dairies and creates cheese imbued with the character of the locale.

And this delectable journey wouldn’t be complete without a taste of at least one of the 250 varieties of Haigh’s Chocolates. Established in 1915 by Alfred E Haigh in Adelaide, the company is now in its fourth generation and continues to be owned and operated by the Haigh family.

Specialising in bean-to-bar, it manufactures iconic and quintessentially Australian products including Chocolate Frogs, Speckles and Scorched Almonds. The unique tastes of River Murray Salt in Haigh’s Salted Caramel and native Australian ingredients in the Lemon Myrtle, Wattleseed and Quandong chocolates are a real treat. One can even purchase a Chocolate Murray Cod, created by the chocolatiers to raise the profile of this endangered species of Australian freshwater fish.

Pure indulgence, it has been, and I am spoilt for choice.

Photos: Neena Bhandari