The Root’s of Framboise

‘Sorry boss, there weren’t that many raspberries out there today, the birds must have got them all’ was my excuse for not having picked much fruit that day.’Yeah right, why are your faces red and covered in seeds then boys?’ the boss man Dennis proposed!There really wasn’t that much to pick that day in all honesty, yet Scoter and I coating each other in what we had actually picked didn’t go down real well!

All I can honestly remember is scoter calling out my name, then turning around to a strawberry fair in my eye socket. My retaliation, as one does in this world, was to seek vengeance, so I coated scoters face in my days picking!…Fruit picking was my first real job in this world, after selling kiwi fruit, kiss biscuits and mowing lawns outta my own backyard when I still too young to get any kinda real job.I had better things to do as a fifteen-year-old anyways while on School holidays! Like going swimming, fishing, throwing rocks at things or riding my treadly up and down the main drag when I was on holidays over at Scamander on Tasmania’s untainted east coast growing up!This prime little coastal beach town was my home nearly every second weekend as well as every school holiday growing up! Basically, one straight road, a hand full of shops and more fruit to pick from people’s backyards than any grommet could dream of. Not to mention the fishing was prime! Peaches, nectarines, apples, as well as many different varieties of plums. You got away with raiding fruit trees most days without any grief, yet if you knew the owners weren’t real happy about getting their fruit nicked, you could always tuck your shirt in and load up that way and just do a runner when they caught you and lost their shit!

Devil’s food cake with strawberries!
I was basically outta my tent in the morning, down to the river, then back and forth all day between eating at home, out of the river or outta someone else’s backyard!Out of all the things one can quickly knock out in a commercial kitchen or at home, a fresh piece of sun warmed fruit in the summer or a solid raspberry jam layered over puddles of melted butter with freshly yeasted bread at any time of the year is truly majestic and trumps the majority of food I have ever cooked at work. You can ask any chef worth his pearly white jacket and he’s going to tell you the simple things are usually the best, like a berry jam with butter on toast in my book!My son and I ventured out to the Evandale market a while ago to suss out a few jams and there were surely more jam pioneers out there than the Carlton football club has had wins in the last five years. I picked up some Hawthorne Hills raspberry jam that was brewed without the addition of processed sugar, which was different to your standard fare, yet pleasant all the same. In my opinion, the guys out at Christmas hills raspberry farm do the best raspberry spread in the land, yet they have competition coming from everywhere!…The Rubus Gunnianus, or Tasmanian Alpine raspberry which I am most fluent with, has been and still is a big part of any kitchen that wants to be taken seriously, no matter what the variation of your raspberry. Be it golden, black or the common red variety we are all accustomed to! This tendrilous plant, with its velvet acidity has always been one of my favourite things to indulge on ever since I was munching them down as a wee lad in my own backyard growing up!Tasmania’s cool and moist climate makes growing these red helmet shaped doozies a breeze! They are best picked when their red colour is profound and bright. This is when their acidity and fruitiness is matured together to garner the best results! The green, under ripe ones are as putrid as any green fruit you could think of and the dark red ones are only good for sauces or throwing at your sisters like I used to do growing up, as they lose their distinct flavour characteristics and do not transport very well. I have always preferred mine to be slightly under ripened, it’s an extra tang thang for mine!

Coming soon!
The Russians produce roughly a quarter of the world’s raspberries, they are also believed to be native to Asia minor (current day eastern Turkey) and North America! Historical records indicate the patrons from the city of Troy used to forage for Raspberries back in the day. It would be fair to say a chap named Achilles downed a few before burning the place to the ground after he had had his fill!Coulis, sorbet and cheesecake are in my opinion, the best way to go about utilizing a Raspberry, yet they are more versatile than a swiss army knife! Throw a squirt of coulis over your cake, drop a few whole ones down with a chocolate cake and cream, or even use them fresh and whole as a lazy garnish on nearly any desert, no one is going to complain!For those of you who don’t know what Coulis is, it is a simple blend of pureed berries with icing sugar and a dash of lemon juice! Just whack some berries into a bowl with 1/5 the amount of icing sugar to berries, sit your bowl in the sun for half an hour, then blend them with a stick blender and a few drops of lemon juice. Most chefs I know like to boil their coulis on a stove and then pass it through a sieve. I thoroughly enjoy plucking pungent berry seeds out of my teeth hours after I have smashed a piece of Hummingbird cake with some fresh coulis, so I stay away from sieving this thick sweet sauce! Plus I find heating this sauce removes some of fresh acidic aromas, not to mention the jam similarities that can occur once the pectin wakes up and does its thing!Raspberry is also a common favourite in vinegars and beer. Well before our primitive ancestors were hoping around with hops, these guys were fermenting them on their own! Then were very much inclined to add some to their beer soon enough as to enjoy with a sweetened delicacy! We call this Lambic these days and Belgium natives are the most profound in this trade, check out some Lambic framboise next time you are trying to match a beverage with a dessert!…Back when I was growing up there was really only the Eureka farm that delivered locally produced jams, ice creams and other arrays of home brewed tucker in that area of the East coast of Tasmania.I had recently ventured down that way and sure enough my old boss Dennis, along with his wife Anne, were still hard at it putting together a few summer puddings and doing everything farmers do, like grow things and make tasty berry and fruit delicacies!

Showing the boy how to work!
The plan was to camp while I was down that way, yet due to the far from salubrious weather, I ended up getting a room with my former employer at Eureka farm. Dennis and I exchanged our ideas in relation to website building and he was truly more helpful than I was. I’m technically still only a second-year apprentice when it comes to writing and doing all things articles and websites. Plenty has grown and changed out at Eureka Farm since the days of me trying to tell my boss Denis about my lack of pickings whilst sporting a red and seed filled hairline. Apart from adding accommodation to his offerings, he has been cleaning up awards left, right and centre with his prime jams, conserves and ice-creams, among other things!Foraging for fruits was one of the first ever ways I was taught as a little tacker as a means to go and make a few dollars or just to make something pure and pesticide free that didn’t cost you anything! Apart from grazing your shin’s on prickles, you got a good workout and maybe some pocket money too!It would be safe to say old Scamander has barely changed a bit since losing my hairline though. A couple more eateries and a little bit of a clean-up on a few eye sores, yet for the most part, it is still pretty much the same place I grew up at!Be sure to check them out if your every in Tasmania or down that way, you can check them out here at https://eurekafarm.com.au/bloghh/The berry season is pumping at the moment down on the east coast and Scamander is still definitely worth a look this time of year for anyone that can muster a trek down that way. The jams are sweet, locals are lovely the Bream are biting all year round!

The mouth of Scamander River