Six cooks, six countries, six incredible journeys.
Stepping outside their comfort zones...
It's not for the faint-hearted, for sure.
..our cooks will travel far and wide...
Route 7, all the way.
..to find some of the most exciting food on the planet.
If you're back in the UK you get tandoori chicken nothing like this.
It's beautiful. The best food I've had in Egypt.
It's pure, it's got heritage. It's got love in it, you know?
They'll go off the beaten track...
Crocodile sausages.
..meeting extraordinary people...
..exploring ways of life unchanged for centuries.
No electric blenders in the jungle. Have to do everything by hand.
Take your life into your own hands, we're on the road now.
As they travel they'll see how the language of food transcends
cultural differences...
I've never huffed on a cheese before.
..and a world away from home.
This is why I love Australia.
There's no excuse for a bad pie in Australia.
This is the beginning, where do we end?
They'll learn lessons that will change the way we cook forever.
I've been cooking a barbecue wrongly all my life.
Wow!
This time it's Rick Stein down under.
I'm in love with abalone.
Still prawns on the barbie... Bit of Pernod, olive oil, garlic.
..but Australian tastes are shifting.
I sense there's a seismic change happening.
Rick's going south... You know where you have to go? Where?
..to Tasmania.
It's the wild foodie frontier.
That's gorgeous. Wow! An island of new ideas...
This is in a class of its own.
..and old-fashioned hospitality.
"If you choose to steal my produce I hope you choke."
In 1966 I was 19 years old, and in a bad place.
I wanted to be in a good one, somewhere sunny, optimistic,
somewhere nobody could have the blues.
And this was it, Australia.
I love this beach.
When I first came to Australia when my father died,
tragically, he committed suicide,
and I was completely sort of pent up and not sure what I wanted to do.
And I thought, "I know, I'll run away to Australia."
And when I came here, one of the things is people associate me
with the Atlantic and the fish and all that.
But when I came here I was just amazed about the variety
of fish, the quantity of fish.
How you could go fishing anywhere and just catch fish, big ones,
colourful ones, the sort of fish I'd never seen before.
And I think it was that and cooking fish that almost kick-started me
off to opening a restaurant back in Britain.
Fifty years on I have a home in a small town called Mollymook,
south of Sydney.
Mollymook is a sleepy, salty place, home to people who love to be near
the water and a resort for families who want a bucket and spade holiday.
It's a bit like Padstow without the advantages of rain and gales
and fog, but with the splendid advantage of having a fish
restaurant in it, owned by me.
Morning.
'This is my Australian home from home.
'The number one topic of conversation is fish.
'What's fresh and what's trending out in the dining room.
'Knowing what people are asking for is how
'you monitor changing tastes.
'Over the years I've seen Aussie food fashions come and go.
'Old French, slow food, fast food, Pacific Rim, Asian fusion
'and of course nouvelle cuisine.'
I've been coming here for 50 years.
Wow! But in that time it's just been amazing how it's changed
because when I first came here the food was what I'd
describe as pies and pints.
Or more correctly pies and schooners.
It was really simple sort of British-based food.
But everything's changed and it keeps changing.
And you've just got to keep up with it.
As a restaurateur you have to, otherwise people don't come
to your restaurant. So I've got to know what's happening.
And I sense there's another seismic change happening again.
My house.
Sundown. A little party - because I've just had another birthday.
My guests are foodie friends and neighbours.
Everybody needs good neighbours.
They've always looked to the rest of the world for culinary
inspiration, but I think the feeding habits of Homo Australis
are changing. Going local, that's my instinct.
I think I've got everything right.
I think I know what Aussies like at a good barbecue, but you can
never be too sure because things are moving all the time.
And that's part of why I want to do this barbecue.
Just to ask a few people who I know
know a lot about food in Australia, where we're going next.
'The humble Australian barbie is a good example of how things change.
'Blokes used to stand about talking sport and incinerating sausages.
'Now they want to know what's in your marinade.'
It's just a little bit of fennel, bit of Pernod, olive oil, garlic.
'Here's another change.
'Almost all this food came from within 100 miles.
'Even ten years ago lots of it would have been imported.'
Ding-ding! Can we just start eating cos it's getting cold.
I gave it a few minutes for the food and
the wine to take effect, and then I began by talking to Helen Patience.
She grew up on tinned spaghetti.
These days she's all sun-dried tomato.
We're so lucky here. I know.
I think our appetite is becoming more sophisticated.
We used to be more like steak and sausages
and all that basic food but now the Australian food's fantastic.
We spent the last 15 years searching for an Australian cuisine
and there isn't one and we're happy with that now.
All there is now is the best produce where we can add all those
flavours from around the world and make it work.
You are so right, Simon.
We can grow everything from Mediterranean to cold climate
to tropical. We've got everything.
Why would you want to cook anywhere else?
To look at Australia as a whole the climate makes all
the difference, doesn't it?
You've got to get down to Tasmania. Apparently that's where it's at.
'I've heard this before.
'The island of Tasmania is the new go-to place for wonderful produce.'
You know where you have to go? Where? Tassie.
Everybody keeps telling me that. Why, what's so special about it?
There's no pollution. So you've got a pristine environment.
Some of the best-tasting apricots are coming out of Tassie right now.
Fishing, beautiful.
Listening to those people, they're really into local produce.
I'm so interested in what they had to say about Tasmania
because I think they see Tasmania as being this almost mystical island
with the best produce anywhere in Australia.
♪ And if I should become a stranger
♪ You know that it would make me more than sad. ♪
'So, I'm going to have to go to Tasmania.
'I've only been there once before, which is possibly
'once more than most Australians.
'It's always been a backwater, until now.'
But my culinary journey has to start in Sydney where all foodie fads
and fashions kick off.
If there are seismic changes due,
Sydney's where I'll feel the earth move.
From Mollymook it takes about 3.5 hours to get to Sydney,
a drive of 200 miles.
It's also a 50-year step back in my own story,
the place where I first got off the boat, in 1966.
In the '60s I was incredibly influenced by rock'n'roll.
And rather more American rock'n'roll than British.
Obviously, the Beatles and the Stones I was really keen on.
But in the mid-'60s I started to get into surfing music.
And particularly the Beach Boys.
And about that time the local council in Cornwall started
employing Australian lifeguards.
And I was very taken with those Australians.
They were so lean and tanned.
And they spoke of the Beach Boys.
And they spoke of beautiful Australian, sun-tanned girls.
So I didn't head for California. I headed for Australia.
Back then, Australia seemed to be a place where anything was possible,
and that was partly because of the attitude of the people.
They were extremely friendly.
'An hour into my journey, a chance to see
'if what Australians call mate-ship is still as strong today.
'In the '80s this all-in-it-together attitude
'led to the creation of the Driver Reviver,
'saving lives with free tea and biscuits.
'It's also a bastion
'of unreconstructed, but possibly reconstituted, Aussie tucker.'
The great contribution to world cuisine,
the Australian meat pie.
Hello. Hello.
What can I get you? I'd quite like a cup of tea, if it's possible.
Cup of tea.
You haven't got any pies, have you? Meat pie? Yeah, I'd love one.
I'm very impressed with this. Do you do this every day?
Only during the summer we do it at the weekends.
This is a government-sponsored idea to get people to rest.
I'm getting on a bit. I sometimes get a bit sleepy when I'm driving.
That's a safety thing. You should stop every couple of hours.
Want some sauce? I'd love to... Oh, God! Brilliant.
You can wear that. Good Aussie sauce.
I've always slightly wondered what's in them, though.
You don't think about it. You don't. Don't ask questions.
Roadkill, kangaroo, all that sort of thing.
I'd call this Aussie meat pie calibration.
Cos I can remember these when I first arrived in the '60s.
So this is one end.
This is a way of saying this is where we start with Aussie food
and where do we end?
This is the beginning, where do we end?
This is the primeval Aussie food.
So...
Sydney's changed a lot in my time.
Today it feels comfortably middle-aged, but back in 1967
it seemed very young - even the Opera House was under ten.
The ship I arrived on docked at a wharf that's now a trendy
boardwalk full of restaurants.
Food wasn't fashion, it was fuel.
And the local food culture was an import - like me.
After that initial visit I then started coming here again and again.
I couldn't stay away.
And what I did notice right back from the early '80s was
the growth of, first of all Italian, Greek, but then...
There was
always Chinese, but Vietnamese, really good Thai restaurants.
And the great thing was they were all easy to get at.
You could walk to really good food.
Today I'm a pillar of the community, but at 19,
when I first arrived here in Sydney, I was all bum-fluff and backpack.
I'd had a bit of catering training in London,
but I wasn't here to cook - I wanted adventure.
'I took off for the interior of Australia, looking for work
'as a labourer and looking for love with sun-tanned girls.
'It was when I came back here, to Sydney's Kirribilli neighbourhood,
'that I started cooking in a student flat in a grotty back street.'
I don't think students can afford to live round here now.
This is it.
This is the flat. Ground floor, that was my room.
There's the door.
We used to have fantastic parties in there, just unbelievable.
I remember once I managed to get this nurse from the
Royal North Shore Hospital into bed but I was so drunk I fell asleep.
And I woke up in the morning and one of my friends was banging
on this door and I told him what had happened,
how I'd just fallen asleep and he said, "You're a true Aussie now."
It's not much of a view but it's pretty iconic, the view.
See the old ship passing by.
I mean, it's sure bringing back some memories for me, I must say.
Very happy to be back here.
There's a really good fishmonger up in Kirribilli.
And I started cooking for my flatmates and it was sort of that.
They said, "You really can cook." I only used to do grilled fish
and things like pasta and bolognese sauce and that.
But it was in this flat, 97 Kirribilli Avenue, that I began to
realise I could cook and have people enthused about what I was doing.
Back then,
despite being surrounded by bounteous seas with gorgeous fish,
most Australians just wanted meat and two veg.
The Sydney fish market was a bunch of sheds
full of blokes off the boats haggling with dealers.
Now, it's a magnet for Sydney's foodies.
And what is great about this market is it's absolutely packed
with people who can see how wonderful Australian fish is and
when I first came here and saw fish like this I was just blown away.
Because fish is so theatrical anyway. I love fish.
Incredibly, 70% of the fish eaten in Australia is imported.
But most of these fish are from native waters.
They're costlier, but look at the crowds they draw -
exactly the evidence I'm looking for,
for a growing interest in eating Australian.
Hi. Hey, mate. How are you? Very well.
Could I have a small trevalla? Blue-eye, they're normally called.
Certainly. Just one side? Yeah, that would be great.
And I'd like a garfish.
Maybe I'll have a small sand whiting.
A little bit of a fillet of a scorpionfish.
Just one side of that? That would be lovely. No problem.
I will have a flounder, as well.
I think that for me is the best flatfish over here.
I'm like they say in Aussie, a kid in the lolly shop.
Understandably, a lot of people can't wait to get eating.
So they'll cook your fish for you on the spot, from net to pan
to plate.
I'm looking forward to this.
I must say, I've probably ordered a bit too much
but I just wanted to try it and... Oh, my gosh.
I certainly have ordered... And a bit on the side too.
Oh, good lord! I think I'll start with the garfish.
Fish is wonderful. Next, my favourite fish.
And this is sand whiting.
Not a bit like our own whiting.
Really, really good flavour.
And this is the blue-eye.
That is good flavour. Now then...
..I often say that in Australia you don't get really good flatfish.
But I would make an exception for this which is called
the yellowbelly flounder.
'This may look like gluttony,
'but the crew will devour what I leave like gannets.'
Ah!
The Aussie seas are a fishmonger's delight,
and the land is one big meat department.
Overrun by kangaroos, infested with rabbits,
and besieged by wild camels.
'Might a nation that's now discovering its fish
'be persuaded to try these challenging meats as well?'
Have you got any Australian meat like kangaroo or anything?
It's over there. Over there. Thank you very much.
'Seems they might.'
Here we are. So you've got kangaroo mince, kangaroo burgers.
Wow, that is really amazing, camel burgers.
Crocodile sausages.
Tail steak. "Unleash your wild side," it says.
Oh, my God.
'Heston's got his sausage in first.'
Look at this.
'But of course he's ahead of the game with wild fruits and berries.'
He's got bush tomato in there, which are very tasty, I must say.
And there he's got pepperberry.
'Heston's offering his services
'at the supermarket, but what about other top chefs?
'Is there bush tucker on Sydney's poshest menus?
'Rockpool is the creation of one of Australia's greatest chefs,
Neil Perry.
'When the food press started writing
'about food found or foraged in the wild,
'like me, Neil's head chef Phil Wood took notice.
'When I called him up, he said
'native plants weren't as easy as your common or garden veg.'
If anybody's doing cutting-edge cooking it would be you
and are you using any of these ingredients?
It's quite challenging to use them, to be honest.
The biggest thing is the seasons are so short.
With these little fruits and vegetables maybe I'll get
it for three weeks or two weeks and then you'll never see it again,
until the next year.
So by the time you've worked out what to do with it, it's gone.
And you've got to wait a whole another year
and you may get moved on.
So, you know, they're hard to use.
What's this one?
That's actually got quite a pretty name, lemon aspen. So...
Oh, that is really nice.
It is, it's really bright, acidic,
and it's got this lovely sort of fresh lemon flavour.
But cooked, just absolutely terrible. Horrible.
And this one, then...
Yeah, it's a riberry.
So... Not quite so good.
Not quite so good, yeah. Sort of a little bit eucalyptus.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and quite acidic.
And these, then?
These are my favourite, actually. They're muntrees.
Muntrees? Muntrees, yeah.
So they're a little berry and they kind of taste like a bruised apple.
A definite apple flavour.
Yeah, so to market them, they call them a native apple.
This looks like a plum.
And it is, yeah, it's a Davidson plum.
So... Crikey!
What sort of plum is it? Davidson plum.
These are the ones that have sort of make it out of the country.
You see them on trendier menus around the world.
Finger limes. Finger limes.
So you just open it up and then you can just squeeze out
all these little caviar-like citrus.
Not only do they taste like a lovely, fragrant lime...
Yeah, but they've got a beautiful texture.
Do you think people like you can make these things happen?
I hope so, yeah.
It would be nice if we could start using things that actually grow
and are indigenous to Australia.
And give us a bit more of a voice.
You know, it'd be good to base a little bit more
around the stuff that we have here.
Almost 90% of Australia's plants are found nowhere else.
A lot of them are edible,
but until Delia finishes How To Boil A Muntree,
cooking with them is a matter of trial and error.
But the knowledge I need isn't found in cookbooks.
The first Australians didn't write their recipes down.
For 40,000 years, they didn't just survive -
they thrived on wild foods.
It was really interesting talking to Phil about native fruit,
vegetables and herbs,
but I'm on the beach now
and I'm going to meet a local Aboriginal chef
and I think she's going to teach me a whole lot more.
This is Botany Bay, where Captain Cook first landed.
It's also where today's visitors
are constantly coming in to land overhead.
My guide is Jo Walles -
she's a chef trained in the classical French tradition,
who first learned to cook at the knee of her Aboriginal mum, Donna.
So her food is a bit of a fusion of ancient and modern.
Well, I didn't know I was going to be taken on as a sort of sous-chef,
but Jo's got me making pesto.
I've got some garlic in here, a bit of olive oil.
It doesn't sound that Aboriginal, but we'll see.
Some macadamia nuts.
Yes, they're very Aboriginal.
'But this is what makes it really authentic.
'In place of basil, warrigal greens -
'straight from the bush. Literally.'
So are these more of the warrigals?
Yeah, these are the warrigal greens, Australia's native spinach.
They're found around Botany Bay here, which is where Captain Cook landed.
Would Captain Cook have known about warrigal greens?
Yes, he did, he fed it to the crew
so they wouldn't pick up scurvy along their travels.
Can I taste a bit?
I mean, I'm only asking you, they're not poisonous
when you eat them, like...? You can eat a little bit raw,
but you're not allowed to eat too much of it
because it does have a bit of a poisonous...
Excuse me.
But once we blanch it, we can use it for pesto,
we can use it like normal European spinach,
and this is one of the local area's staples.
So, which first?
Jo had told me we'd be able to forage for all the vegetables
for our meal within 50ft of her fire.
This saltbush, you can add it to fish.
It's salty but it's quite bitter.
Not poisonous? No.
Phew.
Once you've got your eye in,
turns out the beach is a super market garden.
So this is...? This is the sea mustard.
I reckon I could use this in my fish cooking.
We would have used it to flavour our seafood, our shellfish,
it brings the fish to life.
This I like. I mean, I've liked the other stuff,
don't get me wrong, but... This is the best you like so far.
Back at the kitchen, dinner's still roasting at 200 degrees,
about gas mark 6.
Not that Jo's told me what it is we're cooking.
Be gentle, it's one long piece right there.
So we'll just shake all of that off.
'It's a sort of fish-shaped package.'
Oh, you've got some roo in there. I've got some roo for you to try.
Kangaroo in a paper pouch.
So it's a bit charcoaly but we'll just slide the paper bark off.
This is flathead.
And so I've already stuffed it
with some lemon myrtle and some native limes.
Now is the time to try. Warrigal green pesto with your fish.
That's very good.
Sometimes I think, actually, a bit of well-cooked fish is no bad thing.
But I love this.
The next course is that roast kangaroo.
I've actually used a Davidson plum with the kangaroo here.
Can I try a bit while you're carving? You sure can.
I didn't think it was going to be terribly good,
but it's very nice.
They're the limes that I used inside the flathead.
They pack a punch.
They pack a punch, wow!
And these are our native limes.
Got to try everything.
I love using that as a lemon curd tart.
That's got tang.
I think that Australians are starting to become aware
of how great their local produce is.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg that we have here today.
There's one final treat left in the embers. It's crocodile.
There is the croc. So this would be one portion.
This is what they could do in restaurants
for chefs that say it's too hard.
Yeah. As a cartouche, with the paper bark and the banana leaf.
So we just chop that up. It's gonna be hot.
If you didn't tell me what it was,
I'd say it was some sort of fish.
I like it.
There's a lot you could do with Aboriginal food,
I think we've tended to... Not we, Australians have tended to
sort of look towards Europe, look towards Asia.
I would be glad to see a lot more of this produce widely used.
It is fresh, it's vibrant.
It's seasonal and it's local,
and it's 100% Australian own,
Aboriginal cultivated and looked after.
Why can't the rest of the world enjoy what we've been enjoying
for thousands and thousands of years?
Well, I think it's up to you Aussies to make more of it.
I'm hoping in the next five, ten years
that this is the forefront on a lot of main menus.
Beating about the Australian bush offers tantalizing possibilities
and extraordinary taste sensations.
After seeing two great chefs trying their hand with foraged ingredients,
I know wild is the next big thing.
And the wildest place of all is nestled in a silver sea
a thousand miles to the south.
Tasmania used to be seen as a bit of a joke,
"rustic" and "wild" - meaning backward.
But wild is suddenly hot, meaning Tassie's newly cool,
the future of Aussie cuisine.
So who's laughing now?
In a country where popping down to the shops can mean a 100-mile
round trip, the flight south is only a short hop.
But it's not so much about distance as time, and travelling back in it.
Tasmania's old-fashioned - as in charming, innocent and unspoilt.
I did once visit the capital, Hobart.
But this Eden is new to me.
It doesn't feel like Australia...
..but you never realise how truly wonderful something is
until you experience it itself.
As well as beauty, I can already see that there is bounty here too.
They're everywhere, signs for fresh fruit.
Apricots, raspberries, cherries.
Pink-eyes. I think that's some sort of potato, not a fish.
And there's fruit farms everywhere.
A lot of these are small scale operations,
sort of second-job farming.
There's not a combine harvester in sight.
I keep thinking shall I stop or shan't I?
Maybe around the next corner.
Eventually, it got to me.
Time for the driver reviver, Tassie style.
I couldn't carry on without stopping.
Blueberries.
I just can't resist blueberries.
And apricots. We don't get enough apricots back home.
Delicious.
I mean, this is heaven for me.
I love my fruit
and just being able to stop and get it on the roadside...
..perfection.
I'm feeding the meter.
I'm not sure if you're actually supposed to
eat out of one of these stalls,
but I do like that.
"If you choose to steal my produce, I hope you choke!"
Dollars lighter and pounds heavier,
back on the road,
now able to pass signs for fruits that can stay forbidden.
But amongst them,
a sign for something that's just too intriguing to pass by.
Now, as I've said, I reckon bush meat is the future,
but the wallaby must be a mammal too far.
Most Aussies think of it as vermin.
This bloke thinks of it as gourmet food.
OK. And the farm is just near there. Brilliant.
OK, see you later, Ross.
That was Ross O'Meira, he's a pig farmer by day
but a wallaby hunter by night!
Tasmania is about as remote as you can get,
but to see Ross means taking a ferry to somewhere
even more out of the way, the tiny island of Bruny -
only accessible by ferry, a kind of marsupial Jurassic Park.
He farms somewhere in the woods, and tells me that alongside
his pig business he's set up a wallaby operation that's thriving.
Apparently, there are 500,000 Tasmanians
and ten million wallabies.
That's bad for the animals and for the environment, which they destroy.
Ross O'Meira has a solution.
Hi. Ross. Hi, Rick, nice to meet you.
You're a pig farmer
but this is hardly what I'm sort of imagining when you say pig farming.
I imagine, you know, big pig stalls. Concrete, yes, yes.
That stuff.
I would love to say you sort of slip under the net in a way.
Yes, completely. Look at that! He's just having a crawl.
This is what everybody dreams about free-range pork, isn't it?
He's beautiful, with the young ones.
And as you can tell, they like hanging out with the big fella.
Don't they just?!
One thing I'll say in Tasmania,
wallaby is the main source of the diet.
There's a lot of Tasmanians that have always eaten it.
I've got a few Tasmanian friends that will make a roo-strone or
they'll make wallaby bolognese. It's a beautiful meat.
I'm looking forward to trying it. I've never tried it.
The best part about it, it's organic,
grass fed, free-range meat, so it's a fantastic product.
To get hold of wallaby meat we need to hunt - by night.
The population's exploded
because there are so many delicious crops on Bruny,
and no natural predators -
except hunters like Ross.
We are just off to a neighbouring property that have asked
Ross to come in and cull the wallabies.
I get the impression that when they took the property over
they thought that wallabies were really cute
and now they've realised how the wallabies devastate
the habitat, they've asked him to come in all the time.
Tasmania is the only place in Australia
where you can legally kill wallabies for food.
Much of it goes to feed pets.
Ross is out to harvest meat destined for discerning diners.
So, what we'll do is, if you can see down there on the fence line,
they'll sit there in the bushes
and they'll slowly work their way out and we will sit
until it gets a little bit dark, they'll come out and start feeding.
Then, once you put the spotlight on them, it kind of stuns them and they just kind of stop.
And that is when you pick them off? That's it, yes.
Sure enough, it's not long before the wallabies make an appearance.
There's one there on that side of the fence.
If it's for human consumption, Ross must get a clean head shot.
Gosh! Wow!
Always good to get it straight off the bat.
And you got it in the head?
Yeah, he just dropped straightaway. He just went down like that. Yeah.
I'm very impressed with that. It must be a very small target
and it's a clean shot right in the head.
Thanks to Ross's skill, the kill was instantaneous.
Next morning, the wallaby's roasting in an anchovy stock.
Being fresh it needs slow-cooking to tenderize it.
This second one's been hanging for a few days and can be simply fried.
So, I will take the shanks off now.
You can cook them like you would any other shank, like a lamb shank.
They braise up really well. There's the two shanks there.
Ross has carved out two prime wallaby cuts -
topside, and one from close to the spine, known as the backstrap.
I've just got a bit of salt and pepper.
I'll just drop a bit of olive oil on it.
There we go. I'll get these ones in the pan.
Put the other one on the other side,
and I'll get the backstraps in.
A bit more salt and pepper on this side.
I like the fact you are cooking it just with salt and pepper because
I just have a feeling that there would be a lot of people out there
who would be marinating it for three weeks in all kinds of rubbish
and basically all I want is to taste what it's like. Probably put a bit
of a teaspoon of bacon fat in there, just to get a little bit of
crackling going and a little bit of moisture.
I love bacon fat. Do you cook with a lot of bacon fat?
I do because I tend to have a lot of bacon around the house!
Drop that fat in there now. Can I taste a bit?
Oh! That is lovely!
It's good, clean fat, isn't it?
A slight bit of smokiness,
a lovely savoury taste to it.
Take it off to the side to rest.
A delicious smell has started to permeate the air.
Kiki!
The family pooch is as fit as any butcher's dog I've ever met.
Time for me to try the slow-roast meat from last night.
My first taste of wallaby.
See the way it... Oh, yes, it's peeling off.
Can I try a bit? Oh, yeah, go for that.
It's like a little drumette.
That's gorgeous!
That is really lovely.
That's sort of like a lamb shank only much lighter in flavour.
Fabulous!
'Delicious and fragrant.
'Now to see if the older, hung meat is gamier.'
Have a little bit of a taste.
I must say it looks very appetising.
Go for that bit there.
I'll give you this one first, the topside.
I reckon it's got a bit better flavour.
Fabulous.
A little bit chewy, but...
do you know, that is really lovely.
So there's the backstrap there.
Fab! I'd say it's a bit like bavette, you know,
like a slightly less than totally tender beef cut,
but it's got a better flavour to me.
Yeah.
And I'm just amazed that it's held in such sort of low esteem.
I mean, this is like gourmet food to me.
Yeah, it's great meat that's just there, you know?
So basically we're having something nice to eat... Yeah.
..and you are doing good for the environment.
Correct. And everyone's a winner,
even the wallabies. True.
Not this wallaby! No.
Wallaby meat is nothing short of a revelation.
I really do think we're on to something here.
I think something like that will be the next big thing.
And, of course, wallaby meat is wild meat,
so Ross and others like him will always be small-scale producers.
In a place seemingly unsullied by the modern world
this is farming far removed from the almost industrialised
food production I'm used to on the mainland.
And on the evidence so far, the result is superb quality.
It does have this wonderful image of purity, clean air, clean water,
and I think that is what it means to the rest of Australia,
so the products from Tasmania seem to be top quality.
The search for emerging Tasmanian products
leads just a little north to the island's capital, Hobart.
This is the only bit of Tasmania I'd visited before.
On the mainland, things have moved on,
but Hobart is just as I remembered it.
Gosh, I've been coming to Australia for a long time!
When I first arrived in Sydney, it looked a bit like this.
I can remember the first shopping malls being built.
But now, Sydney...
..just like that.
And this...is the capital of Tasmania.
That's rush hour over there.
I mean, it's hard to believe,
but it just reminds me so much of when I first came to Australia,
and it's wonderful.
But it's patronising to think of this place as a twee backwater.
I'm here to find out what the future holds.
What's drawn me to Hobart is a brochure for a product
I wouldn't have associated with Tasmania
and, even more surprising, seems they do it better than anyone else.
Did you know that the world's best single malt whisky comes from here in Tasmania?
I sort of did, mate, but I didn't know whereabouts from.
You didn't? No. So you've never tasted it?
No, I haven't, mate, I'm not a whisky drinker.
Fair enough! Maybe when you drop me off I could get them to give you a taste.
Er, yeah, once I knock off from work, mate, yeah.
Seems Tasmania's quiet food revolution really is quiet!
Even the locals haven't heard about it.
In my day, Aussies mostly drank beer, and so did I -
like a beery fish.
Later, their wines emerged.
But now this distillery has conquered the whisky world.
In 2014, theirs was voted the best single malt anywhere.
It's even more amazing when you consider that Patrick McGuire
and his team only started making whisky 15 years ago.
What's so special about your Tasmanian whisky, do you think?
We're lucky to be small,
unknown, with no demands on what we're doing.
We didn't have demands.
So we've got the luxury of time.
So we do things in a very old-fashioned way -
we take months to dilute and
allow whiskies to settle so it's an old-fashioned, raw style of whisky.
It's a natural for Tasmania -
we've got a nice cool climate,
we've got a lot of high quality barley grown here,
our water is fantastic,
so all the ingredients are there. We're a long way away
from anywhere else in the world
so if we're going to compete, we have to produce a very
high quality product. It doesn't matter what it is,
it'll be small quantities but high value.
Now, I'm not a big whisky drinker, but this is work.
I have to steel myself.
There you are, Rick.
Have a little glass of...
It smells a bit strong. ..our matured whisky.
This one's around 14 years old now
and will be - be careful - up around 70% alcohol. Wow!
I can smell it from here.
Is this the one that won the prize, then?
That barrel was bottled out in its entirety.
Is there any left? We've got three bottles.
Are you going to sell them or keep them?
What would they be offering?
We've been offered some very serious money for those.
Like how serious? Up to 20,000 a bottle.
20,000 a bottle. Blinking hell!
Yeah, I know, that's what we said!
Let me just tell you what I think of this!
Being poetic, this tastes like some trout stream somewhere in Tasmania.
I always find good whisky
and water have a sort of affinity.
I think it's slightly sort of brackish,
up a mountain water, trouts...
Sounds good, doesn't it? It does.
Perhaps we should get the rods out!
It's about quality not quantity.
I think the secret of Tasmanian success
is keeping it small and artisanal...
..and trading on the purity of products
from the sort of environment that's a copywriter's dream.
Looking out of my window, whisky seems more and more at home here.
But for the gum trees, Tasmania could be Scotland.
I mean, when you look out of the window and you see all this water
and the hills and mountains behind.
Here in the south, the valley floors are full of sea lochs,
and they're home to an industry that's familiar in Scotland
but a bit of an innovation here.
These big inland areas of seawater are covered with fish farms.
I've been passing them all day.
30 years ago, nothing!
It's a well-known story in the Aussie food business -
in just three decades the Tasmanian salmon industry
has gone from literally nothing to world-beating.
Pristine waters and careful attention to welfare
have produced fish that fetch the highest prices in Japan.
And now one of Japan's best sushi chefs has come over here
and caused his own mini culinary revolution...
..which is how I come to have a Tasmanian salmon
on the back seat and a bit of a deadline.
30 years ago when I started doing TV, you wanted to do something,
you said, "I'm going to take this from A to B," and you did it.
But these days you have got to sort of jazz it up a bit.
They call it jeopardy, I call it melodrama.
It goes a bit like this...
I've got a monster salmon in the back, but I've got to get it
to a sushi chef in time for lunch, but there's a problem.
I've got directions and a sat nav and I don't really know how to
read the map or work the sat nav, and worse still, it's getting warm.
The salmon's beginning to heat up.
Well, there's air conditioning but it's not working very well.
It's 90 degrees outside and I can only go at 55mph.
Will I make it in time for lunch?
Will I...?
Bit more of that and I could be on Top Gear!
The master chef I'm seeking is Maasaki Koyama,
formerly of Osaka,
but now living in the bijou town of Geeveston.
I've heard of tiny towns, but this one,
it's supposed to be just off the main drag. Where IS the main drag?
Is this the main drag? There's a swearing chemist.
It's supposed to have colourful language. I love his trousers!
There we are. Sushi. Fab.
In just six years Masaaki has transformed local tastes,
just as all those immigrant chefs did in Sydney.
The neighbours can't get enough of his sushi.
He's already setting about my salmon with aplomb.
This is good for sashimi.
I love salmon sashimi!
I just love watching the way really well-trained sushi chefs work.
There's such a delicacy about the way they cut everything.
It's like a form of massage to me, it's just so peaceful.
I'm just cutting off the fatty part,
leaving the fishy flavour.
When he first arrived,
Maasaki opened seven days a week to put himself on the map.
Today his sushi is so popular, he opens just twice a week,
and then only for lunch!
His few tables and tiny takeaway counter pull in locals
and enthusiasts from all over the island.
Wow, look at that! You must think you've died and gone to heaven!
Actually, I was Masaaki's very first customer.
I was waiting outside the door when I heard there was a sushi place
opening in town. The ex-premier came three times before she could get in!
People come and it's sold out within an hour.
Geeveston is a town in love with sushi.
But local tastes weren't always so sophisticated.
It was very interesting for me to start at first.
I never met people who never eat rice before. They had never eaten rice!
I was a sushi virgin!
I just wanted to introduce my food
and then, people started coming back again and again.
The locals have embraced Masaaki's sushi,
and Masaaki has done the same with the outstanding local ingredients.
I thought the best way is using local produce.
For example, beetroot, we don't have beetroot in Japan.
But I just loved it. Very tasty.
What about the salmon, how did you find that, the quality?
Salmon quality is very good.
Never seen this fresh before in Japan.
I was very lucky, I could do a lot of experimenting all the time.
Using the finest Tasmanian produce seems to have freed Masaaki up
to take sushi to the next level.
This one's a yellowfin tuna and snow pea.
This is a cooked tuna, this is a cold smoked ocean trout.
We have prawn and avocado here
and this one is the Japanese egg omelette.
And this is a beancurd pouch
with rice, honey brown mushrooms, beetroot,
sesame seeds and carrot.
As a chef, it's just a privilege to see someone like Masaaki at work.
I often go on about how I like watching people
do things they do well, but this is in a class of its own.
Masaaki trained for three years, much of it spent in A&E,
then honed his craft for another 22.
So what is the perfect way to treat the perfect salmon?
Nice size - not too big, not too small.
Just harvested the right way, rest about one day or two days.
Of course you have to have good skill to fillet.
Eat with friends - that is best, I think.
When I look at that, I virtually can't keep my chopsticks off it.
It looks so beautiful.
'For me, when a product of this quality meets a chef this skilled,
'the result is - well, it's a kind of poetry.'
That's it, they're closed now, for five days.
They need to get on with the more serious things in life,
surfing, fishing, maybe gardening.
And for me it's a great business model, it's called less is more.
Because this is some of the best sushi I've ever had in my life,
in this tiny town - it's unbelievable.
On the mainland, Australian industry shouts a lot about its success,
but these islanders seem happy to whisper
and wait for people to notice their genius.
Which isn't always a good thing.
One of the most famous Tasmanian foodstuffs is virtually unknown
on the mainland.
Getting to the point of production is a bit tricky.
Getting there is half the fun! Got to roll up my trousers!
What I'm after seeing is abalone, a large sea snail.
They're found all around the island in bays and inlets,
many of them are known only to the fishermen who go after them.
Abalone and crayfish is one of the main specialities
of the local fishing bay.
We see those guys come in and out in remote spots around the coast.
Abalone are sub-sea fat cats.
They lead a jet-set life, gliding about on sunlit rocks,
sucking in the rich nutrients that drift by on the currents.
Who needs runaways when you've got a seaplane?
Abalone grow very slowly.
Scott Palmer and his fellow fishermen don't moan
about fishing quotas - they've asked the government to impose them.
Nobody wants to upset this trade. 25% of all the wild abalone
eaten on earth comes from Tasmania.
To make a fishing trip worthwhile, Scott and his divers stay out
harvesting for days, but to get a sample catch, one dive is enough.
This is what we're looking for, Rick. You trust me? Yep.
So, this is them.
This is our Tasmanian black lip abalone, Rick.
And how do they rate, Tasmanian abalone, in the scheme of abalone?
World's best. Of course!
And where's your biggest market? It's in China.
We have about 70% going live into China now.
Do Aussies eat this?
Um... Melbourne, Sydney in Chinatown you see abalone
but you don't see a lot of abalone in the rest of the restaurants, no.
And why is that, do you think? I think just...
People haven't tasted it.
If it's not cooked properly, it comes out like boot leather.
People kill each other in other parts of the world for abalone!
'It's big business - they fetch around 100 a kilo
'or even more - that's 25 bucks each!'
So how much you come home with?
When these tanks are full, we have got three live tanks on board.
When these are all full of abalone,
she's got six tonne of abalone on board.
Six tonne? Six tonne. Well, that's nearly 300,000!
It's getting close to it.
How often do you go to sea? About 80 to 90 days a year.
Ah, I see!
No wonder you're smiling! Diesel's very dear, Rick!
Oh, come on! That's what fishermen always say!
Scott's sitting pretty as long as the Chinese market remains steady,
but the trick will surely be to alert Australia to what they've got
just off their own coast.
First the meat gets a good bashing to tenderize it.
OK.
There you are.
'Scott's a man after my own heart - keeping seafood simple.'
I'm liking the look of this, I must say.
They've got quite a lot of flavour.
So I don't think you need to do a great deal with them.
We're just about ready to start frying these.
What do you fry them in? In ghee.
Ghee! Indian ghee? Yes. Great.
I like seafood fried in ghee, I picked it up in India.
I thought I could smell ghee. That's very unusual.
I don't cook it really hot.
No, I never do either. You just burn stuff.
They're not far from done. That's quick.
Smells great!
Look at that!
Now, would you like a little bit of salt on that or not?
Yeah, I'll have a bit of salt.
Here, I've got a very good Chardonnay from Tasmania.
Wow! Now you're talking!
Abalone, Chardonnay. We've got the fine china!
Let's go for it. A premium Tasmanian wine.
Good health. Good health.
Oh, that's nice! Really good!
Full of fruit, bit of oak, lovely. And now for this.
Oh!
Tender. You're a seafood cook!
I can't tell you how good that is.
Really, seriously.
If the average Aussie could taste that, they would be converted
instantly. Because it's like a prawn fritter, it's almost as sweet
and as tasty as a prawn. And it's as tender.
You tenderized it so well. That is absolutely delicious.
I love abalone! I'm in love with abalone!
Abalone has got to be the best seafood Australia isn't eating.
And I reckon the Tasmanians should be shouting about them
from the rooftops.
I started this journey with an inkling
that what I call the Australian national palate is changing -
that they're starting to look to what they grow and harvest
in their own backyard.
And I think the Aussies are on the right track.
The foods I've tasted here have been as good as anything, anywhere.
Australia's tended to look towards the rest of the world
for ideas, for materials, for food -
they've tended to import all the best stuff and only now
are they beginning to realise they don't need to do that,
that if they work hard enough at what they're producing here,
the world will look at them.
I came here trying to find my place in the world, and so were they.
We were both very young -
modern, federal Oz was only about 200 years old.
And I've been coming here for a considerable chunk of its existence,
and in that time, it's made me the happier man I am.
There's this optimism about this country
and it's about being a new world and having boundless opportunities
but it always lifts me up whenever I come here.
I think Aussie cuisine is about to take a great leap forward -
well, backwards if you like,
to where it all began, with local.
And with around 2,900,000 square miles of local
to leap into, watch this rather large space.
Next time, in Malaysia, cook and food writer Rachel Khoo
journeys to the heart of her own family history.
Oh! That's my dad!
She goes off the beaten track to find out
whether food can unite a multicultural society.
This is at another level.