Food Safari: Earth (13-Part.Mini.Series)

Many world religions talk of a fabled Garden of Eden,

a paradise full flowering trees and bountiful plants,

a place of harmony, beauty and abundance

with fertile soil and plenty to eat.

Throughout time, man has created gardens to sustain life.

In fact, most of the world's cuisines have largely been based

on plants, on herbs, nuts and fruit,

the abundant bounty of the earth.

Good boy.

In this series, we explore just how far those cuisines have developed

in creating simply wonderful dishes with vegetables

from high-end restaurants to farm tables,

top chefs to home cooks -

a glorious celebration of everything that grows.

Welcome to Food Safari Earth.

In this episode of Food Safari Earth,

world-class chef Peter Gilmore's inspiration from his garden,

pioneering Thai chef Amy Chanta's green vegetable curry...

Wow.

..Lebanese chef Joseph Abboud's reimagined baba ganoush

and alchemist Martin Benn creates magic with beetroot.

Across restaurant kitchens,

green is the new black and vegetables are centre stage,

chefs striving to extract maximum flavour and texture

and create simply beautiful food.

And vegetable salad is over here.

One of those at the forefront of innovation

is the acclaimed Sydney-based chef, Peter Gilmore.

OK, service, please.

With world-class restaurants on opposite sides of our famous harbour,

at Quay and at Bennelong in the Opera House.

Like many top chefs, he has a network of growers

who deliver impeccable produce.

But he also has a flavour workshop -

his impressive home garden -

a place of wonderment and inspiration.

This is really cool. This is a purple potted pea.

Oh, isn't it pretty? Isn't it pretty?

A lot of the different things I'm growing are quite unusual, sort of heirloom varieties.

So then, often, I'll taste it...

Let's have a try. Broad bean flower.

You never know. Like, you know, it might be the actual fruit,

but it could be the flowers or the seed pods or, you know,

or just the growing shoots that I want to use.

So, yeah, you're constantly sort of tasting and exploring.

Beautiful little kohlrabi. That is a thing of beauty. You find them in the shops.

They're about this big, like a baseball,

but actually, at this size, they're incredibly tender and really beautiful.

Oh...

Worldwide, there's been a much bigger focus on vegetables and less on protein.

I think the ratio of protein and vegetables on a plate has actually sort of swapped.

Where it might have been 70-30 and, I think, it's almost 50-50 now, and that's really interesting.

And that's because the vegetable world's so diverse.

You know, texture, flavour, you know, and just sheer inspiration, yeah.

Yeah.

Maeve, we've got these gorgeous little Parisian baby carrots

and we're just going to clean them up.

And the best way to do that,

to keep the natural shape of the carrot

and we're just going to scrape the skin off.

It makes for an interesting garnish for the salad.

Well, in a sense, you're creating artwork, aren't you?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, people eat with their eyes.

And I think, you know, if you make something beautiful, it's going to taste even better.

Very painstaking, though. I'm...

That's what we have apprentices for, Maeve.

So then we're going to take them over to some boiling water

and just blanch them in some water.

About 1.5 minutes, blanching.

And we're just going to pop those little carrots straight into the cold water.

There he is.

We're just going to cut up these little artichokes.

We need to have some water and some lemon ready,

'cause they oxidise really quickly.

Just want to cut the base of these artichokes

and then the top two-thirds...

And then just want to peel the rough outside leaves away.

And that's going to expose the really nice inner part of the artichoke

and then goes straight into that lemon water.

Stops them oxidising.

Just going to trim the bottom off a little bit and then...

So these are the leaves we want to fry.

And we keep going until you get right down to the base, to the core.

What do you fry them in, Peter?

Just some sunflower oil or grapeseed oil.

Fry up very quickly and just nice sort of golden colour is what we're looking for.

Something like that is perfect.

That's really quick, isn't it?

It is. What we'll do is...

Oh! Put a little bit of salt on them.

In a completely different way.

A really nice way to cook baby artichokes.

So, Maeve, we're going to put a little salad together now.

They are like little jewels, aren't they? They are like little jewels.

Flavour, texture, the visual appeal, it's all part of a really nice dish.

I'm just going to give the little carrots a little drizzle of olive oil, just grab a little bit of salt.

So they're our carrots.

Going to take smoked almonds and then pepitas.

This is our crunchy component to the salad. Mmm.

A tiny drizzle of olive oil and a little bit of salt.

And then they become like jewels as well.

They do, don't they?

The idea is just to build up the salad now.

So we've got some really beautiful sheep's and goat's milk fetta,

and then some of the pepitas and the smoked almonds.

We're going to add a few carrots to each salad.

A salad dressing using sweetness and acidity is based on a caramel

made from sugar and dry sherry, which are mixed and brought to the boil.

I want to push it a little bit further,

because I really want the caramel to have that slight bitterness as well.

Mmm. It's just really...

It's quite mad science, this bit, isn't it?

Once the caramel bubbles, he adds a little more sherry

and sherry vinegar.

The dressing thickens as it cools and is easily piped onto the salad.

Sort of almost toffee-like. Yeah.

Against all of the lactic sort of flavour of the fetta it just works really well.

And then I made a little bit of carrot puree.

I took some larger carrots, some onions, garlic, vegetable stock,

cooked it down in a little bit of butter and then blended it.

Going to put our crispy artichokes on top and they're going to form

a beautiful textual component for the salad.

Now comes the fun part.

We get to garnish. This is ice plant.

You can see all the little beautiful crystals.

A couple of broad bean flowers.

And then, just for a little bit of pepper,

we're just going to put a little bit of nasturtium.

So very, very last thing we'll do

is we'll just put a tiny drizzle of extra-virgin over the top.

And then we are ready... ready to eat.

Where to start?

Mmm. Wow!

Wow.

There are so many textures happening there.

Absolute gorgeousness. You're right.

We all love a little piece of protein,

but there's so much joy

from vegetables in the garden.

Yeah, and you feel great after eating this, don't you?

You feel healthy and indulgent at the same time.

Ohh!

In my lifetime, markets like these have become so much more vibrant and interesting.

Herbs that were once hard to find are now here in fragrant abundance.

Obscure vegetables are now readily available.

We're so lucky now to have growers in many different areas

to provide us with the best

to satisfy a whole smorgasbord of cuisines.

When Amy Chanta opened her first small Thai eatery in 1989,

she could never have imagined the scale

to which her restaurants would grow.

There are five Chat Thai restaurants across Sydney

and her daughter, Palisa Anderson, also owns a Thai fresh produce store

and popular cafe.

The long-held dream of mother and daughter was to hold the reins of their own fresh produce supply.

Sadly, that does not look beautiful, but...

Nah, they taste good. It's still good.

In the beautiful Northern Rivers

an area blessed with rich, red volcanic soil,

Amy and Palisa have planted their Boon Luck Farm,

all they need to supply their own restaurants

and grocery store and more.

We start harvesting before the break of day.

That is the best time because it's nice and cool,

all the greens are still really alert and standing upright.

And so when we pick things at that point,

it holds the structure of the vegetable,

so it doesn't ever goes soggy, no matter how long you stir-fry it or curry it.

Now we have chilli already, so this is basil.

So fragrant.

And it just tastes different,

and that's because they're grown in the soil,

they're not grown hydroponically, they're not grown in soil bags, they're grown in the earth.

Whoa! Gold!

That is literally gold in the soil, isn't it? It is.

So these are the jewel drops, or the water drop eggplants and they're just...

You know, they look like a tear shape.

Palisa, you've got how many types of eggplant?

At the moment, I think we're up to about 10.

10?! Yes.

So this is the long silken Thai.

There's no bitterness to it, it's just a sweet, crisp eggplant.

So in Thai, we call this makhuea khuen,

which is a bush variety of apple eggplant.

We very rarely see pea eggplants,

one of the harder things to find in the markets.

Now, this is originally a Turkish variety,

so it's like these two had a baby and then it looked like this.

Long green eggplant, this is a lot better than black eggplant.

Tender. Can't wait to try that.

Not tough, and the taste is sweet.

This is Thai pumpkin.

See? Skin does not look good, but this is more starchy than normal pumpkin.

Mmm. We don't worry about meat. No?

Because we have fresh ingredients and they have taste itself, OK.

Fresh ingredients from the earth. From the earth.

Go and come and cook.

Oh, heaven.

Cumin seed first.

If you put too much, smell too Indian curry.