Food Safari

The waters of the earth are full of unusual treasures,

extraordinary sources of food and flavour.

From these sparkling mountains of salt

harvested from the Great Australian Bight,

to the abundance of sea vegetables and delicacies prized beyond measure.

Welcome to Food Safari Water.

On this episode of Food Safari Water...

Glorious caviar from freshwater salmon,

legendary scallop moussaka from Peter Conistis...

Incredible.

..wakame fresh from the ocean,

foraging for coastal vegetables,

and treasured abalone used in a magnificent Chinese omelette.

Oh, wow!

In the Chinese world,

there's nothing quite so treasured from the water as abalone.

The slow-growing gastropod mollusc - a type of sea snail -

sells for up to $1,300 a kilo.

When it's dried, as it is over many weeks at Candy Ab in Tasmania,

it resembles a ingot of gold, an ancient form of Chinese currency.

Many Chinese buy dried abalone as a status present and never eat it.

But freshly-harvested abalone features at important events,

and in every New Year feast.

Abalone diving isn't for the faint-hearted.

On the pristine coastline off Bruny Island

on the east coast of Tasmania, the seas are very cold.

Diver James Polanowski works in eight-degree water

for six to eight hours at a time.

They seem to hug the shoreline.

Little cracks and crevices, they'll be up in the cracks,

and along the side of the walls.

You come in under it and prise it off.

This is what we use for a measure for size.

Ah! We check every piece for size.

This animal here, would be probably around about six to seven years old.

He's just size. Right.

And that's a perfect abalone?

Yeah, he's a really good colour. Yeah.

The shell's consistent, everything about him is really nice.

And so, how many would you bring up in the space of a few hours?

Well, today we've done three hours, and we've got round about 200 kilos.

That's fantastic work.

So, it's a pretty good day when you're 20 minutes out of home.

Yeah. So can't complain with that.

One of Australia's most acclaimed Chinese chefs grew up in Scotland,

in his parents' takeaway restaurant in Forfar in the north east.

Frank Shek has been the guiding force at China Doll

on Sydney's Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf since it opened in 2004,

a master and creator of many treasured dishes

at the popular restaurant, including the revered abalone.

Well, it's a very unique flavour.

It's somewhere between maybe crab and foie gras.

I'm not sure how to describe it! Wow.

So, deep, earthy flavours.

Deep, earthy flavour, and just flavour for miles.

So I'll show you how to get it out the shell.

Just get underneath... Mm.

And just gently, you don't need much force, it comes out quite easily.

And there he is. Ah.

There's two ways to cook this kind of protein.

Same like squid, you can do it very quickly,

just flashed in a wok.

Or we're going to take the low and slow approach.

We're going to use a technique called sous-vide,

which I think a lot more people are familiar with now.

Alright. And then in with the spices as well.

So cinnamon, star-anise, ginger,

fennel, the cloves and peppercorns.

I'll just take a little ladle of oil.

I've just got some vegie oil here.

Most people don't have a vacuum machine at home,

but there is a little cheats way...

Oh, good! ..which we sometimes use.

I've got water from the tap, cold.

So, as we lower it into the water,

the air pressure will force the excess air out of the bag.

Just zip that zip-up bag, up to about there.

Leave a little gap, just there.

Continue lowering this into the water,

and what will happen gradually is the excess air will get forced out of the bag -

that's when you finish the zip-locking.

And as you can see, that's ready to cook sous-vide.

Over here I've just got a pot of water,

which I'm going to bring up to 90 degrees.

We just want to protect the bag

from sticking and melting to the bottom of the pot.

So we achieve that just by having a plate on the bottom.

Ah! And that acts as a buffer.

The abalone can go in.

The next step is get one more plate, just to keep it submerged.

We want to achieve a target temperature of between 85 and 90,

and we want to keep it there for three hours.

So, Frank, this is the professional sous-vide. Yeah.

It circulates the water around, so there's no hot and cold spots.

And this guy's been in here for about three hours now.

Ooh. I think we'll have a quick look.

There they are.

They're just sitting and very happy

absorbing all the flavours, getting tenderised.

So they're cooked now, aren't they, Frank?

They are completely cooked.

The next step is we're going to make the filling for the omelette.

So, in here, bean sprouts, enoki mushrooms, shitake mushrooms,

shimeji as well, some black fungus.

Then I've got some garlic chives as well,

and just finely-shredded shallots.

Really nice snow pea sprouts, and that'll just add to the crunch.

Ah, lovely. This is ready to add our abalone.

Just get some of this into the bowl.

Some of the mix for one omelette. Right.

Just mix that through so there's plenty of abalone in there.

Give this a quick season.

I've got some mushroom soy here.

And just a little touch of sesame oil as well.

Now we move on to the exciting part.

Some eggs - burst, burst, burst, burst.

No whisks in this kitchen, Frank. It's chopsticks.

None of that new-fangled stuff in this kitchen.

Chopsticks for everything.

Done. So to the wok.

Quite a bit of oil.

It needs to be quite hot so the egg starts cooking straightaway

and just bubbles up.

Oh, wow!

Just move it around. Keep it off the edges, otherwise it burns.

It's a real raft of egg, isn't it? It is a raft of egg. Frothy egg.

Just looking under for a nice golden brown colour.

Oh. Super quick.

Alright, so I'll just pour off the excess oil. Right.

So the next part is we're going to get the filling in there,

and just use a little fishslice just to turn that over.

Now I've got a little bit of chicken stock, just in the bottom.

That's just going to create a bit of steam

to gently cook those vegetables.

We don't want to wilt them too much,

just want to make them nice and warm.

I'll just drain off that liquid,

but we'll keep it as part of our sauce later.

And then the whole thing slides out on to the board.

You could eat it like that but it's not very pretty.

So we're just going to shape it.

I'm going to chop off the sides - nice sharp knife for this.

I don't want to waste them so I'm going to put them on the plate,

just to act as a bit of height to the dish.

We've got that chicken stock from earlier.

A little bit of oyster sauce,

a bit more of the mushroom soy,

and just a little bit of palm sugar syrup.

And finish off...

..a couple of drips of sesame oil.

And that is the sauce finished. Very simple.

And then we'll just bathe this abalone omelette in that sauce.

I've just a little bit of oyster sauce here.

A little nap over the top. Mmm.

And then I've just got some ginger here,

and we're going to fry that until it's nice and crispy.

I've never seen this before, Frank.

And then I might just do a few shallot jules as well.

And there we have it -

that's our wok-fried abalone and Asian mushroom omelette.

Mmm. What a masterpiece. Thank you.

I've never seen an omelette like this.

Yes, cheers. Cheers.

Abalone is melting almost.

It's like a scallop with sweetness, and a depth.

It is a sea treasure, isn't it?

Absolutely. Abalone is.

Hopefully we've done it justice today. You have indeed.

Thank you, Maeve. Thank you, Frank.

One of the foods from the water that's being used

in more and more restaurants are sea vegetables,

like samphire growing in the tidal area of this lagoon

on Kangaroo Island.

Twice a day it's covered completely in salt water.

Sea vegetables are unique, with a salty crunchiness

that makes them the perfect taste and textural balance

to many proteins from the ocean.

So, yeah, it's a great little spot.

Samphire is found around the Australian coastline,

and is one of the vegetables harvested by horticulturalist

and bush food devotee, Peter Hardwig,

who's been foraging for wild food on the New South Wales north coast

for over 40 years.

It pops, doesn't it? Yeah.

It's Juicy and it's a salty sea,

but it's quite...it's quite a lovely flavour.

And I know it's great with seafood. Yes, fantastic with seafood.

Now, this is sea purslane.

This one, it does have a slightly apricot note.

I find that fascinating, these vegetables with fruity notes.

That's got a nice crunch to it. Yeah.

A lot of these coastal plants, they're typically succulent,

and it's a way they can balance out the salt content in the soil.

OK, this is...seablite.

Just imagine in colonial days,

probably they came in here,

and all that was growing were these coastal succulent plants.

And they went, "It's a blighted landscape." Oh, really?

I don't know why they call it seablite, but...

Seablite's on a lot of restaurant menus now.