Food Safari

One of the great gifts of the sea

is its own pure, natural, briny flavour,

which exists to various degrees

in most seafood

but it's never more glorious than in raw seafood,

the unadulterated taste of the sea, found in oysters,

sashimi and ceviche.

So many cultures celebrate

that salty tang of the sea

and the natural sweetness of uncooked fish and crustaceans.

Welcome to Food Safari Water and the pure, clean flavour of raw seafood.

In this episode of Food Safari Water the world of oysters...

That's when you get your money's worth.

..a journey into sashimi and sushi..

That's just melting.

..the pearly perfection of Fijian kokoda,

iconic chef Tetsuya Wakuda's blue mackerel,

the simplicity of an Italian crudo of red emperor...

It's so pure.

..and magnificent salmon kibbeh from Greg Malouf.

One of the ultimate raw seafood experiences

is undoubtedly savouring oysters.

In the clear, cold waters off Bruny Island, Tasmania,

Pacific oysters are being farmed,

the current in the D'Entrecasteaux channel

sweeping nutrients from the Great Southern Ocean

across the racks of molluscs.

Australia is a dead flat continent because all of its mountains

have been washed away and all the minerals and nutrients

have come and washed into big basins like this

and when we eat these, we are eating history.

Really, we are. I mean it's...

Wow! What a thought!

School teacher Lee Macefield took over a lease

to fatten Pacific oysters for market in 2016.

These are the species native to Japan

that are one of the favourite farmed oysters

in Australia and New Zealand.

What is the flavour of this oyster as opposed to anywhere else?

Just the purity.

I think you eat one, you close your eyes. It's the freshness.

You know, it's singing. It sings, you know.

How many foods sing in your mouth?

These oysters, they just... They sing. So...

I've got to have some!

Yeah, you've got to have some.

Lee's wife Suzanne says the best way to eat them is freshly shucked,

unwashed, in their natural brine.

Just loosen it from the shell. Mm-hm.

And down the hatch. Oh, no lemon. Here we go.

Well, I don't.

Mmm.

It's a beautiful, briny mouthful.

Absolutely.

Are they fuel for love? Absolutely.

Casanova swore by them so that's good enough for me.

On the Clyde River in southern New South Wales

another type of oyster,

the native Sydney rock oyster,

thrives on the mix of nutrients

swept down by the fresh water and all the algae from the sea.

It's what farmer Steve Feletti calls "the sweet spot".

It's an interesting thing for our estuary oysters

to have that magical mix of fresh and saline.

It gives a sweetness to the oyster.

And of course the Sydney rock oyster species

is unique to Australia

so we have this absolute nugget oyster,

gem of an oyster here.

Steve has worked around the world at corporate level,

speaks five languages and, by chance,

saw the lease for an oyster farm when he was on a posting to Tokyo.

I got into oyster farming sitting in my office in Tokyo,

dreaming about going fishing back in Australia.

I thought, hm, oyster lease, good place to go fishing, you know?

Traditional method of oyster farming is rack and rails.

That's like railway lines stuck in the mud. Oh, yes, yes.

We started floating here in 2004,

floating on top of the surface

to get the benefit of the sun's warmth generating plankton.

It's feeding the algae.

Algae is the secret. Algae is the key.

And all of these have got green algae coming around it like that.

Ah, so that's what you want. That's what I want.

The weed itself actually generates more plankton

that is feeding the oyster.

And how is it feeding? Filtering.

Filtering. Like a fish. This is a fish.

All oysters are a live fish in a rock.

So if we ship to Melbourne and they have a function that's cancelled,

we can bring them all back and put them back in the water.

They're alive while the shell is there.

Yeah. When you sever the muscle, that's it. Right.

To try and encourage home shucking,

which is a skill that we've lost, here's a few tips.

Number one... Well, first, get a good oyster knife.

Throw the screwdriver away.

Break off the first three mils of the shell, exposing the real hinge.

That little part there. Right.

So basically we're going to pop the lid

and then we're going to sever the adductor muscle,

which lives about here.

Pop! Ah, there we are.

And what's peeping out of there? Oyster!

So shucking under running water?

Oh! Oh!

What is wrong with shucking under... Under tap water? Yeah.

You've replaced the natural flavour

with all your fluorides and chlorines and all that good stuff.

So most people in Australia have not eaten an oyster

the way it should be eaten. Exactly!

The best weapon any kitchen ever had to do oysters and salt water

to brush out any broken chips

or the odd little fleck of mud or something.

Now we're going to cut the bottom of the adductor.

That is a smasher.

A little bit of a chew. Little bit of a chew!

A little bit of a sort of consideration. Ponder the world.

Mmm. Mmm.

That's the sea encapsulated, isn't it?

It's salty and then there's a creaminess and it's briny.

Mm. It's like getting dumped in a big ocean surf roller, isn't it?

It's marvellous. That's when you get your money's worth.

You know you want that. Yeah. Wow!

The Japanese world reveres raw fish and seafood

like no other cuisine on earth.

The exquisite simplicity and clean pure taste of the ocean

is paramount.

It's all about respecting what you use,

from your knife to obviously the fish.

We look at the fat content, how it's been treated.

It's brain spiked.

Instantly dead and obviously there's no stress

and then that's why the flesh is so nice.

One of the chefs striving for excellence

in this rarefied world is Chase Kojima.

His father is a master sushi chef in San Francisco

and Chase trained with him before joining the kitchens

of world-renowned Nobu and going on to open Sokyo in Sydney in 2011.

What I learnt from my father, he gets extremely angry

if I'm not cutting it with 100% respect or focus.

He'll see it. You can't cheat it.

You can't hide it. You'll get caught.

It's almost better don't go into work that day, you know?

You have to be in 100%.

You're actually aiming for a perfect slice.

One of the revelations in this precise world

is that fish are not at their best until they are a number of days old.

The flavour becomes more complex as the amino acids break down,

the moisture levels reducing and the umami increasing.

And then after we purchased it

it's already been aged for five days

and then we went another five more.

The longer the better but you know there's always that optimal time

and it's usually around 12 days but it's a gamble, you know?

You don't want to ...

..if you slip a little bit too much then it's going downfall.

It's going to get fishy. It's going to turn off.

For each specific work you have, you have to use a different knife.

We only sharpen on one of the sides,

so obviously all these knives are right-handed chefs.

Because of the long blades, it's that motion.

That one-stroke motion when you're slicing.

You can see the difference when one is not sharp.

You're not slicing, you're actually kind of ripping.

And each of these parts of a tuna has a name, doesn't it?

It does. Akami, meaning the red meat.

This is the loin side.

If you cut it too thin, it's going to go down quickly.

If it's too thick, it's too chewy and it's just too much in your mouth

so there is a perfect size.

Homemade soy sauce,

which we season with more tuna bones and bonito flakes.

Mm!

There's a beautiful fattiness in that fish

that just melts on your tongue.

Chutoro.

And that's more of the leaner belly and then Otoro.

This is the belly side, which will be extra fatty, extra deliciousness.

It's like... And that's the peak for many Japanese.

It's wagyu. It's wagyu.

I use a little bit of sushi rice, a little bit of wasabi... Yes.

...and make it into a boat.

The temperature, the texture of the rice, the texture of the fish,

I don't know, it's just all working together.

It's like a magic in your mouth. Eat with your hands.

And one bite. One bite.

Mmmm!

What a perfect moment!

So many cultures create masterful pure fresh salads

using the best seasonal raw fish

right around the Pacific,

from Ecuador, Peru and Chile, right through the Pacific islands.

There are so many variations and names, from ceviche to oka.

In Fiji, the cured raw fish is known as kokoda

and making it calls for a ripe coconut

to extract the rich velvety cream

to highlight the sweetness of the fish.

Absolute gold.

That is absolute 100% fresh white gold. (LAUGHS)