The best of Tasmania: Honey, cherries, apples, oysters…

Blackberries
Not ripe yet but reminding me of the labyrinths we used to tread as a child picking them. Inspired by Jamie Oliver on Foxtel I chop up a single apple and add a punnet of bought blackberries. Spinkle with sugar. Then using passion rather than measuring instruments I rub butter into sugar and plain flour to make a crumble topping and bake. Served with thich organic cream. I love blackberry and apple crumble.

Honey
Bumble bees are everywhere, collecting pollen, transferring it between pouches, bullying native bees. Nevertheless, there are plenty of other bees busily making honey in Tasmania.
A pot of mielerie unheated honey is just what the doctor ordered: organic, cold extracted, unheated and unprocessed. This is what the best of Tasmanian ingredients is about. My only regret? Not buying a larger pot.

Cherries
Big ripe and sexy cherries are everywhere. I’ve seen top quality ones in melbourne for $30 a kilo. These were $9 and each one a perfect virgin voluptuous Nigella Lawson. Bite into one releasing the squishy, oohing orgasmic Nigella sound effects.

Apples
Importantly they are this years, some flawed but crisp and juicy. Fresh.

Peppermint Bay
Six lousy dollars. That’s $6 for a beer and a burger of Friday nights. No wonder the place is packed but still the view of Bruny Island is stunning and relaxing. Of course, chips follow.
And half a dozen Bruny oysters with their fresh smell of ozone and iodine and a naughty reputation.
I fail to join the orderly queue. After a long wait a bureaucratic type arrives at the bar and can’t decide what to order.
”Bloody hell. Why couldn’t you decide in the queue,” quips a sozzled man. “You’ve had enough wine,” interjects the sozzled man’s wife. “I’ll have another bloody bottle of red if I want to,” he replies.
I was drinking responsibly and returned home.
We didn’t make it to Peppermint Bay’s fine restaurant this time around – a wedding got in the way.

Cheese
As I’ve already written about the stinky stuff with a whiff of goat. tasty.

Dolphins
Dolphins are not to eat of touch but to watch diving through the wake. Seals that are even riper than the cheese.

Roadkill
If this is your scene then southern Tasmania is for you. In a one hour drive dozens of Bilbies, possums, wombats and Tasmanian Devils were splattered across the road or bloating on the verges waiting for enthusiastic barbecuers.
Of course, if you want to BBQ Dolphin you will have to return to Melbourne where the dredging (if we believe the environmentalists) will have dead ones washing up on Port Phillip Bay’s beaches for the taking. Otherwise travel to western Tasmania to Strahan where the beaches are fairly often strewn with dead wales for the taking. Perhaps the Japanese should start collecting.

Tagged as: Bruny Island, Cherries, Honey, Peppermint Bay, Tasmania