Any foodie travelling south from Perth to Margaret River is likely to have stopped at a variety of places seeking elusive amazing new tastynoms. My recent trip south included several discoveries worth a mention.
The first, and in many ways the most significant is Gabriel Chocolate. All we knew of it was a mark on a map, a splash page we found online and that they had chocolate. When entering the building I glanced through a glass panel and saw sacks. Of cocoa beans. Unroasted.
No one, to the best of my knowledge, roasts cocoa beans in Western Australia. Except me, just once for LOLs.
Gabriel roasts the cocoa, hand sorts, grinds, conchs, tempers and pours. That is, they actually make chocolate, not just blend courveture or enrobe things to make truffles.
Better yet they use single origin cocoa beans of great quality that have characteristic flavours.
It has been open just a matter of weeks and quite obviously they are still just working up the premises which is still requiring finishing touches, but the chocolate...
Yeah, there were maybe a few particles larger than 20 microns that I noticed, and their sample trays had obvious tempering fails but regardless of any minor teething flaws, Western Australia now has a genuine chocolate producer using high quality ingredients and rare bean stocks.
Beside me right now is slightly less than 85g of a bar of Chuao (missing only the little I took for a tiny taste! I could resist no longer), from a remote microclimate region in Venezuala where the beans fetch up to four times market price for their uniform quality. Only 20 tonnes are produced annually and Gabriel in Margaret River managed to acquire one tonne, remarkable for a new company competing for a bean that has been the battleground of Valrhona and Amedei.
This is bean to bar chocolate, superbly prepared and a new chocolate experience. If you are going to Margaret River I think you really need to add a visit to this tiny producer of amazing things.
As a bonus, if you drive out of Gabriel's driveway and into the driveway immediately opposite you will drive into our next discovery - Windows Estate.
Gabriel are located on the corner of Caves Road and Quininup Road in Margaret River and can be contacted on:
If not, you really should be - a great selection of well written, logically framed discussions.
The following is an article by Aaron Gove, a Research Associate within the Environment and Agriculture department at Curtain University.
Published in full under the Creative Commons licensing agreement in place at The Conversation. I highly recommend it as a daily read.
Not just a few beans: the true cost of coffee
Coffee prices are rising again, and you might be wondering how much more you’ll soon pay for your morning coffee.
Although coffee prices are fickle the fluctuations affect most of us very little compared with growers in developing countries, at the end of the supply chain.
You might also be wondering about the prospect of “peak coffee”. Peak coffee (like peak oil) is the point at which the world begins to run out of its global commodity.
But is the supply of coffee really going to run dry?
The good news for coffee consumers is that, empirically, there is little to suggest we’re in the midst of peak coffee.
Coffee production has consistently increased over the past 20 years, and there’s been no significant recent dip in global production.
There’s no evidence to suggest a peak in coffee production (AAP)
This is true for robusta beans (Coffea canephora) and, to a lesser extent, the higher quality Coffea arabica.
But several coffee-growing regions have experienced a run of poor seasons, which is attributed to drought and unpredictable rainfall.
This has occurred across Central and South America, Africa and Asia.
Poor coffee seasons, coupled with the continual rise in coffee consumption, have led to demand exceeding supply and an increase in prices.
It is not yet clear whether these occurrences of drought and unpredictable rainfall are associated with climate change.
But several studies predict that the extent of cool, moist coffee-growing regions will indeed diminish due to climate change.
In the pursuit of favourable climate, plantations will also be forced further up mountainsides, which obviously has its limitations in terms of both land availability and the ability of farmers to migrate.
Like most of the globe’s resources, pressure is put on coffee supply when populations and demand expand. But with increasing demand and higher prices comes new suppliers to the market.
It’s relatively easy to get into the coffee production game. But at what cost? (AAP)
Coffee is a relatively easy market to enter. China, for instance is expanding coffee cultivation at a dramatic rate.
Nepal is also expected to significantly increase coffee cultivation over the next few years – not surprising, given the prospect of climate change and coffee’s need for increasing elevations.
It is difficult to predict the net effect of the two forces of poor seasons and the emergence of new coffee regions.
While some commentators talk of peak coffee, others talk of the next great coffee glut.
The last great coffee glut occurred 10 years ago, and led to a collapse in coffee prices. The situation was widely attributed to the financially-aided increase in coffee production in Vietnam, which almost overnight went from being a minor player to the world’s second largest coffee exporter.
In 2002, Oxfam described the consequences of low coffee prices as “a crisis destroying the livelihoods of 25 million coffee producers around the world."
So, when the price of our cappuccino is low, it comes at a significant cost to the small-scale producers that depend on coffee as a major source of income.
We love a cheap coffee, but the cost to producers is high. (AAP)
Fluctuating coffee prices also have environmental impacts.
For example, rises in local coffee prices (which are basically global coffee prices transformed by currency exchange rates) have been shown to increase illegal deforestation in Sumatra.
In many parts of the world, including Ethiopia (the plant’s indigenous home), coffee is grown beneath a semblance of the original forest canopy, often with a variety of trees and shrubs.
While not as good as the intact forest, shaded coffee serves as habitat for a broad range of species and may help to connect otherwise isolated patches of intact forest.
But when coffee cultivation is intensified, forest trees and all competing shrubs are removed, and pesticides and fertilisers are more frequently applied – and the habitat value is greatly diminished.
These are the sorts of plantations that led to the coffee glut in Vietnam, and are currently expanding in China.
In Ethiopia, many farmers could be driven to convert to intensive coffee cultivation, abandoning shaded coffee, and even abandoning cultivation of staple crops such as corn, if the rewards are high enough.
Shaded coffee plantations are being crowded out of the market. (AAP)
The challenge is to address a balance between maintenance of livelihoods and preservation of natural environments.
Certification programs such as Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade attempt to address this balance, but they cover less than 20 per cent of global coffee production.
Economist and author Tim Hartford believes that it will take far deeper changes in the globe’s financial divide before coffee farmers ever make a good living.
It’s worth remembering that the consequences of the price of our cup of coffee reach further than the change we give our barista.
I have a number of coffee making items in my coffee cupboard. My favourite is the Bodum pourover but the Clever Coffee Dripper runs a close second when I just need a small serve.
Below is a sample of the best entries to the Perth Good Food and Wine Show Competition - I will contact the winners by email and arrange to get your tickets to you.
The Winners (First name or initials only) are:
Laura
Kelly
Simone
Raymond
Congratulations!
The winning facts were:
"Coffee, after roasting, continues to release carbon dioxide for several days"
"Natural enzyme processes during digestion in the human body produce a normal blood level of formaldehyde of around 2.5 parts per million"
"There are five known tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and umami. The fifth is the most recently recognized basic taste of glutamates and nucleotides."
"Diacetyl, which is produced by fermentation bacteria during coffee processing, gives a rich, buttery aroma!"
The other wonderful new bits of knowledge obtained included:
"Consumed coffee on a daily or almost daily basis had a lower risk of the most common type of liver cancer.."
"It's hard to believe, but Decaffeinated coffee contains caffeine. Although Decaffeinated coffee is five times weaker than regular instant coffee, and three times weaker than Coke, it still contains some caffeine"
"Did you know that coffee was discovered by goats? According to an African legend, coffee was first discovered and brewed in Africa in approximately 800 A.D. According to this legend, an Ethiopian goat-herder, named Kaldi, was frustrated because his goats kept him awake at night. He decided to find out what made them so lively, and discovered that they were eating red berries from a tree which grew in the area. He collected a number of these berries and took them to a local abbot who was reputed to be very wise. The abbot and his monks first roasted and then boiled the berries. They had unwittingly brewed the first coffee! They drank it, enjoyed the taste, and found when they drank it at night that they could pray all night long."
"According to a study conducted in Switzerland by the Nestle Research Centre (recently published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry), coffee has four times the antioxidant content of green tea. Coffee also contains more antioxidants than cocoa, herb teas and red wine. Robusta beans have twice the antioxidants of Arabica beans (although the difference is reduced once they pass through the roasting process)."
"A Polish study has found that the five-minute drinking of 15.0 g of cappuccino coffee increased the amount of saliva, decreased xerostomia, and improved the ability of speech! No more dry mouth!"
"Bananas were noted by Arab traders as small, about the size of a man’s finger, and so called them banan, which means “fingertips” in Arabic. The banana plant is the world’s largest herb and is often mistaken for a tree, but it does not have a woody trunk or boughs."
"There are about 400 species of oak, though only about 20 are used in making oak barrels. Of the trees that are used, only 5% is suitable for making high grade wine barrels. The average age of a French oak tree harvested for use in wine barrels is 170 years!"
"If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee."
And my personal favourite (but didn't make it out of the hat when I wanted it too!)
"Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia - Brain freeze, was invented in 1994 by 7-Eleven to explain the pain one feels when drinking a Slurpee too fast."
At Pranzo this morning Pete was showing me his new pride and joy, which I must confess, was a pretty fine innovation for it's simplicity and the reduction in movement it generates around the espresso machine.
It is a jug washer, plumbed beneath the espresso machine and appears to have improved the functionality of a tight workspace.
I have no idea how many of these are out there in Perth, and I have seen a few fitted in sinks, but this is the first one I have seen mounted under the machine. I suspect it won't be the last such unit.
A new term was coined today by Andrew Sharp who appears to be arriving at the realisation that we may be seeing a transition from SteamPunk into something new - Keep an eye out for the term ClockGoth!
We understand the tem came about with the realisation that there is little steam in SteamPunk and even less punk, but amazing quantities of clockwork and goth elements.
Hopscotch films are distributing a new French Cinema hit this month - Little White Lies. A film about fun, fine wine, great food and deception.
I have 5 free double passes to Give away for the Weekend of 10 June - if you would like to win a double ticket to see the film at Cinema Paradiso or Luna simply email the name of one classic French dish or wine to Cafe(dot)Grendel(at)gmail(dot)com.
Competition Closes on Thursday afternoon 2 June to allow time to get the tickets to the Winners.
It has been a busy year so far, but fun in many ways.
One of the highlights of March was being a part of a panel for the Eat.Drink.Fad? Panel Discussion Series hosted by Sophie Sunderland of European Foods and included Hospitality Consultant Wendy Roach, Cafe Citrine owner-operator Tracee Butts, Braziliano coffee coordinator Yvonne Nielsen and Oxford 130/Greens & Co founder Stuart Lofthouse.
Given the make up of the panel it was encouraging to see that there is a common core of desire to ensure that Perth's cafes remain a strong sector, and more importantly provide a space for people to meet and enjoy the social aspects of coffee.
At some point of the discussion I'm pretty sure I staggered into a dull repetition of my "cafe as the Third Place" theme, but my mind was trying to run in too many directions so I hope the audience coped.
John from European Foods took me on a walk through of their new roastery which shifts the balance heavily in moving the coffee out once it is roasted. I snagged a fresh bag of the Silvana Gran Caffe in the gift pack's the panelists received and it was spectacular and really brought home how easy it is to forget that while European Foods might be big, they do know their business. The changes to the roastery have certainly been worth it from a coffee drinker's perspective.
My sister mailed me a bag of coffee from Turkey for my birthday. A light traditional turkish roast, the beans ground to a dry powder, and although stale the taste was highly evocative - the first coffee I ever drank was of that roast and style (and staleness) in Armenia. I enjoyed it regardless for the memories it brought.
June is GiveAway month on Cafe Grendel - I have 4 Tickets to the Perth Food and Wine show to give away, and a special prize that I will announce when I have the prize (cart-horse etc, or is that chickens-hatch... I won't tempt fate either way)
Details of the competition will be announced shortly! It will be simple, I promise.
We have two sons Junior Grendel Number One - aged 9, and Junior Grendel Number Two, aged 7. They are great boys, full of life, loud, funny, active, farty boys.
Junior Grendel Number One has autism which gives us a few extra things to deal with but he is an amazing child. His brother can insist on attention like no one I have ever seen.
They are amazing and we love them.
On a dark day in 2004 we nearly lost them both to Pneumococcal septicaemia.
The youngest had been ill for a few days and my partner took him to the after hours clinic at Joondalup from where he was admitted directly to the pediatric ward at Joondalup hospital. I left our older son with neighbours and took some clothes and personal items in to the hospital. On my return my older son looked unwell and walking back to our front door he collapsed and started having convulsions. His blue lips triggered a phone call to the ambulance and I could feel he was hot so I stripped him off as far as I could and tried to cool him with a wet cloth.
My partner recieved a frantic call from me telling her, as she sat by the bed of our 10-month old baby, that our two-year old was arriving at the emergency entrance in an ambulance.
The staff wanted a sample of urine from our eldest but he was so unwell that after an hour's debate they decided on a massive dose of antibiotics. Within two hours he had responded and was moved to the wards. Our youngest was a difficult case and it took a week for him to recover to the point where we could take him home.
Their lives were saved by the medical knowledge developed through decades of medical research and the applied research that followed. Doctors only know how to treat these diseases effectively because research has made the discoveries that point the way.
Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria that cause Pneumococcal septicaemia, pneumonia and meningitis are found commonly in the respiritory tract. There is a vaccine available to prevent illness from occuring from the most common strains. The program to commence the vaccination of children was rolled out nationally in 2005. This program will save the lives of children like my boys. It will save parent the trauma we underwent and it will prevent costly hospital intervention and emergency events.
The medical research that leads to vaccines like these is funded through the National Health and Medical Research Council and carried out by organisations and researchers at organisations like Perth's very own Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.
I'm angry by any decision to reduce research funding because as a parent this place me, my partner and our children at risk. As a citizen I know that cuts in research place fellow citizens at risk. As a human I know that the reduction of funding will cost lives, not just here in Australia, but in the developing world where our research has even more significant value, since many countries cannot afford the research infrastructure that we have established.
We can't afford to reduce funding - not from a health outcomes perspective and not from an economic perspective.
