Sunday Star Times- 5^th September 2010 (download the original story)

Master Chef judge Simon Gault joins some of the finest chefs in the world in Sri Lanka for a challenge with a twist.

EXPERIMENTING WITH tea to fuse new flavours into food had already captured my imagination when I heard about a chance to go to Sri Lanka, the Isle of Spices and the home of Ceylon tea.

To spend 12 days with chefs from South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and my long-time colleague Shane Yardley from Bistro Lago at Hilton Lake Taupo, as part of Dilmah Tea’s The Chefs and the Tea maker challenge, was an opportunity not to be missed.

As expected the experience was chef’s heaven. But there was a twist that will have an impact on me for the rest of my life.

The first indication that this trip was going to be a little different came in the warm and humid Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital city and home to nearly one million people. That’s where we first met Dilhan Fernando, son of Merrill J Fernando who founded Dilmah 22 years ago.

Dilhan taught us that tasting tea and wine have a lot in common – use the eye, the nose and then the palate. He gave us matches like mint tea with chocolate brownies and chamomile tea with apple pie – nice. But then there was real fusion, like Sichuan chicken with Earl Grey tea. Stimulating.

I also learnt that like many people I simply didn’t know how to brew or store tea. None of this jiggling a tea bag for few seconds – a black tea should be steeped for three minutes and a green tea for one and a half to two minutes. And reboiling the jug is a no-no. Use fresh water every time and slightly cooler water for green tea. As for keeping tea fresh – make sure moisture does not get near it as it destroys tea’s health-giving antioxidants. Keep it in foil and an airtight container.

Then Dilhan introduced us tothe creed that ‘‘business is a matter of human service’’. It was to form an essential part of my experience. Dilmah is not a member of theFair Trade organization. Merrill believes that while Fair Trade has honourable intentions, it would not be necessary if ethical business practices existed in the first place. Merrill puts his money where his mouth is, helping more than 10,000 Sri Lankans every year through his MJF Foundation.

Behind the smiles for some Sri Lankans, life is a struggle. I shall never forget the kids at the MJF founded Monaragala School for the Deaf and Blind. For them the sausage with beans we helped prepare was a luxury meal. We played the school’s cricket team they’re the Asian disabled cricket champs. I wore a blindfold – all the chefs had to cope with some sort of impairment. We got taken to thecleaners.

It was an emotional experience and Shane and I want to do something to help in the future, so look out for a charity dinner in coming months.

My part in Chefs and the Tea maker was originally to be an observer and guest speaker at a charity dinner where the chefs and Robert Schinkel, a tea sommelier champion, would serve individual tables of 10. But, naturally, I couldn’t resist and, together with award- winning reference chef Bernd Uber, joined the action.

At Negombo, we welcomed fishers back to the beach and helped shake tiny fish out of nets. They had been out nearly 10km in open boats with bright coloured, square sails and some with outboard motors. There was a variety of seafood at the adjacent fish mart – tiny fish to yellow fin tuna, squid and prawns. The chefs selected their fish and vegetables from the nearby produce market and the rivalry began that afternoon at the JetwingBeach Hotel. Shane worked with chef Tomas Rimydis from Lithuania and Bernd and I judged their crusted coconut and green tea fried prawns with a salsa of tomato, onion, curry leaf and lime, together with sauteed sea bass, a real winner.

A 6.30am start the next day found us on our way to a cinnamon plantation. There are 100 varieties of cinnamon, which is a native of Sri Lanka and one of the spices thathas lured traders for centuries. Sri Lanka still exports cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg and mace, black pepper and turmeric. Fresh Sri Lankan cinnamon smells divine. To harvest it, you cut the tree down, remove the bark then take the next layer of wood off, called the quill. Fresh quill off the tree tastes like a sweet lolly.

Furthering our tea education we next visited the low country tea garden at Rilhena, As we walked through the lush tea garden the chefs learned that, like wine, tea varieties are created by ‘‘terroir’’ or the combination of soil, climate, and geography that gives the tea bush (Camellia sinensis) of particular regions their distinct qualities.

A few days later, we got to join the pickers in the higher altitude, rolling hills of Somerset Estate. These smiling women are professionals, who pick tea leaves and toss them into cane baskets that they wear on their backs, supported by straps across their foreheads. Getting it right is not as easy as it looks.

On from Rilhena, we visited more MJF projects – first Mankada, where the villagers have been supported to produce traditional arts and crafts that are now sold throughout the world and then the Udawalawe National Park, which houses the foundation’s Elephant

Transit Home (ETH). After a safari through the park to see elephants in the wild, we watched as baby, orphan elephants were bottle-fed. While we could get close, we couldn’t touch – human contact is restricted so that the babies can eventually be successfully returned to their natural environment.

The Mankada villagers helped us learn about their traditional ways of cooking, usually in a clay pot over a fire. We got to select a vegetable and make a curry with wonderful fresh spices. Shane made a pumpkin curry with coconut milk, turmeric, chilli and cinnamon. It’s so good we’re going to refine it for our menus here.

That night was the first of a couple of nights of camping. We were right on the river and, in the morning, we had breakfast sitting around a big table in the river eating things like steamed string hoppers (flour, water, eggs), coconut roti topped with chilli sambal, potato and pancakes with coconut treacle inside, while tiny fish nibbled our toes.

The second camp was at Galapita, an eco-tourism resort in the south east of Sri Lanka. We arrived in the dark, navigated a swaying, suspension bridge across a deep ravine and spent the night in open huts. After all the early starts – and a few late nights – we were quickly lulled to sleep by the sound of the rushing river.

Dawn was spectacular and we could finally see nature at her very best. The sound of the birds and the water, the spectacular view and with the company of people passionate about many of the same things as you . . .

In complete contrast, the next two nights were at The Hill Club at Nuwara Eliya. The town itself is known as ‘‘Little England’’ because of its colonial architecture. The Singhalese inhabited Sri Lanka until the arrival of European colonialists in the sixteenth century. After the Portuguese and the Dutch, the British ruled the country from 1815 until it gained political independence in 1948 and became a sovereign state in 1972.

The Hill Club was the inaugural Tea Planters Club after tea was introduced to the country in 1867. It has kept all the traditions and, for us, that meant taking high tea on the lawns and dressing up (chefs jackets or full suit) for dinner.

We were working ourselves up to prepare a dinner for Merrill and his family and guests that night but first we visited Tientsin, one of the stunning bungalows that form part of a Sri Lankan tourism jewel – The Tea Trails (www.teatrails.com).

Four luxury villas lie within walking distance of each other in Bogawantalawa Valley – known as the Golden Valley of Tea, home to old Ceylon. Each villa has a chef, butler and service staff that cook meals from tea-infused dishes to traditional Sri Lankan classics.

Back at the Hill Club we were divided into teams to prepare a hot beverage, a cocktail and a mocktail and a range of dishes for dinner. Our team won overall –and my Dilmah Mulled French Vanilla Rose Tea cocktail got a perfect score. That meant I got to make it for the guests (see recipe, right). I included arrack, the Sri Lankan whisky made from coconut, but you could add your favourite whisky – in small doses of course.

Back at the Hilton Colombo, the chefs worked up for the charity dinner and I worked on my speech. Shane did New Zealand proud. For a starter, he roasted Dilmah Ceylon young hyson green tea and spiced king prawns and did a consomme with Earl Grey smoked duck breast and smoked chilli noodles. His main used New Zealand ‘‘First Light’’ venison rump crusted with cinnamon tea and citrus, accompanied by roasted courgettes and fennel served with cinnamon, juniper jus. And dessert was a Moroccan-minted green tea chocolate marquise, Moroccan minted tea bubbles and icecream.

Shane had hot competition from Mario Holtzen from Belgium.

All the chefs’ recipes will soon be produced in a book. Dilmah is doing a real service to help chefs understand that tea has a wider role in gastronomy.

Although a good cup of tea is great to start the day, it can also help finish off the day in an incredibly wide range of drinks and dishes. I know my experiments have only just begun.

The award-winning dishes and the chefs who created them in the first Chefs and the Tea maker will be played on Food TV at 6.25pm and 7.25pm each Sunday starting tonight for the next 11 weeks and is also available on Food TV’s website – www.foodtv.co.nz. For details of how you can enter and win the New Zealand Chefs and the Teamaker with your Dilmah-inspired recipe , see the entry conditions in next Sunday’s Escape, in the Sunday Star-Times.

SimonGault’s Dilmahmulled French vanilla rose tea cocktail

Dilmah Exceptional French

Vanilla Rose Tea

175ml water

Two slices of orange peel with

white pith removed

4 thin slices of lime

12 cloves

11⁄2T honey

25ml Arrack (Sri Lankan whisky

or your favourite whisky)

Stick of cinnamon

4 small pieces of cinnamon

1 drop of vanilla essence

Method:

Put the orange peel, lime slices, cloves and honey (not manuka) together with the Arrack, small pieces of cinnamon and the drop of vanilla essence into the tea pot. Add two Rose Vanilla tea bags and the 175ml of hot water.

Stir once and rest for one minute. Stir twice and rest for two minutes. Stir once more and strain into a martini glass. Garnish the glass with a piece of orange, a thin slice of lime, clove and a small piece of cinnamon which is inserted into the orange.

Light the cinnamon and serve.

Optional extra: Take a piece of orange peel with the peel side out. Light a match and then break the peel in half right by the flame. The oil that comes out will light. Do this over the cocktail so the burnt oil drops into the cocktail. Serve warm.

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