Magical Mushroom Tour

There's not much that would get me up on a Sunday morning at the crack'o'dawn, drive for an hour and arrive to see the the frost still glittering coldly on the grass, unless of course, it was an opportunity to go on a guided tour of a mushroom tunnel.

The mushroom tour was organised as part of the Cool Flavours Festival, an annual foodie festival in the Southern Highlands. Directions were a little imprecise, but we managed to find the swimming pool car park that was the meeting point. We had to travel by mini-bus to the actual tunnel, which was only about 500 meters away but, because it was alongside the railway track, we weren't allowed to walk.

Once the mini-bus had done three trips to drop everyone off, (to pass the time, Mum and I tried to name as many mushroom varieties as we knew) Noel Arrold introduced himself and his business - Li-Sun Exotic Mushrooms. Noel started his working life as a microbiologist before taking over a disused railway tunnel between Bowral and Mittagong to start cultivating exotic mushrooms. Starting with Swiss Browns over 20 years ago, then moving to exotic Asian mushrooms like shiitake, oyster, shimejeii and wood ear, he now supplies restaurants  (including Tetsuya's) and wholesalers with around 1,500 kilos a week of up to eight different varieties. Some of these varieties are grown at the laboratory which is in a different location to the railway tunnel.


Growing mushrooms underground is not new. The first mushrooms grown in tunnels in Australia were under Circular Quay in the 1930s. Mushrooms have also been grown in the catacombs under Paris and in 12 square kilometres of former limestone mine in Pittsburgh, USA. This tunnel was built in 1886 and has been unused by the railway since 1919. After being used as a munitions store in World War 2, it has been revitalised as a mushroom farm.

Although the tunnel is a stable 16 degrees, it felt warm and humid after the chilly start to the day. It was very clean with an earthy smell. Row upon row of bottles, some with little mushrooms peering out, were at the beginning of the 650 metre tunnel.

Shimejii mushrooms

Two different types of enoki mushrooms

Nameko mushrooms

Some of the mushrooms are grown in these bottles, some on logs made of sawdust, others in heavy plastic bags - all are inoculated with the specific mushroom spore that have been gathered in the laboratory.

Racks of logs inoculated with shiitake mushrooms

Like something from Avatar....

Hot pink oyster mushrooms - a variety from South America

Most of the mushrooms grown here are originally from Asia, where they grow naturally. Mushrooms play an important part in the carbon cycle by breaking down the trees in the forests there. Mushrooms were first cultivated 930 years ago outside Shanghai. It is now an industry employing ten million people.

Oyster mushrooms

Mushrooms that need specific tree types to grow under, like porcini, chantarelle and morel cannot be grown here and are imported as dried mushrooms.

Shimejii

Everyone on the tour received a punnet of mushrooms, ours had King Browns, enoki, shimejii and woodear mushrooms. Stay tuned on how I cooked them!

We finished our morning in the Southern Highlands with a visit to Tennessee Orchards at Yerrinbool, stopping to buy a box of deliciously tangy Lady Williams and a bottle of clear, flavourful apple juice.

What's the most exotic mushroom that you've used in cooking?

What's On

Don't you hate finding out about things after the fact?
Why does the first Saturday of every month go past and I forget to grow to the Grower's Market at Pyrmont? Same with the first Sunday of the month and the Artisan Markets at Eveleigh.

And whilst I love reading about foodie events and activities, I'd love it even more if I had the opportunity to consider attending the event in the first place!

So, in the interests of keeping you informed of my interests, here's the on-going and upcoming list of events - mainly food inspired, but also some other items that tickle my fancy.

And hopefully, through the miracle that is the interwebs, I'll be able to post an actual calendar with recurring and upcoming events.

So - this coming long weekend, the Highlands Foodie Group presents the first (of I hope annually) Cool Flavours Festival over the June Long Weekend.

With a variety of activities at local farms, restaurants, cafes, vineyards and orchards, there's plenty to choose from. Check out the program and map here for all the details of the many events.
I was keen to do the cheese-making tour at Small Cow Farm in Robertson (various times on Saturday and Sunday, $10 per person - how cheap is that!) but couldn't fit in into my schedule, so have decided to go on the Mushroom Tour at Li Sun Exotic Mushroom Farm on Sunday. (Various times on Saturday & Sunday, $25 per person). The mushrooms are grown in a disused railway tunnel.
Hopefully, after our tour we'll pop into Joadja Winery for a bit of lunch and some jazz. Rick and I visited this winery a couple of years ago and was impressed with the friendly owner and tasty wines. I remember seeing a vat of balsamic vinegar that wouldn't be ready for awhile so I'm keen to see if it has matured enough yet!

And then next week, I'm off to see Gary Mehigan of Masterchef judgeship fame at a "Modern Pie" cooking demonstration organised by the Harvey Norman Gourmet Institute and promoted through Gourmet Traveller magazine. It sounds like it could be a lot of fun, and I would rather see Gary than little George bouncing up and down!

There's a great selection of other top chefs every month until the end of the year. The Adriano Zumbo one looks particularly interesting - an early Christmas present perhaps?

Let me know of anything interesting that you have heard about. And call back here often, I hope to keep adding to the regular and semi-regular events!

But wait, there’s more

I left you on the gritty, urban streets of Bankstown, as we made our way from rice paper rolls to pho. Catherine, our tour leader, stopped and told us of other wondrous shops that unfortunately we wouldn’t have time to visit today. (Apart from the fact that most of them were Lebanese shops and therefore would not have fitted in with the Tastes of Asia tour theme – my observation, not hers.) Fortunately in the goodie bags we had been given at the Lily Lan Supermarket, we also received a Bankstown Bites pamphlet and map, detailing all the shops and suggested self-guided foodie tours.

On to the pho! Arguably the best pho in Sydney (so our tour itinerary stated), we arrived at a very busy restaurant, where patrons were queued out the door waiting for the customers inside to hurry down their pho and give up their seats. We however, were ushered inside by a smiling gentleman and directed to our reserved seats.


We had about a fifteen minute wait before our bowls of soup made an appearance. Pho is a Vietnamese staple soup, with each family & restaurant keeping the exact ingredients a secret. Catherine had told us while we were waiting that when the owner went on holidays, he closed the restaurant rather than divulge his secret recipe!

We had the beef pho, though other varieties were displayed on the extensive wall menu (I think they were, there wasn’t a lot of English.) The pho was a steaming bowl of broth, delicately scented with star anise & cinnamon, with very thin slices of raw beef that cook from the heat of the soup.

A blurry bowl of pho

Fresh coriander, basil and bean sprouts were at each table as well as lemon to squeeze on some juice. Bottles of fish, soy and chilli sauce were also provided on each table to add as desired.

Jess enjoying her pho

The pho was delicious. I don’t know that it’s the best I’ve ever had, as previous bowls of pho in Bonnyrigg and Marrickville seemed to have more flavour, though the flavour may well have been enhanced by memory. Certainly the crowds of people eating and waiting to eat here attest to its well-deserved popularity.

Onwards and upwards! We circled around the streets of Bankstown to return to a coffee shop directly opposite the supermarkets we had visited previously - Cafe Nho.

Catherine pointed out the TK Plaza - home to many interesting shops

A table had been set up towards the front of the cafe, with lots of sweet, cool treats to choose from. On offer were mango or coffee gelato and avocado or mango & coconut smoothie, as well as tastes of black sesame, taro or durian ice-cream. The mango gelato was smooth and full of flavour. I was eager to try the avocado smoothie, which was a not unpleasant blend of avocado flavour and sweetness. I tried both the black sesame and the taro ice creams, both of which were sweet and mild in flavour - though very interesting colours. Unfortunately I missed out on trying the durian ice-cream -next time.

Blurry cups of ice-cream: grey-sesame paste, purple-taro, cream-durian

Avocado smoothies

Our generous and amiable host, Eddie Nguyen also offered small cups of an absolutely delicious strong sweet shot of espresso coffee with an equal amount of small pieces of ice as there was coffee. Sipped through a straw it packed a pick-me-up punch of caffeine and sugar that was very much appreciated. Eddie told us that the coffee is roasted on the premises with beans from Brazil, Peru and Costa Rica.

Eddie Nguyen explaining the ice-cream flavours

A very short walk back down the street brought us to the Vien Dong Herbalist. We stood outside the shop while the owner and her daughter poured us a cup of "Cleansing and Moisturising Tea" in small porcelain tea cups. The tea was sweet and I could taste the licorice root. This tea helps the liver function to eliminate toxins as well as other medicinal purposes. We then tried some "Nourishing and Tonifying Tea" of which I didn't enjoy the flavour as much, though it can be used as a dessert by adding rock sugar, or in soup.

Tea tasting

We were given our tea cups as gifts (!) to take home as well as an information sheet about the tea, and Rick also bought some of the "Cleansing and Moisturising Tea" to try at home.


This ended our Bankstown Bites: Taste of Asia Tour! Catherine our guide had already left us in order to welcome the next tour. Josie, her offsider, did a great job escorting us to Cafe Nho and the herbalist and it was a testament to the way the tour was run that we had gone an hour overtime, but were never rushed or felt hurried.

Disappointingly, we couldn't "shop until we dropped" as someone in our car had a prior appointment at home, but we did manage to return to both Best Value and Lily Lan Supermarkets to make some purchases. I had quickly scanned through "The Red Lantern" cookbook at home before coming, to check if I needed any pantry staples and managed to find the "3 Crabs" brand fish sauce that Pauline & Luke Nguyen's mother recommends in the book, amongst a few other things.

My purchases

We also stopped at the butcher for some great bargains, and I was tempted by the different pre-made pastes on offer - fish, chicken, crab and veal to use in fish cakes or other savoury treats at home. Next time!



What a day! The sights, smells and tastes had been a fantastic feast for the senses and a small insight into Vietnamese cooking and culture - and all within a couple of blocks of the sterile, character-less mall at Bankstown that had been my last shopping experience in the suburb. I truly cannot understand why anyone would shop at Woolies or Coles if they had such a vibrant, fresh food precinct as this one nearby.

Happy shoppers - Lee & Tineke

Catherine told us that these tours had been supported by the Sydney International Food Festival, but they were planning to be continued in some form over the coming months. She was going to send the tour participants an email update (which I will pass on to you) , but otherwise check the website for details.

In the interest of honest and open disclaimers, Champagne Hour and The Gang of Five were NOT guests of Bankstown City Council or The Sydney International Food Festival - but felt as if we were, as the value and fun we got out of the day was worth many times the $25 cost of the tour.

Bankstown: Life on the Streets

We (The Gang of Five: Rick (husband), Tineke (mum), Lee (aunty) and Jess (cousin)) arrived a little early for our Bankstown Bites: Tastes of Asia Discovery Tours, so after parking the car in our VIP reserved parking space (fortunately reserved, as everyone in Bankstown was trying to fit into the two free car spaces) we headed up the road for a pre-tour cup of coffee.

Walking up the shared traffic/pedestrian area, we saw police tape being wrapped around two picnic tables and blocking off the entrance to a couple of shops. On the way back to the start of the tour as we realised that one of these shops was the first stop on our itinerary, the forensic teams were now covering the picnic tables in fingerprinting dust and taking photos. Was this taste of gritty urban life Bankstown or Baltimore?

The taped-off crime scene

Once all the tour members arrived, Catherine, our leader relayed the sad story. A local well-known homeless man had died of a drug overdose last night and police were checking over the scene. Our tour would continue however and we were able to use the back entrance to the supermarket whilst the police finished up out the front.

I love back alleys and laneways behind the scenes, they allow you to see the “real” place, not necessarily the well-presented sanitised version. In this case, the back entrance took us through the storehouse of large boxes and wholesale bags of rice into a clean, well-stocked large Asian supermarket - The Best Value Supermarket.

Not the regular customer entrance.

Catherine – our enthusiastic, knowledgeable tour leader showed us some of her favourite items: One was Knorr chicken stock powder – a well-flavoured stock powder used in both Asian and European cooking. Japanese style bread crumbs, larger than regular dried bread crumbs are great when a recipe calls for fresh bread crumbs as they soak up lots of flavour while still retaining their shape. She showed us some different rice wines, most of which can only be used in cooking, but one can be drunk. Place prunes in the wine and heat gently, before drinking the warmed wine and then eating the prune. Excellent (apparently) as an aperitif. Tineke and I thought that this will definitely be one to try out for our Yum Cha whilst Camping experience (a subject of a later, January post).

Our tour guide showing the drinkable rice wine

We had a chance to wander the aisles and check out some of the different wares on offer and decided to put off any purchases until after the tour. The police having finished their business, we were able to leave by the front door, collecting our goodie bags (!) as we went.

What's not to love - 100% percent of new flavour AND a feeling of metroplis

An amazing array of fresh mushrooms

No idea what these "Beamcurd Knots" would taste like.

I don't know if the cool kids would eat these cookies

The Best Value Supermarket goodie bag

Our next port of call was the Nhu Y Juice Bar, a hole-in the wall style juice bar with a plethora of fresh fruit and some more well, interesting, ingredients on offer.



We were offered a smoothie or a “che lanh” (jelly drink), all The Gang of Five opting for the latter to find out what they actually were. We received foam cups filled with a milky looking liquid and some shaved ice and instructed to stir well before drinking.


As you can see stirring the drink yielded some interesting items, some of which we were unidentifiable to us and Catherine came over to help. In the sweet, coconutty flavoured liquid were: pearl barley, taro jelly, lychee, coconut jelly, soy beans, black “grass” jelly, dried long tam, dried prune, sago seeds and lentils. Oh, and seaweed. And yes, that is corn.

Some of the more interesting ingredients

I don’t know if I would have ever requested a drink like that, but I was glad I tried it. The different jellies, beans and fruit gave some interesting (not unpleasant) textures, and the lightness of the coconut milk and ice shavings made the drink not too heavy and very refreshing on a muggy day.

Onward to our next stop – another supermarket, this time the Lilly Lan Supermarket, located back up the street. We walked straight through the shop and out into the back alley, where white tents had been set up with trestle tables and hanging lanterns. We were about to have a demonstration and hands on try of rice paper rolls.

Our genial demonstrator - Duy

Rice paper rolls are a regular item in our house for dinner, so I didn’t think I would learn a whole lot. I was glad to be proven wrong. Duy (pronounced doo-ie) was our easy-going & informative demonstrator, apologising in advance for his shaky hands (side effect of a big night out) and allowing one of our tour to make a misshapen roll before showing us his way (in a nice way).

• Dipping the edges of the rice paper sheet in the bowl of hot water, and moving it rapidly through the water until it is wet and pliable, lay the sheet on the plate (Duy’s tip #1: don’t use paper plates, they will stick to the wet rice paper.)
• Lay the lettuce leaves, mint leaves and coriander leaves along the bottom third of the rice paper sheet. (Duy’s tip #2: don’t buy packets of rice paper sheets if they are cracking around the edges, they are old stock. Otherwise there’s not really any difference between different brands.)
• Lay some strips of thinly slice boiled pork IN FRONT (not on top as I would have done) of the lettuce. Then put some halved prawns, skin side down in front the pork.
• Sprinkle with crushed peanuts and add sliced chilli if desired.
• Turn in the sides of the sheet and then roll tightly, wrapping the last piece under.

The prawns looked pretty good under their rice paper wrapping and we fit a surprising amount of filling in the rolls. Dip in the sauce (hoi-sin, heated with a bit of garlic) and enjoy. And we did. There were enough filling ingredients to feed three times as many people so we did our best to get through a bit of it.

All hands on deck

Tineke showing off her finished product

Duy keeping an eye on Rick's rolling method

While we were eating, Catherine asked Duy to explain some of the lesser-known vegetables that are sold at the supermarket. Duy showed & told us the following:

• Use bok choy in stir-fries or salads – not in soup. Use pak choy in soup – it has a sweeter flavour and breaks down better.
• Mustard greens can be used in cooking, but are more commonly dried & preserved with sugar and chilli and then eaten, similar to Korean’s kim chee.
• Aramanth has pretty green & purple leaves, used in soup. Goes slimy when boiled – good for “cooling the body down”.
• Guava – eat when green & crunchy with salt & chilli. Good for “the morning after”. (This Duy’s starting to sound like a bit of a party animal.)
• Green mango is also good, mixed with sugar, fish sauce and chilli in salads.

Duy explained that Vietnamese people don’t like ripe fruit. They prefer it, as mentioned, green and crunchy. When fruit gets as ripe as a Westerner (ie me) might like it, a Vietnamese person will consider it over-ripe and not use it.

Duy also showed us:

• Taro – used in hot pots or steam boats. Also used to stuff pastries and sweetened in baking.
• Yam – purple flesh used in soup.
• Jacama – a fruit eaten cold, peeled & uncooked. A similar texture to apple or nashi, sweet & juicy.
• Bitter melon – deseed and stuff with minced pork, then boil in soup. Or cut and stir fry with egg.
• Loofah sponge – peel and deseed. Soft textured vegetable used in stir-fries or soups.
• Eggplant – small and white. Often pickled and then served with drinks.

That was the end of our impromptu, but fascinating fruit & vegetable lecture. Duy finished our visit by letting us know that the instructions for rice paper roll construction were in our goodie bags (!) as well as his mobile number & email (in case we got into trouble).

Our Lily Lan Supermarket goodie bag

We left, walking through the now crowded streets on to our next stop – the renowned An Restaurant for a bowl of pho.

To be continued….