Since it does not seem to be possible to spend a day at the beach in Australia without full sunshine and cloudless skies, we spent the first rainy day of our New South Wales road trip indulging in the local edible delights of the Tweed Coast.
The first stop was the award winning Mullumbimby Farmer’s Market, held every Friday from 7 am – 11 am in the vibrant village of Mullumbimby, 20 minutes from Byron Bay in the Mount Chincogan foothills. The market’s main focus is produce with countless stalls selling a colourful smorgasbord of local fruits and vegetables benefiting from the region’s sunshine and tropical climate. I was super excited to try new fruits I had not previously encountered, growing up in the snowy Canadian prairies.
We were greeted by Kool, a dreadlocked bearded resident dressed head to toe in tie-dye, hula hooping and singing “It’s all good, it’s all good, it’s all good in the neighbourhood”. My first stop was Jungle Juice, a smoothie stall to try their black sapote coconut cream and banana smoothie. It tasted like a healthy chocolate milkshake with a Medjool date like sweetness. Black sapote, also known as chocolate pudding fruit, is a species of persimmon shaped like a tomato with a soft olive green colour which turns deep yellow green when ripe. I was also drawn to the glossy aubergine purple/ black hue of jaboticabas, Brazilian tree grapes, and purchased a punnet on learning they taste of a mix of lychee and rose grape.
We decided to join the locals congregating on communal tables and sitting on the grass enjoying the stall’s brekkie fares. Wishing to relive alfresco breakfasts on Southeast Asian travels, we were drawn to the Indonesian kitchen. Though we initially intended just to share the Indo Breakfast – a plate of nasi goreng, sweet and sour salad leaves, and a fresh omelette with farm veggies topped with hot chili sambal, we could not resist adding sticky rice and banana steamed in banana leaves and ondeh-ondeh, sticky rice snacks filled with sweet mung bean paste to our order. Enjoying our food in the warm humid air with palms and mountains in the background, we could have easily been in Bali.
We filled our baskets with local macadamias, pecan butter (roasted immediately post picking), avacados, bananas, tomatoes, cheeses and macadamia sourdough (yes we are a bit maca-obsessed) and bush herbs. Many of the native ingredients filling hatted Sydney restaurant menus grow wildly in the North New South Wales/ Gold Coast rainforests including my favourites Davidson plum, a sharp lemony sour antioxidant loaded fruit with a fushia pink colour when powdered as bright as its punchy flavor. Wattleseed from acacia trees brings a savoury nutty toasted biscuit flavor with coffee like acidity while lemon myrtle brings a eucalyptus like menthol citrus flavor to teas and cocktails alike.
Our next stop was Tropical Fruit World, a working farm, shop and café on sprawling rainforest land. We admired the views of banana trees, twisting tall palms surrounded by ferns and distant mountains while tucking into the seasonal fruit salad, a humble name for the exotic variety of delights ranging from canistels, an orange fruit tasting of creamy sweet pumpkin, Barney purple star fruit, orange mangosteens with a flavor more tart than their namesake but equally delicious, more black sapotes, passionfruit, papayas and bananas with creamy coconut yoghurt. The staff were extremely knowledgable about the origins of the fruit, how to tell it is ripe and recipe suggestions. I left with at least one of everything for tomorrow morning’s porridge bowl.
To counter our virtuous vitamin packed lunch, it was time for a different kind of tonic at the Husk Distilery. Though most famous for the Instragramable Ink Gin, which changes colour when mixed with tonic due the pH sensitivity of the key botanical, purple butterfly flower, Husk was one of the first rum producers in Australia. The abundant sugar cane, growing 1-2 inches per day is harvested daily and immediately fermented producing an aromatic rum with tasting notes reminiscent of the local environment – honeysuckle, nocarella olives and eucalypt. We opted for Husk rum served as the Caribbeans like it – a ti’ punch –diluted to taste with sugar syrup produced from the sweet elixir of the plantation’s sugar cane juice and zingy lime.
With our bellies full, Eskies brimming with produce I previously did not know existed, baskets of nuts and bush herbs, and a bottle or two of Husk spirits, the rain disappeared and sun shone just in time for a much needed beachside nap.
