With a combination of good food and perfect setting, Belli Bamboo Parkland provided the ultimate backdrop for our midsummer day lunch.
There is something quite magical about a bamboo grove. While they are quite common land feature throughout Asia, Australia doesn’t afford many opportunities to experience this natural delight making a trip to Bamboo Australia at Belli all the more pleasurable.
Bamboo takes many shapes and forms, which is apparent from the moment one enters the Belli property driving through a magical bamboo arched drive as you pass through the main gate. Textures abound, smooth poles jut from the earth while velvet husks peel from the shoot itself.
Bamboo groves have a spiritual quality, an ethereal silence that evokes a feeling of peace and serenity; you just need to wander through the property’s running grove where we chose to have our delicious midsummer day’s lunch, to revel in the ambience.
Durnford Dart, the owner of the property has been collecting, cultivating and cataloguing bamboo for over 15 years seeing the property amass over 250 varieties of bamboo which many of which can be bought on site.
Peter Wolfe designed a fabulous menu for us on the day, utilising locally grown bamboo shoots, lotus and duck as our main ingredients, demonstrating the versatility of bamboo by its use not only as a core ingredient but also as a cooking vessel, shot glass, vase and an exotic backdrop for a relaxing and enjoyable lunch.
Peter is renowned for being adventurous with ingredients, typically native or bush foods (as in Cedar Creek Bush Foods) so given the opportunity to ‘play’ with some bamboo, lotus root, red claw crayfish and duck, came up with not only delicious dishes but ones that displayed tremendous visual drama as well.
We started with a robust Red Claw Crayfish Bisque that Peter served up in fun bamboo shot glasses together with a Red Claw Cray Paste that was spread onto lotus root slices and shallow fired in macadamia oil. The texture of the Red Claw with the fresh crispness of the lotus root made a great combination, the red claws having that slightly more gamey taste than that of what a prawn would have. Peter utilised the breast and thigh meat of the duck – organic duck by the way, lovingly raised on Bendele Farm, the only duck to buy if you live on the Sunshine Coast.
The marinated duck breasts were smoked in a cast iron pot demonstrating that you don’t need flash smoking contraptions to be able to enjoy the spectacular flavour of smoking in your home (or in the middle of a bamboo grove).
The final flash of drama was the cooking method of the black sticky rice which Peter did in a section of bamboo over a burner (coals from an open fire works too) the inspiration of which came from a recent trip to Vietnam where ‘natural’ cooking aids are common practice; bamboo pots and bowls, lotus and banana leaves as wraps and plates which is then reclaimed by nature once the contents are devoured – beats doing the dishes!
We enjoy the wonderful flavours of all the dishes and if you get a chance, wander out to Bamboo Australia, and feel magic first hand.
This post was written by Petra Frieser – Pebbles + Pomegranate Seeds
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