Vic Cherikoff Food Services formerly Bush Tucker Supply Australia P/L home page - containing comprehensive information about the world of Australian native foods (Bushfoods, Bush Tucker)

Spices have been the basis of the economic development of many countries for centuries and are at the core of the growth of civilisation.

Their preservative actions were as important as the role they played in adding interest and variety to everyday food. Everyday for the ruling classes that is, because spices were generally the wealth and sometimes the currency of civilisations.

Fortunately, herbs were more accessible and provided any forager with flavours as well as a few with some not insignificant medicinal effects.

For modern Australian chefs, one of the most important effects is the medicinal action on boring menus as our amazing native flavours bring otherwise ordinary or mundane or at least so common as to be tiresome dishes to life. Ours are the flavours of the modern spice trade

While there is some evidence of spices being used by African and European hunter-gatherers through pre-history, clear records show that the Ancient Egyptians used spices in food, cosmetics and medicines since 5000BC. The Arabian spice trade spanned over 5000 years and grew out of the Middle East to the Mediterranean and on to Europe. Supplies came from Chinese spice merchants gathering their cargoes from their own country as well as Indonesia (specifically the Spice Islands of Maluku), India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon).

The great trading companies of old (equivalents of our yahoo-dot-coms and others) pushed the frontiers of exploration and endeavour creating new industries in their wake, based around these new flavours in food.

Interestingly, there have been some strange adoptions. Consider the use of coriander (cilantro). Several Asian cuisines spring to mind as using coriander as almost a signature flavour. Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian and even Japanese cuisines include many dishes where this ancient Roman herb is an essential ingredient.

Similarly with vanilla and chocolate, French and other European cuisines have embraced these flavours and made them basic to their dessert repertoires.

This certainly makes the comments of one chef who claimed to me that he only cooked in the classic French style and that a wattleseed brulée just wouldn't make sense to him. However, the two flavours, vanilla and chocolate are from the New World, being South American originally and certainly not native to France.

Where's the sense?

Well, the French have always embraced new foods applying them to their traditional cooking methods and calling the result, French cuisine.

So this brings us to the contribution to world food provided by Australia. There is little doubt that Australian flavours as developed and marketed by Vic Cherikoff Food Services P/L are now the next step in the historic spice trades. The process of discovery of a family of flavours, which offer new twists to established cooking methods and ingredient combinations.

For many enquiring and open-minded, culinary professionals who can see their potential, Cherikoff's flavours could very well be the next major food trend in those cities and regions where food fashion is born, grows and from which it spreads.

"These ingredients are incredibly exciting. They seem familiar but have their own unique characteristics and are intensely flavourful. The herbs are strongly aromatic and the spices powerfully pungent. I am going to use them here at the school and think that all creative chefs will be equally excited." George Tarasso, Napa Valley Cooking School, California.

"I am honoured that it has befallen me to introduce these flavours to the world. Every time I 're-discover' an ingredient I may not have used for a week or two, or longer, I am struck by its impact on other more conventional foods. And I must say that I get an equally powerful charge when chefs tell me that these flavours have re-inspired them and rekindled their love for cooking." Vic Cherikoff, industry pioneer and Australian food devotee.

It has taken me, my network of colleagues and growing list of customers, 22 years to experimentally identify a marketable range and develop organic plantations as well as managed systems of wild-crafting commercial quantities so that world markets can begin to be serviced.

It will be some years, possibly decades still until they have any hope of being common foods but even today, they are generating huge interest around the globe as new and exciting flavours and recognized as versatile and adaptable for a host of applications, irrespective of cuisine. The exciting part of the demand is the large export market is now beginning to dwarf local usage, allowing the industry to really move forward, without the influence of our unfortunate domestic culinary cringe.

So what are these ingredients, once only sustenance for Australian Aborigines?

Not unexpectedly, they include herbs, spices, fruits, seeds, nuts, greens and other specialties from Australian rainforests, woodlands, highlands, coastline and deserts. They also range to extracts, concentrates, purées, isolates and essential oils although these are generally intended for food manufacturers.

In all, there are nearly three dozen species but export markets will be introduced to them in stages. The herbs and spices (eight in total), paperbark (a cooking wrap and flavouring made from the bark of a tree) and a versatile collection of fruit juices, sauces, syrups and preserves are first up with other products to follow as supplies permit. Yet even this initial range results in a huge variety of possibilities.

Apart from direct flavouring restaurant dishes as with conventional herbs and spices, some successful value-added applications include Australian mountain pepper or roasted wattleseed (Acacia seeds) in breads and other baked products; lemon myrtle or wild fruit concentrates in manufactured dairy and frozen desserts; and new flavours such as pepperberries, aniseed myrtle or Australian mint in prepared seasonings, sausage pre-mixes, infused oils, pastry, cheese and sauces.

Cherikoff marinades, sauces, chutneys and spreads are encouraged to be used as base flavourings adding a particularly innovative twist to different world cuisine styles. For example, lemon aspen syrup can be transformed into a Japanese dipping sauce by adding vinegar and soy or made into a Chinese sweet and sour sauce with vinegar and sweet ginger.

For a delicious topping for potato chips as fries or wedges Cherikoff Mountain pepper BBQ sauce served with sour cream is unbeatable. This barbecue sauce has even 'Australianised' Middle Eastern cuisine when mixed with hummus, baba ganoush or sheep milk yoghurt or adapted to American dishes as a flavouring for mayonnaise on salads or splashed straight onto a hot dog with mustard.

In the USA, there have been a humble few steps taken. Kitchens in numerous Australian Embassies, The Coastal Kitchen in Seattle, Eight Mile Creek restaurant in New York and the Provo Marriott and Matilda's Restaurant in Salt Lake City to name only a few, are old hands at using Cherikoff flavours. Now, with distribution established, these products are beginning to take giant leaps into the innovative food sector.

Similarly, in the UK, the native food presence is being felt. Sainsbury's Supermarkets stock my herb and spice range in 350 stores. Our food service distributor provides ingredients for restaurants including DK's, Harvey Nichols' Fifth Floor, the 37 Walkabout Inns and many others. Last but not least, a strategic alliance with an industrial ingredient supplier is ensuring that Australian flavours will soon be available in all sorts of manufactured products, from sausages and ready meals to pastas, condiments and bakery items.

Look out world. We're coming through.

One popular service I offer is a flavour-up. This is my suggestions using Australian ingredients suited to a chef's existing menus. (It is also offered as a service for manufacturers). Fax or email a menu or a product concept and an array of alternatives is sent back over the next few days. For chefs, the dishes are 'tweaked' yet the chef and his team are already familiar with the routine of preparing the established menu. It is not a radical change but merely an adjustment of tastes. The result is a smooth transition in taking good food and then, as one personality chef in the US has the habit of saying, to "kick it up a notch" with these unique and delicious flavours. Chef! If you want your menu tweaked send us a copy by email and let us send back our suggestions.

Who ever said a menu shouldn't promote a restaurant?

Once customers discover that something different is going on, there'll be an avalanche of interest. At a recent food show in San Francisco, a buyer from a well known retailing group said;

"These new Australian flavours are about the only new concept in food out of over 5000 exhibitors."

It is ironic that these flavours are also among the oldest foods on the planet and we will no doubt continue to see the influence of fusion methods featuring the striking highlights provided by these wild quality offerings from the Land Down Under.

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