feast of the senses magazine
celebrating life in the tropics
feast of the senses 28 March - 6 April Cassowary Coast
proudly sponsored by
welcome to feast of the senses Welcome to the 2014 Feast of the Senses showcasing the wonders of the Ultra-Tropics and celebrating life in the Tropics. This year’s festival offers a range of activities from our headlining Market Day Extravaganza, Gala Dinner and International Food Fair to Bush Poetry recitals, food trails and a range of exhibitions and competitions. There really is something for everyone and I encourage you to get involved with the Cassowary Coast’s premier festival. The Feast of the Senses is a community festival that owes its success to the numerous hard working volunteers and the generous sponsors who dig deeply into their hearts and pockets to give so that others may enjoy. On behalf of the management committee I wish you a wonderful Feast for 2014! Margaret Darveniza President Welcome to ‘Feast of the Senses’, a terrific event serving up a premier food and wine experience to visitors of Tropical North Queensland. Showcasing the Cassowary Coast’s impressive variety of exotic tropical fruits and produce, this ten-day festival is a highlight on the TNQ Regional Events calendar. The Newman Government is proud to support ‘Feast of the Senses’ through the Tourism and Events Queensland Regional Development Program. We recognise the importance of events such as this in fostering community pride and driving visitation to regional communities as we work toward our goal to double annual overnight visitor expenditure from $15 billion to $30 billion by 2020. A key theme of the Government’s recently launched Destination Success 20-year plan for Queensland tourism is to identify and promote iconic experiences throughout Queensland’s many destinations. By continuing to work hand-in-hand in an industrygovernment partnership we have a plan to secure the long term future of Queensland’s tourism industry. I congratulate the event organisers, volunteers and local community for supporting this festival in 2014. Message from the Minister for Tourism, Major Events, Small Business and Commonwealth Games the Honourable Jann Stuckey MP
The Hon. Jann Stuckey Queensland Minister for Tourism, Major Events, Small Business and the Commonwealth Games
Entertainment Program Time
South Johnstone Mil Main Stage
Cane Cutter Court Stage
9am 9:30am
Rainforest Bounty
10am
Cumic Steel Celebrity Chef Intro
10:30am
Thermomix Demonstration
11:00am
Cumic Steel Celebrity Chef Competition
11:30am
Ingrid Piper
ZUMMBA
IESS Drummers Mission Beach Ukulele
IESS Drummers
12:30pm
Green Way Health Cooking Mission Beach Demo Ukulele
1pm
Coffee Club Sr Rambutan Stacking Comp 9 - 12 years
2pm
Just Sing It
Innisfail State College Strings and Pop Band
Coffee Club Jr Rambutan Stacking Comp 6-8 years
Rainforest Trees and Fruits
Powerlink Community Stage
Innisfail Community Band
12:00pm
1:30pm
Court House Steps
Ingrid Piper
Other Entertainment & Activities: CYBERSAM
Zoo to You Wildlife Display and Face Painting Wonderfair Amusements Children’s Rides My Kitcen Rules Rare Fruits Ultra-Tropics Display Bennie Banana
RARE FRUITS DISPLAY AUCTION CENTRAL FRUIT DISPLAY
Australian Bananas Market Day Stalls Rankin Street
Cane Cutter Court
Babinda Men’s Shed Tropical Froggery The Closet Hippy Tracey’s Dream Cakes Sapphire Soy Candles Rylee Rose Tings Orchids Lisa Dee Creations Madam Kransky Tropicool Treats Roxyvogue Happy Bugz Mandy’s Muffins 7 Elements Design Cairns Magical Face & Balloon Sandwizard As Green As Garden Centre Hubbs Orchids Jennie’s Crafty Bits Sikh Community It’s Not Cake Essential Oils Cassowary Region Arts Council Association Majestic Rides Tropicolor Nursery Bowen Therapy Contours Innisfail
Australian Bananas Flavours of India Jennie’s Pancakes Hasham’s Dips Angie Sciacca Peter Parakas Kakigori Dreams Papa’s Poffertjes Rite Bite Catering John Darke & Tanya Franklin Hungry Possum Wood Fired Pizza COC Imperial Tavern Feast of the Three Saints Thai Tucker Tableland Wagyu Beef Annie’s Cup & Away Millaa’s Little Delights QCWA East Palmerston
Edith Street Cheryl Burge Passetti Family Trust Daintree Estates Cocoa PL Fruit Forest Farm Broken Nose Vanilla Rainforest Bounty Mungalli Creek Dairy Ravenshoe Country Pickin Greek Orthodox Community of Ifl & NQ Ifl Woodworkers Guild Mourilyan Bakery Swiss Krusty Shed Bush Essentials Murdering Point Winery Denis & Jennifer George Blackbooks Tea Victorian Rose Ifl PCYC Damree Products Australia The Wholefood Co Bob’s Original Sauces
Thank you for visiting the Feast of the Senses
John Farrington Sunset Ridge Farming Pty Ltd Mirriwinni State School P&C Community Support Centre Innisfail Bluebird Candles Daintree Vanilla & Spice Janita’s Treats Zoe’s Doggy Treats L&L Pepperfarms Karissa Chase Handmade The Coffee Bloke Mark Daish Naked Dips Wild Food Popsicles & Lemonade The Tea Chest Kat’s Cane Bar Dolci di Casa Walkabout Woodfired Pizza Macca’s Eat & Go Orchids North Spunkaroo Kollections Espresso Italiano Aust Air Force Cadets
feast of the senses 2014 program The Feast of the Senses is North Queensland’s premier tropical fruit event! Showcasing our amazing variety of exotic tropical Fruits and Produce it is like no other festival in Australia and is truly a feast for all of your senses! Over the 10 day program visitors will be able to see, touch, taste, and smell the amazing ultra tropical fruit and food that comes from this vibrant region! The 2014 Festival will run from the 28th March to 6 April Photography competition Sponsored by Vital Photography
This year’s theme mirrors the Festival theme of “Life in the Tropics”. The competition is open to anyone who enjoys photography and is a wonderful opportunity to be creative and imaginative with the theme. Entry forms and criteria are available from the website: www.feastofthesenses.com.au
Bush Poetry Competition Sponsored by Bendigo Bank
The competition is open to anyone who enjoys writing bush poetry and is a wonderful opportunity to be creative. Winners will be announced at the Bush Poetry Breakfast at Spurwood Springs. Entry forms and criteria are available from the website: www.feastofthesenses.com.au
Innisfail Art Society Exhibition Sponsored by Andrew Cripps MP
Cassowary Coast Region Art Gallery, Mourilyan. Open Daily Each year the Innisfail Art Society holds an art exhibition in conjunction with the Feast. There are many talented local artists, so this exhibition is always vibrant and full of life. A People’s Choice award is presented to the Artist receiving the most number of votes.
Tropical High Tea Tuesday 1 April 2014
A“Decadent Tropical High Tea @ Castaways Resort & Spa. Enjoy a wider range of both savoury and sweet dishes as well as tropical fruits, all served buffet style. $29.50 including a glass of bubbly, espresso coffee or tea.” Book tickets at Castaways Resort and Spa
Taste with a twist Monday 31 March 2014
Mission Beach Visitor Centre’s Tropical Fruit Safari will again be hosting their “Taste with a Twist—Exotic Fruit Tasting” at Castaways Resort on Monday 31st March 1 – 2pm For details and booking contact Angi on 4068 7099
2014
The Innisfail Chamber of Commerce Feast of the Senses Gala Dinner
Friday 4 April 2014
An evening of amazing gourmet meals created from our local tropical meats, seafood’s and fruits. Held in the magnificent Innisfail Shire Hall and with Catering by Castaways Resort and Spa, this will be a magical night not to be missed! This years theme is Great Gatsby! Book tickets at www.feastofthesenses.com.au
Nature ’s long lasting energy snack
AustralianBananas
Australian Bananas Market Day Extravaganza Innisfail cbd
Sunday 6 April 9am-3pm
The Highlight of the Festival featuring over 100 tropical food and produce stalls, as well as plenty of entertainment, displays and workshops. The Food Court is the highlight of the day showcasing the amazing tropical and exotic fruits that are grown in this region. Fun for the whole family.
MEET THE FARMERS
broken nose vanilla
Matt & Fiona of Broken Nose Vanilla
other parts of the property; we are energy conscious; all our retail packaging is re-useable; we source our ingredients wherever possible from our local area. We aim to produce consistently top quality vanilla beans and products and to maintain excellent standards of service to our customers – and enjoy what we do! Tell us about Vanilla
Broken Nose Vanilla is a family enterprise, growing Bourbon vanilla (Vanilla planifolia) and curing and processing on the farm in the foothills of Mt Bartle Frere, in the Russell River valley. We enjoy abundant rainfall in summer (up to 6000mm) and a crisp dry season through winter. We sell a range of gourmet vanilla products through delis and tourism outlets. Matt and I have two daughters, one is now in Brisbane and the other is in Year 10 at Babinda P-12. A philosophy of sustainability underpins our farm practices and business decisions: we use no chemical pesticides or fertilisers on our plants, beans or
Vanilla is a tropical climbing orchid that originates in Mexico. It loves heat and humidity and thrives in our wet coastal climate. It flowers during the winter months and the mature beans are harvested around nine months later. One of the tricks with vanilla is that it has no natural pollinator, so we have to hand pollinate every flower. Each flower becomes a bean, potentially worth $5, so it is well worth the effort to poke a stick at a thousand flowers every morning for a few months. Once harvested, vanilla goes through a curing process; careful heating and sweating over a numner of weeks stirs the enzymes into action to develop the beautiful vanilla flavour. www.brokennosevanilla.com.au
T| 07 4043 8300
31-33 Palmerston Drive
F | 07 4043 8395
PO Box 200
E | admin@ibsonline.com.au
INNISFAIL QLD 4860
ibsonline.com.au
PROUD TO BE A SPONSOR OF THIS YEARS FEAST OF THE SENSES
Bananas
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paronella park mena creek
Luke Evans of Paronella Park
These days we employ more that 40 staff from the local area, and attract over 100,000 visitors to the region. You’ve recently taken over the Mena Creek Hotel, how has this enhanced the Paronella Park experience for visitors? It has improved the experience greatly. Our night tour continues to grow in popularity, and having a venue 200 metres away offering accommodation, and hot meals every night makes it easier and more enjoyable for our guests. We wanted to get the little things right with the pub before we did anything else. A country pub needs to have good fresh food, cold drinks, and a welcoming atmosphere - this is what we’ve focused on, and the feedback so far has been great. More than anything, I think Paronella Park is a story about triumph over adversity. It’s a beautiful place and a lot of very hard work went into creating it, but I think the fact that someone had an idea, and was determined enough to see it through despite the challenges, is what makes the Park so special. When we first arrived at Paronella Park, it was there physically, but very little was being done to make visitors aware of the story behind the property. Employing tour guides and having them tell the unusual and remarkable story of José Paronella and his family was a turning point for the business.
What’s next? We have big plans for the next couple of years. Probably the most important is that we plan to continue to reinforce and preserve as many of the structures at the Park as we can, as well as an exciting plan to recreate the useable space in the old Ballroom. The Ballroom was destroyed in a fire in 1979, and while we won’t be taking it back to what it was, we will be preserving what’s left, recreating the original shape, and building a new room and floor, all in keeping with the original feel. www.paronellapark.com.au
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MEET THE FARMERS
pacific coast eco bananans
Frank & Dianne of Pacific Coast Eco-Bananas story by Penelope Votzourakis
banana growing region. Frank wanted to address the problems of farming with chemicals and all the issues associated with it. He also recognised the ecosystem was not in balance and wanted to get back to producing a banana that tastes the way a banana should. The hard work paid off with the launch of the Eco Banana we all know it by its distinctive red wax tip in the year 2000.
Dianne and Frank are a ‘throwback’ breed of farmers; ‘What’s Old is New Again’. They farm more like their great grandparents might have, working hard to make a living from the land. But they are not just farmers they are trailblazers. Frank and Dianne Sciacca of Pacific Coast Produce are located near Innisfail in the heart of Queensland’s
We’ve been working on environmental management systems of farming with trials of eco bananas starting in 1998 and putting our first product into the market place in 2000. At that point Frank knew he needed help back on the farm and I left my job at the local authority. It’s sort of trailblazing; when we first started doing this, the word environmental and farming were never spoken together. www.eco-banana.com.au
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tropical fr rambutan
This Southeast Asian delicacy is known first and foremost for its potent odor, which is said to be similar to rotting food or garbage. It’s so pungent, in fact, that it’s banned from certain restaurants and hotels, as the smell can linger for days. The durian tree does not bear fruit until it is 15 years old, making its prized crop very expensive. About the size of a volleyball, the fruit’s shell is covered in short spikes, and needs to be broken open like a coconut to reach the fleshy middle, which can be eaten raw, but is also used in anything from Malaysian candy and ice cream to traditional soups.
african cucumber
Native to West Africa, the ackee is now mostly produced and consumed in the Caribbean, particularly in Haiti and Jamaica, where it is the national fruit. Measuring up to 4 inches in diameter, this bulbous fruit grows on the evergreen ackee tree. It has a yellow and red leathery skin and must open naturally, at least partially, revealing thick, creamcolored sections attached to three shiny black seeds, before it is removed from the tree. (An unripe ackee can be poisonous when eaten.) The nutty-flavored flesh is often parboiled in salted water or milk and then lightly fried in butter. It’s also served with codfish, added to stews, or curried and eaten with rice.
This Ping-Pong-ball-size red fruit is indigenous to Malaysia, and has also been cultivated throughout Thailand, South Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka. It features a thin, leathery skin covered in tiny pinkish hairs for which it is named (in Malay, rambut means hair). A relative of the lychee, it has a white or pinkish flesh on the inside that is described as juicy and sweet. It’s often eaten fresh or canned, in salads and, more recently, in high-end cocktails.
durian
Also known as the horned melon, jelly melon, or hedged gourd, the African cucumber is a vibrant fruit, featuring green and yellow colors on the inside and bright orange on the outside. It originates in the Kalahari Desert—which spans from central Botswana to west central South Africa and eastern Namibia—but can now be found in California and New Zealand. The taste has been compared to a mix of banana, cucumber and lemon, and it is often used for decorating platters or as an ingredient in smoothies and sundaes.
ackee
ruits guide buddha’s hand
Native to the valleys of Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador this oval fruit can weigh up to 5 pounds and consists of a smooth, green skin and plump white inside that’s pitted with dark brown seeds (which are not edible). Its flesh is juicy and fragrant, with a custard-like consistency that is said to taste like a mix of banana, passion fruit, papaya and pineapple. It can be cut in half, scooped out and eaten raw, used in salads, puréed and made into mousse, folded into a pie or tart filling, or frozen and eaten like ice cream.
salak
Most popular in Southeast Asia, dragon fruit is eaten around the world, including in Mexico and Central and South America. This pomegranate-size fruit is quite vibrant, with bright pink skin and large, greentipped scales; inside, it contains a white or fuchsiacolored flesh that’s dotted with tiny black seeds. Slightly sweet and crunchy, the fruit is said to taste faintly like a mix of kiwi and pear or melon. To be eaten, it is cut down the middle and the soft inside is scooped out. Though often eaten fresh, it’s also used in juices or frozen drinks, or tossed into fruit salad.
Also known as bushukan or fingered citron, this citrus fruit—whose skin somewhat resembles that of a lemon—is native to southwestern China and northeastern India, and looks like a giant-fingered hand or yellow squid. The fruit is in season in winter, and can grow up to 12 inches. When split vertically, it reveals a white, juiceless and often seedless flesh. Prized for its fragrant scent (like that of violets), its thick yellow rind is often used to make jam and marinades, to flavor liquors and perfume clothing. In Japan, it is also considered to be a good luck totem for New Year’s, and is displayed as a decoration in homes.
cherimoya
Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, salak—also known as snake fruit or snakeskin fruit—is the shape and size of a ripe fig but with a pointed tip and brown scaly skin. It’s prepared by breaking off the tip and peeling back the skin to reveal three yellowish-white lobes and a dark brown seed. It has a crisp texture and sweet flavor, making it a popular choice for fruit salad. It’s also used in soups and custards, and can also be found canned in syrup, candied, pickled or dried
dragon fruit
fresh dragonfruit smoothie Ingredients 1 large Dragon Fruit, peeled and cut up (keep slices aside for garnish) 5 large Strawberries cut up (approx 1 cup) 1 Banana cut up 3/4 cup plain Greek yogurt (or flavoured if you prefer) 1 Table spoon honey (more if you prefer sweeter) 1/2 cup of crushed ice
Preparation Mix all in a blender and garnish with a slice of Dragon Fruit.
thai green papaya salad Ingredients 300 - 400g Green Papaya peeled and shredded or julienned 30 gm Roasted Peanuts 2 Carrots, peeled and grated or cut into juliennes 50g Green Beans 1 onion 100g Tomatoes
For the vinaigrette
Method Prepare the vinaigrette by mixing the garlic, some chilli without seeds, tamarind paste, sugar and soy sauce in a mortar, or mix it in a blender. Add lime juice and mix well. Blanch green beans and cut into irregular strips. Chop the tomatoes and onions. Remove seeds from chilli and mince. Assemble the salad using the green papaya as a base. Add the remaining ingredients. Dress with vinaigrette.
1-2 cloves garlic 2 tablespoons palm sugar 2 fresh Thai chillies (optional) 1 tablespoon tamarind paste 4 tablespoons soy sauce Juice of 2-3 limes