Delicious taste triumph in lifting the tortilla curtain
Diana Hull went to Mexico in 2008 to study anthropology. Along the way, she got sidetracked by tortillas.
Diana Hull went to Mexico in 2008 to study anthropology. Along the way, she got sidetracked by tortillas — the corn-based staple of the Mexican nation — although she’d be the first to admit there’s an element of the anthropologist’s calling in the journey that followed.
Like most initiates to the tradition-rich culture of Mexico’s tortillerias — the family-run businesses that fuel every Mexican meal — the Melbourne businesswoman soon discovered the true tortilla is made in a way that defies common understanding beyond Mexico’s borders, and goes back to Aztec and Mayan civilisations.
The process of nixtamalisation — cooking and soaking white corn kernels in an alkaline solution before stone grinding to create the masa, from which the tortilla is pressed and cooked — is both an artisan craft and a tradition threatened by encroaching industrialisation.
“Basically,” said Hull, now Australia’s largest producer of authentic tortillas, “the difference between a real tortilla made with masa and one made with a corn flour dough is on a par with instant mashed potato and the real thing. Chalk and cheese.”
Back in Australia, Hull and her Mexico-born business partner Gerardo Lopez, an IT consultant in his past life, decided in 2013 to back themselves in. “We just knew Australians were waiting for it,” Hull said.
“Australians are quite progressive when it comes to food but Mexican was really lagging.”
Three years later, with just about every Mexican restaurant in Australia on their client list, a production facility established in Melbourne’s western suburbs crammed with machinery imported from Mexico and a staff of nearly 40, it seems to have paid off — La Tortilleria was last night awarded Outstanding Innovation at the Delicious Produce Awards.
Judged by some of the best-known chefs and food people in the country, the awards are considered a high-water mark in the industry. They recognise outstanding achievement in the fields of primary production, artisan foods and culinary arts.
Victorian enterprises did particularly well this year. Producer of the Year went to Holy Goat, of Sutton Grange in Victoria, a farmstead cheese producer run by Carla Meurs and Ann-Marie Monda; the farm is renowned for its ecological practices and outstanding cheese.
Innovative primary producer Milking Yard Farm — Bruce Burton and Roz Rapke, at East Trentham in Victoria — won From the Paddock for its sommerlad-breed chicken, a free-range, organic product that has found favour among food lovers and chefs despite being possibly the most expensive chicken in Australia.
And a Mornington Peninsula organic farm run on the Community Supported Agriculture model, with annual subscribers as its customer base, took the From the Earth award, Transition Farm winning for its Brode Galeux d’Eysines French heirloom variety pumpkins.
Merimbula-based Ozi Uni, a harvester, processor and marketer of premium-grade sea urchin roe, or uni, took out the category From the Sea.
Two regionally based chefs were recognised. Oakridge chef Matt Stone, in the Yarra Valley, took the Outstanding Chef award, and Josh Lewis, co-owner of Fleet at Brunswick Heads, was the Unearthed Next Gen Chef.