TasWeekend: Sirocco South forage of discovery with Mic Giuliani
Foraging straight off the grass and shore with a man who knows his dandelions from his salsify is a revelation, especially when Mic Giuliani cooks the harvest into a European-style feast.
Food and Wine
Don't miss out on the headlines from Food and Wine. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Who’d have thought it would be so exciting to look for asparagus spears? My sense of urgency may have eased over the years, but I still feel a bit like a child hunting for Easter eggs when I go foraging with Mic Giuliani. Best known as the man behind the Sirocco South handmade pasta at Hobart’s Farm Gate Market, Giuliani added a culinary spoon to his pot last year with the introduction of his wild-food adventures for small groups.
We may be standing on traditional hunter/gatherer land, but foraging is also a “thing”. I know that because Instagram has a subset called “Insta-foragers” and they look pretty on-trend.
In Tasmania this decade, a number of leading restaurant chefs have professed a predilection for foraged fodder. I remember spotting David Moyle, Franklin’s founding chef, gathering pipis — or was it mussels — down the D’Entrecasteaux Channel years ago.
In Rees Campbell’s 2017 cookbook Eat Wild Tasmanian (Fullers Publishing, $55) the author tells a story of loss and patient rediscovery of native foods. The island’s colonisers had little to no interest in the edible plants that had sustained Aboriginal people for thousands of years, and their culinary uses were largely lost.
“The Aboriginal people didn’t admit to eating native foods, even if they did,” Rees told TasWeekend when the book launched. “Similarly, white people didn’t admit to eating black tucker because it would suggest that they were poor.”
That has certainly changed now. Today’s forager is hungry for historical stories as well as the experience of picking and dining straight off the grass and shore.
A Sirocco South forage harvests both native and introduced species: mostly we will embrace the glorification of humble weeds and draw on their European heritage.
I meet Mic and his crew of two at one of his secret spots near the water at Dodges Ferry.
Frederick Henry Bay sparkles, but the foraging ground itself does not look especially inviting, being partially a dry swamp. We enter via what looks like an overgrown vacant block between two suburban homes.
Little do I know. We’ve barely made a snake in the grass joke when Mic pounces on a familiar-looking weed. Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is bitter-green and was savoured for centuries until it fell into disuse, he says. I’d thought it was only good for making wishes with its gossamer seed balls.
Now dande de lion (as the French call it after its tooth-shaped leaf outline) is a lunch ingredient. Into Mic’s cane picnic basket it goes, followed by crunchy buck’s horn plantain for a salad.
A couple of metres on, Mic spots heads of salsify, describing tap roots that taste like parsnip and turnip. Next we harvest marsh samphire, a salty succulent.
Under a big old pine tree Mic talks about the slippery jack pine mushrooms he finds here in autumn. A nearby stand of pines is a top place to find saffron milk cap mushrooms. He combines them to make an excellent pate he calls faux gras.
Every few minutes we come across a little patch of asparagus spears, flagged by the feathery fern foliage of the mother plant. Though it’s meant for lunch, I cannot stop eating what I pick — it’s the best asparagus I’ve ever tasted, by far.
Tender. Sweet. Not a woody bite in it. I wonder what Mic can make with the spears that will improve upon their raw state, but I’m guessing from his family heritage it will be Italian-inspired.
For Mic, wild asparagus evokes childhood memories of picking it along a railway line in Victoria’s East Gippsland, where the Giulianis lived for years.
“Grandma would knock up an asparagus frittata and also pickle asparagus,” he says. “And when my parents, grandparents, uncle and aunt would get together to butcher a pig, we kids would be getting in the way, so Grandma would send us off with homemade bread with pickled asparagus and eggplant.”
We spend about 90 minutes gathering. Lacy sea parsley (a bit like parsley crossed with celery tops), bower spinach like warrigal greens but with a tiny flower tasting of leatherwood honey, pigface, and talk of catching escaped farm salmon and turning it into gravlax. By now we’ve reached the little bay where a sweet jetty stands. We take a few steps on the sand… and then the big reveal.
Heavy-legged in the heat, we climb up from the beach to a day camp set up by Mic’s crew. When he decided he’d go ahead with his foraging tours, Mic hired food and table stylist Michelle Crawford to create the nomad-cool look that is now seducing us, timber washstand, ceramic basin and all. It feels like a mirage.
The wow factor is right on. You may have seen some of the set-up on Gourmet Farmer recently after host Matthew Evans filmed an episode right here with Mic.
I can’t wait to savour our finds after Mic has his way with our pickings. As we take our seats at the table, Bream Creek Wines’ Rafe Nottage steps forward to pour each guest a glass of 2012 Cuvee Traditionelle local sparkling, perfect with Pacific oysters three ways, including with butter and fermented asparagus.
Pickled pigface, sea olives and fermented kelp are plucked from the nearby sea — it’s child’s play for Mic, who used to be a diving instructor.
A printed menu reveals that our foraged ingredients will be substantially supplemented with ingredients sourced mostly within a 30km radius.
Octopus from Port Arthur is barbecued and served in an Italian salad featuring the wild parsley.
Stuffed lamb breast is served with fermented wild cabbage shoots, a salsa verde made with buck’s horn plantain, bower spinach and wild rocket.
The glorious asparagus comes in three different ways: barbecued, in a Grandma-style frittata with streaky bacon and sotto olio (preserved in olive oil).
Verdura fagioli (beans) are served with the buck’s horn plantain.
Wild fennel pollen gathered from the local area flavours our divine cannoli dessert.
Who knew? Another guests today is local ceramicist Sarah Webb of Sea Soul Studio, who was a chef before turning to pottery. Also a keen food grower, she has visited the same foraging spot before to collect pine needles for her blueberry plants.
“I had no idea it contained all that edible bounty,” she says. “You really do need to train your eye.”
We agree that our lunch is not only beautiful but a revelation to both of us. Mic enjoys these days out too: “Foraging is something I’ve always done, since I was four or five years of age with the family. “Over the years I’ve had lots of people interested in it, asking me when and what and where to pick. People want to know about this sort of stuff. And it is all of our heritage.
“A lot of what I talk about is European. For a lot of us if we go back a couple of generations, it’s what our ancestors knew about and it just fell out of favour.
“I also thought here’s an opportunity to really spoil guests with a lovely afternoon of trying the food in different ways. I love just watching people’s eyes being opened.
“My guests tend not to have a great expectation when they arrive and see the paddock, but within 10 steps they are making discoveries and becoming very animated. Sharing the knowledge makes me feel good. It gives me a buzz.
“People come alive and feel invigorated and connected.
“In today’s world it’s hard to find an experience you have not had before.”
This is one that today’s guests say they would happily have again, though. ●
The author was hosted by Sirocco South. The next Sirocco South Foraging Tours with a seafood focus are on February 7 and 21. Expect urchins, abalone, cray, seaweed and more. A Sirocco South foraging day costs $300 per person, maximum six guests, and includes all food and drinks and a gift bag.
Make sure you pack an appetite for this hidden Italian gem
With an Italian restaurant on what seems to be every corner, we are spoiled for choice. This new offering serves up sophisticated food with a big heart, writes Stephanie Dalton
Is this the sweetest foodie opening of the year?
This recently opened family-friendly Northern cafe makes a sweet new addition to this business’s growing empire