Tasty walk down Adelaide's culinary history

By JIM EAGLES

Christina Stradijot is probably the Australasian lemon-peeling champion. Every couple of weeks she sits down before 300kg of plump, ripe lemons from South Australia's Riverlands area and gets busy with her potato peeler, stripping off the thin, oily, yellow layer of skin, leaving behind the pith and pulp.

Within a couple of hours all the lemons are white, naked and ready to go to the juicing factory along the road.

But the pile of lemon peel stays behind to be soaked in alcohol, sprinkled with spices and transformed into a marvellous Australian version of the traditional Italian drink, limoncello.

Christina's boss, Libero de Luca, rediscovered the joys of limoncello when he sold his Adelaide restaurant and took a holiday on Italy's Amalfi coast.

Instead of slipping peacefully into retirement he decided to start a new life as a liquor producer, worked at an Italian limoncello plant to discover its secrets and started making the drink in a little factory in the suburb of Goodwood.

Now he reckons his product is even better than the original because the lemons he gets are yellower, sweeter, tastier and unaffected by chemical sprays.

Chilled and poured over ice it's absolutely delicious.

It's even nice at 9am - which was when we arrived at the factory - but better still if you can plan your visit for later in the day.

"It's also good for you," claims Christina. "It must be. Since I started peeling the lemons I haven't had a cold."

It's that mix of the old world and the new - traditional recipes and wonderful produce - which makes South Australia's food so exciting.

Of course the same kind of thing has happened in New Zealand, too, but the inflows of migrants have mostly been later, smaller and less varied, so the impact has been less dramatic.

I've had great food everywhere in Australia but Adelaide is the winner because good eating is so convenient and cheap.

The best place to see the intermingling of food cultures responsible for this culinary joy is at Adelaide's 135-year-old Central Market.

Here you will find everything from traditional pasta sauces and crisp Peking duck, to kangaroo mettwurst, buffalo feta, crunchy chrysanthemum leaves, pickled olives, creamy chocolates, delightfully smelly cheeses, live lobsters and dried fruits.

Join one of Helen Rensburg-Phillips' market tours and you will end up salivating at delicious smells and sights, sated with all the tasty samples ... and late (our tour stretched from the planned hour-and-a-half to nearly three hours because we just lost track of time).

That's because Helen is a Liverpudlian with a great love of food and an even greater love of talking about it.

"When we were wondering whether to take on this tour business my mother said, 'Helen, you mean this would involve people paying you to talk? I can imagine someone paying you not to talk. But if you've got a chance of being paid to do what you love best then go for it. It's perfect for you'."

And it is.

Her market tour is a wonderful mix of anecdotes, snippets of history and samples of much of what the stalls have to offer, and it's a great introduction to South Australian food.

The recipe she outlines involves successive waves of immigration each bringing its own ingredients which have combined to form a sumptuous banquet.

The market doesn't have a specific Aborigine shop but you can buy traditional delicacies such as yabbies at the fish shops, bush tomatoes at the many fruiterers and kangaroo meat at the butchers.

There is even a dedicated kangaroo meats shop, which offers samples of smoked roo and a delicate mettwurst.

The early English settlers have left their mark, too, particularly in the area of drinks, such as beer and tea. The T Bar at the market - owned by Greeks, funnily enough - sells 150 kinds of tea. The most popular at the moment is chai latte.

And if you fancy something stronger you can pop into the Talbot Hotel for a refreshing Coopers Sparkling Ale, first brewed by Thomas Cooper in 1862, allegedly after his wife asked him to whip up a batch of ale from an old family recipe to help to cure an illness. It certainly cured my tiredness.

Scotland's main contribution looks to be the Haigh family, who for nearly a century have made wonderful, rich creamy chocolates. Haigh's main base is Beehive Corner, in the heart of Adelaide, but at a stall in the market you can try a few of the 200 kinds of chocolate the company now produces. The truffles are out of this world.

The German influence is most apparent in the area of processed meats, although they also had quite an impact on the local wine industry.

At the Barossa Fine Foods stall, if you're lucky, they may be offering samples of duck gallantine and slices of smoked pork. The duck is simply succulent.

Alternatively, of course, you could nip out to the Barossa Valley and see at first hand where Schulz Butchers, in Angaston, keep alive the fine traditions of Prussian foodmaking.

And while you're there you might as well drop into the magnificent Seppeltsfield winery with its beautiful old buildings and magnificent grounds, founded in 1851 by Joseph Seppelt, who turned to grape growing after his tobacco crop failed.

His wine company flourished but Seppelt, according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, probably died from an excess of his own product.

But back to the markets, where the Italian influence is particularly strong.

The classic success story is that of Lucia Rosella, who arrived in 1956 to join her husband, Pasquale, unable to speak English but fluent in the language of food.

As Helen tells it, "One morning Pasquale had left to go work and Lucia began making pizzas. Her next-door-neighbour Dayna Hill smelt the wonderful aroma and promptly followed her senses and called upon Lucia.

"After seeing and tasting the pizza for herself Dayna declared, 'These are fantastic. You make them and we'll sell them!'

"So, only 10 months after her arrival in Australia, and before she could even speak English, Lucia established her own business, Lucia's Cafe, which still thrives today."

The recipes Lucia brought with her remain so popular that 18 months ago granddaughter Emma opened a new stall selling jars of nana's sauce, plus all the olives, cheeses and prosciutto you could ever want.

The best place for a taste of Greece at the market is the Zuma Cafe, where they serve traditional pastries and great coffee.

The Greeks also deserve the credit for popularising yoghurt - the Turks apparently invented it - so it's thanks to them that at the Yoghurt Shop you can sample creamy yoghurt in a dozen different fruity and nutty flavours.

But the Hellenic influence is perhaps most obvious in the fishing industry.

Many Greeks, such as the Angelakis brothers, initially settled in the seaside town of Thevenard where they started fishing for food.

The town turned into a transplanted Greek fishing village and today the family runs a major fishing business whose stall in the markets sells everything from oysters and lobsters to King George whiting and swordfish steaks.

These days, however, the Mediterranean influence takes second place to that of Asia.

The Central Market now extends into Adelaide's Chinatown and the restaurant areas of Gouger St with so many restaurants and stalls that from time to time they do their own duck and pinot walk.

This involves moving from restaurant to restaurant and dining on specialties such as mandolin duck, salt and pepper duck tongues, Peking duck, duck giblets and pickles, tea-smoked duck with lotus buns, duck consomme, and duck and rice parcel, supping a different pinot noir with each course.

You'd certainly be waddling by the end of that menu.

Then, of course, there's the New Zealand influence which is becoming stronger all the time ... but by now you're probably feeling gorged and in need of a break so we'll leave it there.

Fortunately limoncello is the perfect digestif, just the thing to sip after a bit too much food, and the ideal way to relax after a busy day.

But be careful.

If you've seen the film Under the Tuscan Sun you may recall the scene when the Italian smoothie Marcello (Raoul Bova) takes Frances (Diane Lane) to his restaurant and smooths the path of seduction with a glass of limoncello.

Limoncello, like the rest of South Australia's food, is very hard to resist.

Limoncello

Limoncello Australia can be contacted on 0061.8.8357.7744.

A New Zealand limoncello is produced by Vinalto Winery at Clevedon or 0800 VINALTO.

Adelaide Central Market

Information about the market

You can contact Top Food and Wine Tours by email or 0061.8.8263.0265.

Further information

For general tourist information the best contact point is the South Australian Tourism Commission by phone (09) 914 9848 or email.

Getting there

From December Qantas will fly direct from Auckland to Adelaide three times a week. Contact Qantas on 0800 767 400 or visit Qantas.

* Jim Eagles travelled to Adelaide courtesy of Qantas and the South Australian Tourism Commission.