Australia’s favourite food blogger, Not Quite Nigella, aka Lorraine Elliott, journeys to the Tablelands, travelling in the footsteps of the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Lady Spencer.

So after my judging and eating hijinks in Port Douglas, where’s a girl to go but south, literally, in search of some of the Tablelands’ most well-known producers including two coffee plantations, a distillery, a Swiss Italian restaurant, a coffee museum, cheesemakers and a rainforest retreat.

Skybury Coffee Plantation

I always thought that one would have to travel overseas to see a coffee plantation but apparently I was so very wrong. We are at Skybury Coffee Plantation, Australia’s first and largest coffee plantation in the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland, which is about one-and-a-half hours drive from Port Douglas. We have just enough time to have a coffee (and a very good one as you would expect) before we get onto a bus to take a tour of the coffee plantation.

John, our guide, first drives us through the farm – which grows papaya and lady finger bananas as well as coffee beans…

We are soon onto where the coffee bean trees are growing. Coffee is a tropical plant and here they only grow arabica beans (as opposed to the robusta, which is an inferior bean used in less expensive coffees). This arabica coffee bean comes in both red and yellow and is best grown at altitudes of 500-1500 metres high (it is 525 metres here)…

We pluck one of the cherries and they are a rubied red and resemble small, hard berries. There is a thinnish but firm outer layer, like a thick grape skin and inside is a very, very sweet, thin juicy layer which is similar to a longan or lychee. Inside this is the actual coffee bean which is pale yellow in colour and covered in a slippery membrane called a mucosa.

To pick the beans they use an automated picker from Brazil that is very similar to an olive harvesting machine. Fibreglass rods rotate through the trees and the cherries fall off, with harvesting taking about two months in total. Per hectare they get about 1 tonne of wet cherries which are then dried out and lose 75 per cent of their weight to make 250 kilograms of beans. They then lose another 17 per cent in the final drying process to remove as much moisture as possible as moisture can cause mold.

They sort these first through water and the premium beans float to the top. Most of their beans are exported overseas to markets such as London, Paris, Berlin and even Italy and they export a special bean to Japan called a peaberry as the Japanese are drawn to its sweeter taste…

It’s lunch time and having missed breakfast, I’m starving. There is a café-style menu available incorporating a caesar salad with a twist – instead of offering it plain with bacon or with chicken, there is the option for salt and pepper squid. I take that option up along with a papaya shake and a slice of banoffee pie.

The drinks are not cheap but the papaya shake is delicious. It lacks that really strong papaya aroma that divides people and there’s just the right amount of creaminess. I rarely have more than a sip of a milkshake as they can be meals in themselves but I find myself drinking half of this.

The thing about travelling to other areas is seeing great ideas such as salt and pepper squid on a caesar salad and doing it at home. The squid and the salad go well together, but then again the anchovy component and caesar dressing go well with salt and pepper squid. There is also a generous amount of bacon among the cos lettuce leaves and cheese.

When asked if we were ready for dessert there was a resounding yes. We start with the pancakes which were said to be served with maple syrup but instead they put a butterscotch sauce and bananas. Delicious! Four bites later and I was still going.

The caramel and macadamia tart is very sweet, thick and rich and should best be attempted with low blood sugar levels (which never happens on these trips).

I wasn’t such a huge fan of the banoffee pie crust and there was an odd slightly tart chopped up fruit in the caramel part which I didn’t think worked. If they had used the caramel filling from the above tart then it would have been much better. But who’s quibbling, I’m back on the pancakes…

A royal dinner

We’ve arrived at our final destination for the day and our accommodation for the evening, Cedar Park Rainforest Resort, deep in the rainforest.

Christoph, the chef at the resort’s restaurant, has cooked for Elizabeth Taylor, Lady Spencer, Isabel Lucas and the Prince of Malta. Here they don’t do so much fine dining as their clientele is mainly locals who don’t necessarily want it, but it is simple and well executed cuisine.

Rosy and Christoph are excellent hosts and very accommodating and they tell us stories of when guest Daryl Hannah came to stay and how the other guests knew who she was but didn’t bother her as they understood the resort to be a place to escape to. The menu is a mix of European dishes along with some Asian dishes and as it has to cater for locals, they open up the restaurant to the public on Fridays to Sundays.

I’m not a huge eater of dukkah as I find it quite dusty tasting, but this one doesn’t have any ground cumin or ground coriander which usually contributes to the dusty aspect. Instead, this is full of toasted seeds and nuts which make it much more appealing. The ciabatta bread is soft inside and more like Turkish bread and is excellent dipped in the olive oil and dukkah. The chicken liver pate is slightly coarser than how I make it and it is topped with a layer of aspic. It has a great flavour and is so moreish that even though we don’t intend to eat much of it, we end up finishing it.

The pumpkin and coconut soup is served with feathering patterns and is divinely smooth with the right amount of coconut and seasoning. And it is nice to have a big bowl of hot soup because whilst it isn’t what one would call cold, it is chilly at night.

The pan-fried duck breast comes topped with an onion confit and a tangy but sweet balsamic jus served with a lemon risotto cake. It’s a sizeable serve and the duck is cooked right through.

Now what I didn’t quite budget on was the sizes of the dessert. In fact this half scallop shell dish was deep and large. There is a thin toffee crust and the brulee underneath is smooth and redolent with lime and ginger. All I can think is how Mr NQN would love this. It comes with a portion of dragonfruit, which reminds me of a mild kiwifruit (but in a vivid fuchsia shade) and a moreish vanilla butter cookie. The pistachio ice cream is more almond than pistachio (it’s that pistachio paste that is mixed with the almond I presume).

Using Swiss milk chocolate the chocolate mousse is boat-sized! It has swirls of airy, smooth chocolate mousse, whipped cream and a vanilla butter biscuit on top.

I’m a little fuller than I had intended and I soon retire to my room where there’s nothing but the sounds of silence.

source: http://www.businessspectator.com.au / Australia / by Lorraine Elliott / October 14th, 2011