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Poh’s Kitchen on the Road: Nov 16

Poh travels to FNQ where she bonds with the Yidinji people, cooking eels and sampling locally grown coconut and vanilla.

Tonight it’s the final leg of Poh Ling Yeow’s road trip, and she travels to Far North Queensland with her friend Elton along as a guide.

She bonds with the Yidinji people in Northern Queensland catching and cooking eels before sampling locally grown coconut and vanilla.

Elton’s father’s people are the Tableland Yidinji and on the banks of the beautiful Barron River on the Atherton Tableland they make Poh feel like part of the family. Poh is given a lesson in catching and cooking one of their favourites – the local eel. Poh is delighted to discover that many of Elton’s family not only share a Chinese heritage but love Asian flavours in their cooking and she is inspired to make a beautifully textured Asian style salad that features smoked eel, jellyfish and a tangy Chinese style dressing.

Next it’s down to the coast, to Four Mile Beach where ‘Coconut Rodney’ has made a business out of “denuting” the wild coconut palms. He sells the coconuts to some of Australia’s top chefs, who just can’t get enough of this fresh product. Rodney and specialist palm-climber, Lennie, demonstrate the skill involved in harvesting coconuts before giving Poh a quick but not entirely successful palm climbing lesson.

Rodney shows Poh coconut meat at different stages of maturity before introducing her to the highly regarded Palm Cove chef, Nick Holloway. Nick uses Rodney’s coconut products to make a delicately sumptuous and beautifully textured meringue dessert – Snow Eggs with Coconut and Pineapple with Lime Ice-cream and Macadamia Brittle! Which he describes as “a little ray of sunshine in a bowl”.

One of the amazing ingredients in Nick’s dish is the locally grown vanilla. Poh tracks down two growers, Mary and Russell Spanton, and gains a whole new appreciation for vanilla when she sees what a true labour of love growing it is – these people even use hot water bottles to pamper their produce if it gets too cool. Poh honours the vanilla with the delicious simplicity of a Crème Caramel.

8pm Wednesday November 16 ABC1

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