All posts by Michael Burge

Journalist, author, artist
Artists

Jodie Van Der Velden – chocolatière extraordinaire

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HIVE OF ACTIVITY Josophan's Fine Chocolates.
HIVE OF ACTIVITY Josophan’s Fine Chocolates.

A Writer’s sweet encounter with real chocolate.

ONE of the first pieces of lifestyle media I ever wrote was an interview with Leura’s beloved chocolatière Jodie Van Der Velden, at that time in the process of shifting her Josophan’s Fine Chocolates factory onto the Mall.

I was delighted that Jodie was willing to share the tribulations behind one of her early triumphs.

This article was published in the April-May 2010 edition of Blue Mountains Life magazine.

Jodie and her chocolate factory

Jodie Van Der Velden on sweet secrets she learned in Chicago.

JODIE Van Der Velden won her ticket to Chicago by taking a cake in an esky to the Hunter Valley. Not just any cake, but an elaborate six-layered gateau which she planned to “pop in the freezer” on arrival.

This was the day of the Australian Culinary Federation’s Callebaut Chocolate Dessert competition, and Jodie, husband David and daughters Sophie and Hannah arrived at 4.30am.

But the freezer door where they were staying wouldn’t shut with the gateau inside it. Jodie had to fill and seal the sizable gap with tape and hope it would chill. With only a few hours before Jodie was due in front of the judges, there was much to achieve for her ‘palet d’or et noisette’ without the resources of most of her competitors.

The list of ‘extras’ on this exquisite dessert included hazelnuts with chocolate soil and passionfruit cream. “I had to make the ice cream over electricity not gas, and by  9am I’d burnt it, and knew I wouldn’t be getting any sleep before the competition,” Jodie adds, wincing.

“Chocolate is complex, it has top, middle and end ‘notes’, just like wine.”

In the marquee where competitors plated their desserts, Jodie was found a small space next to a microwave. It was frustrating, she confesses: “Not just the lack of space compared to come others, but while I was trying to place 23-carat gold leaf on delicate lace chocolate spheres, the microwave door was being slammed by other competitors”.

“David and the girls were parking the car and had a bowl full of leftover gateau and garnishes with them. We hadn’t had breakfast in all the rush, so out came the spoons. By the time they’d found me plating-up my gateau, they quietly approached me and whispered: “It really is good Mum”.

“It confirmed for me just how good it was… they’re my toughest critics, I trust their judgement!”

Jodie walked-off with two gold medals and the overall first prize – an all-expenses-paid trip overseas for further chocolate training. From a field of twenty-three, including several culinary luminaries, this was a “very sweet victory” Jodie concedes.

She then had to decide which of the worldwide Callebaut Chocolate Academies she would visit.

“I’ve visited France and Belgium every year for the last three years,” she says when asked why she picked the United States over Europe, “but I’d never been to Chicago… it is a brand new academy, with state-of-the-art equipment, and, as it turns out, my trainers were French anyway!”

Jodie took two classes, one in chocolate sculpture and another in plated desserts.

Apart from new territory in the world of chocolate, what Jodie found in the Chicago food culture really inspired her. “There’s a real community feel to cuisine there,” she enthuses, “in some of the new popular restaurants you share larger tables, or sit together at bars, it’s more of a communal dining experience. There’s a very different atmosphere around food. I fell in love with Chicago.”

Jodie was also exposed to Molecular Gastronomy, where science meets cooking. For someone who tackled the best in Australia and came out on top, I imagine Jodie’s not afraid of a few scientific utensils.

SMOOTH SCIENCE Jodie is effusive about the work that goes into creating flavour.
SMOOTH SCIENCE Jodie is effusive about the work that goes into creating flavour.

“It’s all very precise,” she reveals of learning how to make caramel pearls. “They are made by adding one per cent alginate to a liquid, then dropping tiny pearls of it into a water bath that has two per cent calcium added to it. The reaction is such that when the droplets go into water, they develop a skin around the liquid sphere. They’re drained, then eaten. The outside skin bursts in your mouth and the liquid drizzles out. Yum!”

Jodie cites chef Ferran Adrià i Acosta of el Bulli restaurant in Barcelona, creator of Apple Caviar, as her inspiration in this pursuit of a sensual food experience.

“Whilst I wouldn’t say molecular gastronomy principles are used in my everyday chocolate work, the concepts surrounding it are very much part of the inspiration that moves me forward, experimenting with flavours, textures and presentation,” Jodie says.

Visitors to Leura are familiar with what Jodie and her husband David have achieved with Café Josophan’s in only five years. Sensing there was a gap in the market for a fine chocolate boutique on the Mall, Jodie embarked on an ambitious plan to make chocolates here in the mountains. Ambitious because Josophan’s is about the indulgent experience of chocolate over just taking something home in a box.

Jodie doesn’t believe that experience has to be the way it’s always been for Australian chocolate appreciators. “Chocolate is complex, it has top, middle and end ‘notes’, just like wine,” Jodie explains. “When this is considered, combinations of flavours can really bring out the best in fine chocolates or desserts.”

Partly because she insists on using fresh ingredients (meaning a limited shelf life for her chocolates), Jodie has created in Josophan’s a true chocolaterie.

“In countries like France and Belgium, high quality chocolate is part of everyday life. There’s a chocolaterie on every corner. Here in Australia we’re only just developing that tradition. We’ve gotten used to what I’d call ‘chocolate-flavoured confectionary’, which has a long shelf life and has been created in a laboratory to taste like chocolate and other flavours.

“Josophan’s chocolate is about using fresh ingredients, in our mint chocolates, for examples, we infuse fresh cream with real fresh mint leaves and add fresh butter.

“We’ve developed a signature style,” Jodie says when I ask about the shape and colour of her chocolates. “Many recognise our chili-flavoured chocolates, for example, with the bright swirls. There’s a lot of brightly-coloured cocoa butter being used out there now, but I’m a bit of a purist, we only use a little. I like my chocolates to look classic.”

Jodie is very keen to share her knowledge and hosts chocolate appreciation classes in the new Leura chocolate boutique. She laughs when I ask if she gets self-confessed chocaholics coming along.

CHOCOLATE WITH CLASS Chocolate appreciation at Josophan's.
CHOCOLATE WITH CLASS Chocolate appreciation at Josophan’s.

“Many people say ‘I don’t need a class to appreciate chocolate!’, but we’ve created a way for participants to learn how to discern quality in chocolate.

“We follow the process from bean to bar, exploring what happens during growing, harvesting and manufacturing that makes the end result so different amongst chocolates, and of course we also get a lot of chocolate tasting in!”

Jodie has many plans for Josophan’s, not least the intention to expand the chocolate factory from Blackheath to Leura. She also plans to introduce Josophan’s hot chocolate to the wholesale market, “something we haven’t been able to do with our fine chocolates,” Jodie elaborates, “due to their fragile composition and the use of no preservatives. We’ve added a real couverture chocolate flake (high cocoa butter content) to our hot chocolate mix, creating a luxurious blend allowing customers to make an indulgent hot chocolate at home.”

There’s a chocolate factory on its way to Leura. Rejoice!

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.

 

Politics

Public opinion pulling the trigger in Bali

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CHEERS MATE Schapelle Corby and her brother the day of her release on parole in February 2014.
CHEERS MATE Schapelle Corby and her brother the day of her release on parole in February 2014.

A Writer on Aussies in Asia.

SINCE convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby’s parole from Bali’s Kerobokan Prison in Indonesia a year ago, speculation about the legal ramifications of her public behaviour has resulted in a long silence from the Corby family.

In contrast, a visibly desperate public relations campaign, underpinned by political and diplomatic representation, is hoping to sell a story of the reformation of the Bali Nine’s Australian ‘ringleaders’ Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, on death row in Corby’s former place of incarceration for their role in drug trafficking.

The collective public opinion of two sovereign nations are in play, and the outcomes of this legal and culture war are set to be devastating.

On the day of her release, the beers Corby and her brother thrust at the camera were seen as a symbol of Western excess. Not so in Corby’s native Queensland, where a beer in the hand is considered a human right in many quarters.

GANJA QUEEN Schapelle Corby.
‘GANJA QUEEN’ Schapelle Corby.

Victim. Villain. Money-hungry. Misunderstood. Everyone has a slant on the woman the Indonesian media dubbed ‘The Ganja Queen’. But how do Australians really see Bali, the tropical Indonesian island often dubbed ‘Perth’s Northernmost Suburb’?

Like Aussie jokes about the ‘Bangkok Hilton’, this one is only half funny. A large number of Australians would probably let themselves off the hook for thinking Bali is an unofficial Australian state.

It was there the terrorism of the Bali Bombings cut an unwelcome gash through the Australian psyche.

“Public opinion – Indonesia’s, primarily – is the strongest judge.”

We have deep connections to the Asian nations to our north. Some have become symbols of national pride or shame which can be referenced using only one word: Kokoda, Balibo, Changi.

Over time, a sense of ownership and entitlement has crept into our dealings with these sovereign nations, particularly Indonesia.

Nothing seems off-limits in this neighbourly relationship, from live export of Australian livestock to asylum seekers.

But when convicted drug smugglers like Corby, the Bali Nine, and Barlow and Chambers before them get caught up in Asian justice systems, many Australians take the tide of opposing public opinion in Asia personally.

These cases highlight that while foreigners are welcome to party in places like Kuta, and relax in regions such as Ubud, they are also expected to conduct themselves according to the laws and sentiments common within the world’s largest Muslim population.

Corby escaped life imprisonment and the death penalty, but her release into the Bali community is an ongoing test for her, and all Australians.

Chan and Sukumaran have lived with death penalties since 2006, and, if accounts are to be taken at face value, they have made a valiant go of their death row lifestyle, insofar as it’s possible to show their advocates and the authorities that they have been reformed while on the inside.

And it’s that difficult-to-impart message which may or may not save them from the firing squad, or see Corby return to Australia after a further two years’ parole.

Public opinion – Indonesia’s, primarily – is the strongest judge, prison guard and executioner for all of them.

The outcomes of both cases will challenge notions that Australians have about Indonesians, threatening the idea of a tourist-friendly population intent on pleasing us with the reality of a people who have opinions, thought and beliefs of their own, in addition to a thriving tourism industry.

In a sense, Corby is now having the Bali holiday which was so suddenly curbed in 2004, although it’s undoubtedly less of a beer-soaked boogie-board ride and more a mindful retreat from Australian public social mores.

If Indonesia permits her to come home, she might teach Aussies a thing or two about the real Bali.

Whether they survive or not, Chan and Sukumaran will do the same.

But none of them will ever escape public opinion.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.

Performers

Melba’s garden, at last

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Caption caption.
DAFFODIL DAME Nellie Melba (1861-1931).

A Writer hunts for daffodils at a diva’s estate.

I’M following my nose to Nellie Melba’s garden, a journey I have waited twenty-five years to take, now that Coombe, the Melba Estate – once known simply as Coombe Cottage – is open to the public.

Much has been made of what stood behind the tantalisingly thick, high cypress hedge that has enwrapped the property ever since it was purchased by Melba in 1909 and transformed from a dairy farm into a spreading garden by Victoria’s great garden designer William Guilfoyle.

The need for a significant boundary has become obvious over time, since it now shields the house and garden from two highways that meet at one corner of the sizeable estate, situated outside the township of Lilydale to Melbourne’s north-east.

VALLEY VIEW The magnificent outlook from Melba's garden.
VALLEY VIEW The magnificent outlook from Melba’s garden.

From the car park, visitors enter Melba’s world through this green barrier, and throughout the twice-daily garden tours, it’s impossible to escape the concept of seclusion created by the woman who was, in her time, the world’s most famous.

For her entire life, Melba was inspired to deep patriotism by the distant blue hills glimpsed from the Coldstream region at the city’s edge, and despite its height the hedge offsets a panorama which much rank amongst the finest rural views from an Australian garden.

Although I have come in search of something I know I will not see that day.

By late summer, most signs of daffodils have withered and dried into something akin to straw, but in late 1911 or early 1912, 20,000 hybridised ‘G.S. Titheradge’ daffodil bulbs were given to Melba for her burgeoning new garden by a NSW daffodil farmer with a love of opera.

At a private estate – Coorah – some 900 kilometres to the north in the Blue Mountains town of Wentworth Falls, Melba gave an impromptu private performance and was offered this unconventional floral gift in return.

As the local legend goes, what caught the soprano’s eye were the thousands of golden Narcissus blooms growing across the hillside to the north of the house belonging to Robert and Marie Pitt, among the guarantors of Melba’s grand opera tour of Sydney and Melbourne that spring and summer.

It’s not just the Coombe Estate wine tasting I’ve just enjoyed that’s left me feeling a little heady – I have been tracing the veracity of that legend ever since I was told it in 1989, and my dream of standing in the place where Pitt’s bulbs may once have bloomed has finally manifested.

In 1993 I told the story to Melba’s grand-daughter Pamela, Lady Vestey, Coombe Cottage’s resident from the 1970s until her death in 2011. Her reply was polite but assertive – as far as she knew, there were no such daffodils in her garden, and she suggested the whole thing was probably nothing more than a myth.

She was right – it sounded far-fetched, but by the time the Royal Horticultural Society library in London yielded a primary source for the despatch of 20,000 bulbs from Wentworth Falls to Lilydale prior to 1914, this burgeoning journalist didn’t feel up to contradicting her.

But it is Lady Vestey I am thinking of as I pass through the garden’s heavy iron gates, with their ornate ‘M’ initial, when I realise how much has changed in the grounds of Coombe Cottage over its first century, and what a challenge ownership of such an iconic property must have been.

Guilfoyle’s major plantings are still intact, but some of the design elements that linked the house and garden – such as the wisteria-covered rooftop pergola – are long gone.

Tour guide Di Logg outlines what has been gleaned in the process of opening the estate, the establishment of a restaurant and a winemaking operation, and explains that there are renovation plans in the pipeline.

“We are hoping one day to reinstate it,” she says of the rooftop garden, from which the views of the valley must have been even better than they are from ground level.

Despite the open manner in which the garden is now being shared with visitors, its secrets seem subsumed by the understandable focus on the preservation of the house and its contents as opposed to the paradise that lay around it.

Of Melba’s bedroom, positioned to take in the expansive mountain view, Di says: “Pamela left it as though her grannie, as she used to call her, had just walked out the door, her Hermès riding boots still in the wardrobe.”

SACRED OAK The spreading tree which has stood on the estate for a reported 180 years.
SACRED OAK The spreading tree which has stood on the estate for a reported 180 years.

But the garden was not left to its own devices. Di relates the story of one of the property’s icons – the 180-year-old oak which predated Melba’s purchase – which Lady Vestey apparently always said must stand even if it ends up knocking over the house.

Other structural garden elements – Victoria’s first swimming pool, iron gateways and ornamental focal points – are all still there and form the backbone of the generous garden tour.

The rest is in the process of being recovered from contemporary paintings (by the likes of Hans Heysen and Arthur Streeton) under the guidance of estate manager Dan Johnson and a combination of family and local memories, including a rose garden and the restored vegetable growing operation which complements the supply of fresh produce to the restaurant.

Hearing Di’s account of the clay soil around Coombe Cottage sets off my ‘daffodil radar’.

Robert Pitt transformed his scrubby hillside of sandy soils with manure and organic matter in the 1890s at Wentworth Falls. He also regularly ‘lifted’ his bulbs – the process of unearthing them after the flowers and leaves had died back and resting them in well-ventilated conditions until replanting in the autumn.

FLORAL FAVOURITE The daffodil has become one of the world's best loved cut flowers (Narcissus pseudonarcissus and Narcissus poeticus, gouache on vellum, in: Gottorfer Codex c.1659).
FLORAL FAVOURITE The daffodil has become one of the world’s best-loved cut flowers.

These farming techniques saw his Narcissus bulbs endure in abundance until long after his death in 1935, until they were eventually moved in the mid 1980s.

I ask gardener and writer Mary Moody about her knowledge of bulbs and clay.

“Bulbs – of all sorts – dislike clay soil because during the dormant period, if there are long rainy periods, the bulbs can easily rot,” she says.

“The reason for lifting bulbs is to thin them out when they self propagate. The bulbs overcrowd and flowering is reduced. This is unlikely to happen in clay soil because the bulbs will be struggling just to hold their own.

“That said, daffs are very tough and if there has been organic matter in the soil they will survive somehow.”

SSS
STATELY STATUARY Melba’s garden is punctuated by several iconic focal points.

Coombe Cottage garden tours end with a delicious afternoon or morning tea in the Melba Estate’s well patronised restaurant, and before I leave I promise to send Di a link to the story of Melba’s 20,000-bulb gift. She in turn commits to sending it on to Dan.

By the time I get home, Dan has recalled what a major part the Narcissus played at the funeral of Lady Vestey during peak daffodil season in September, 2011.

“We filled the small church and house here at Coombe with hundreds of bunches of daffodils, Lady Vestey’s favourite flower,” he said.

Like daffodils, this story is pushing its way to the surface in its own time.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.