Oroshigane Graters now available

Samegawa sharkskin grater (left) and
copper Oroshigane Grater

We've just secured a small shipment of beautiful Oroshigane wasabi graters from Japan for sale in Australia.  


These graters are professional chef's graters and feature a much larger grating surface than our Samegawa sharkskin graters.  They are available in Large and Medium sizes.


They are hand-made by craftsmen in Japan using thick copper, then plated with nickel to give them a long life.  One side is covered with fine teeth whilst the other features coarse teeth.  Believe it or not each tooth is hand punched one by one by the maker - such skill and patience!

The oroshigane grates fresh wasabi quite a bit faster than a samegawa grater, and is also suitable for products such as ginger, garlic and daikon.


Being all metal they're probably dishwasher safe, but as they're such a piece of art there's no way ours is going anywhere near the dishwasher...


The oroshigane graters, samagawa sharkskin graters and budget-priced ceramic graters can all be bought direct from our website - (http://www.shimawasabi.com.au/Specialty%20Wasabi%20Graters.html)

Telstra Australian Business Awards - We're Nominated!

Much to our surprise we've been nominated for the 2012 Telstra Australian Business Awards!  Hopefully that means we're doing something right with our small business here in Tassie.


Last time we were nominated anonymously for an award, we took out the delicious Magazine's top award for products produced "From the Earth", so here's hoping the good luck continues.


The awards also feature a People's Choice award this year, so we'd love any wasabi fanatics and Shima Wasabi customers to vote for us.  Get clicking and help us spread the word about REAL wasabi.  


(Note to Anonymous Nominator - thanks for the nomination/s, now how about you let us know your identity ???)   :-)

The Science of Fresh Wasabi

The thing we are asked most about is why are very fine graters such as the famous Japanese sharkskin grater so important for preparing fresh wasabi paste?  The answer is more complex than you’d think and involves some pretty interesting science...

To begin with, the incredible wasabi flavour is not actually present within the wasabi stem (often wrongly called the root) when you harvest it.  The sinus-burning hot flavour is in fact a natural defence mechanism and is created by a chemical reaction when the plant cells are torn apart, such as when an insect chews the plant (or we grate it!). 

The main chemical involved is a group of compounds called Glucosinolates.  Glucosinolates are present within every cell of a wasabi plant, as they are in all members of the Brassica plant family such as mustard, broccoli, cauliflower and horseradish.

Holding all the goodies within the plant cell together is the cell wall, and it contains (among lots of other things) an enzyme called Myrosinase.  Ordinarily the glucosinolates and myrosinase never meet, however if the cells are damaged or torn apart the glucosinolates are released and come into contact with the myrosinase.  Provided there is sufficient moisture the myrosinase sets off a complex chemical reaction with the glucosinolates over the next few minutes.  

The end result is a group of sulphur-based volatile compounds called Isothiocyanates and it is these which provide us with that unmistakable hot wasabi flavour.

Wasabi’s isothiocyanates are a remarkable group of compounds and they offer a broad range of properties beyond just setting fire to our mouthes.  The first documented use of wasabi for medicinal purposes dates way back to the 10^th century in Japan and current research is looking at the ability of wasabi ITCs to help prevent several types of cancers, particularly within the digestive system.  ITCs also have a renowned anti-bacterial effect and some authors suggest this helped protect Japanese peasants over past centuries against bacteria associated with the consumption of raw fish of poor quality.

So what does all this mean for using fresh wasabi? Here’s the key points:

• To develop the unique wasabi flavour to its fullest, you must use a very fine grater to physically tear apart each and every wasabi cell to release the glucosinolates and myrosinase

• Mix the fresh paste in a circular motion to ensure the glucosinolates and myrosinase are thoroughly combined

•  Let the paste stand for 3 to 5 minutes so the chemical reaction has time to work

• Only prepare enough paste for immediate use as the flavours are quite volatile and will be lost after 15-20 mins

If you follow these simple steps you’ll be rewarded with a much fuller, sweeter and hotter wasabi experience!

Masaaki's Sushi

Lucy and Masaaki with a young wasabi plant
at the Shima Wasabi shadehouse

Nestled around an hour’s drive south of Hobart is the quiet town of Geeveston, probably best-known as the gateway to the Tahune Airwalk.  Perhaps not as well-known but equally worth the visit is a small business humbly named Masaaki’s Sushi.  Run by Japanese-born and trained Masaaki Koyama, this is truly sushi at its artistic finest and culinary best.

Masaaki has been using our fresh wasabi for some time in his sushi however it was only in the last few weeks we finally managed to meet.  On a trip north, Masaaki and his wife Lucy dropped in to say hello and what began as a quick chat became a couple of hours of engaging conversation with two of the nicest people we’ve met in the world of wasabi.   Masaaki was particularly interested in knowing how wasabi is grown and after seeing the joys and frustrations of this unusual crop he commented “I can now see why wasabi is so expensive!” 

Masaaki's newest devotees - Cameron and Jordyn Welsh

As luck would have it, we had already booked a weekend trip to Hobart a couple of weeks later so we took the opportunity to leave a little earlier and wound our way through the beautiful Huon Valley and on to Geeveston.   

Tucked away to the side of Church Street we found Masaaki's shop and were greeted by his trademark warm smile and a very busy shopfront, with customers ‘ooh-ing and aah-ing’ about the sushi on display.   

Shima Wasabi meets
Masaaki's grater

Masaaki then prepared an incredible banquet of sushi and sashimi (which disappeared way too quickly), but the real treat was to watch this artist in action as he prepared his beautiful food.  

Masaaki’s deft touch with his razor-sharp yanagiba knife sliced tuna and salmon (Tasmanian of course!) with machine-like precision then combined sushi rice, a range of fresh vegetables and vigorously grated fresh wasabi to prepare some of the most appealing food we’ve ever seen. 

It’s all too rare to find a culinary experience like that served up by Masaaki, where the visual appeal of the food matches its superb taste; yet is surpassed by the pure artistry of its preparation.  

Forget the Tahune Airwalk, make the drive just for the sushi!

(Masaaki is also a regular at Hobart’s Farm Gate Market every Sunday).   See Masaaki's facebook page for more information:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Masaakis-Sushi-Geeveston/133400560012836

Welcome 60,500 New Workers

Shima Wasabi recently welcomed our newest team of workers - all 60,500 of them!  


Like all tasty crops, insects really love fresh wasabi and if left unchecked we'd hardly have anything left to sell.  We've been long-term practitioners of Integrated Pest Management and have just introduced two new species of biological control to our climate-controlled shadehouse to help keep the bad bugs under control.

Pictured are some of 500 Cryptolaemus ladybirds which will happily feed on mealy bugs.  Mealy bugs are a common house plant pest which tend to sneak into our wasabi each summer.  


The real heroes however are 60,000 (yes, sixty thousand!) tiny wasps called Trichogramma pretiosum.  These guys are less than half a mm long and will go to work on our every-present voracious caterpillars which munch their way through precious wasabi day and night.  The wasps lay their eggs into caterpillar eggs and then devour the caterpillars inside-out before emerging to mate and lay new eggs into more caterpillar eggs.  Eventually their population will strike a balance with caterpillar numbers and keep the little blighters down to acceptable levels.  


The beauty of these willing workers is they'll happily work 24 hours a day, don't expect a smoko break and will greatly reduce our need for other pest control measures.  Mother nature at her best!

Shima Wasabi Wins at delicious. Magazine Awards

   

Shima Wasabi has won the From the Earth category of the prestigious ABC delicious. Magazine Produce Awards 2011!


Held at the Opera House with an audience of over 250 guests, including Australia's leading chefs and celebrities such as Maggie Beer, Matt Moran, Kylie Kwong and Neil Perry, MC Matt Preston hosted an entertaining evening to recognise the 'Best of the Best' specialty food products from around the nation.

Stephen and Karen Welsh celebrate the Award
with MC Matt Preston

This was the first awards we've ever entered and we were shocked to even make the final against such fantastic products as vanilla bean from the Daintree, Tasmania's own Tas-Saff saffron and pickled capers from WA.  


In announcing the win, Matt Preston commented the judges had been 'really fired up' by our wasabi and were amazed not only to be able to buy authentic wasabi in Australia but that the quality was so high as well.  Iconic chef and doyen of fusion cooking in Australia, Cheong Liew, wrote “Fresh wasabi tastes green, gutsy and sharp.  At last we have the real thing for our sashimi,” as part of the judging process.


Winners of the five major categories were:

• From the Earth - Shima Wasabi (Tas)
• From the Ocean - Kinkawooka Shellfish Co (SA)
• From the Dairy - Gundowring Finest Icecream (Vic) 
• From the Paddock - Mondo White Rocks Veal (WA)
• Artisan - Pacdon Park Haggis (NSW)

Grab a copy of the August edition of delicious for the full story and more.

Hey Wasabi Fanatics, check out the latest edition (July 2011) of MiNDFOOD Magazine (www.mindfood.com) featuring a four page story on Shima Wasabi!  


We were lucky enough to be visited by MiNDFOOD Chief Sub-Editor Laura Venuto recently as part of a group of journalists visiting Tassie for a week.  Laura fell in love with real wasabi so much she raced back and wrote a fantastic article on us. Thanks Laura!


MiNDFOOD have also posted a gallery of images at:
 http://www.mindfood.com/pc-from-the-source-wasabi-food-gallery.seo

New Sharkskin Graters Have Arrived

A new shipment of authentic Japanese SHARKSKIN GRATERS has just arrived!

These beautiful wooden graters are the ideal way to prepare perfect fresh wasabi paste and their authentic look will add another dimension to your Japanese-themed dinners.

Our first batch sold out in under a fortnight so we recommend getting in early before this batch disappears too.

The graters can be purchased using our secure PayPal shopping cart at  http://www.shimawasabi.com.au/Specialty%20Wasabi%20Graters.html

An excerpt from our Autumn 2011 newsletter...

A Flying Start to 2011…

With 2010 well and truly behind us, 2011 is shaping up to be a great year for wasabi!

We have been inundated with enquiries of late for people wanting to grow wasabi at home, not just from people in Australia but from the UK, Italy, Germany and the US. Such interest makes us realise that not only is wasabi increasing in its popularity worldwide but that we are incredibly lucky to have a domestic market where we can provide restaurants, providores, wholesalers, retailers and home-users with fresh wasabi that has come from our beautiful food-bowl in Tasmania.

We were able to continue spreading the word about how great fresh wasabi tastes when we hosted retailers and food media personalities from Sydney on our two farms in February. I always love watching the faces of those people new to ‘real’ wasabi as they tentatively take their first taste. The look of delight as they taste not only the heat but the sweetness of the wasabi always makes me smile.

We simply combined the freshly ground wasabi paste with beautiful fresh oysters from the East Coast of Tasmania and Petuna sashimi grade ocean trout all washed down with Arras sparkling wine from the Bay of Fires vineyard. Yum!

Crop Update – With this Weather, Flowers won’t be Far Away!

Being a cold-climate plant, wasabi really dislikes the warm Aussie summer. Even here in northern Tasmania, things get much warmer than our wasabi plants would like. However, we were one of the few that were lucky with the weather this season as it was a relatively mild summer with below-average temperatures and quite a few cloudy days.

Over the past couple of weeks, our crops have really kicked back into growth as the shorter days and cooler nights of autumn arrive. It’s amazing just how quickly wasabi responds to these conditions and we’re getting a lovely flush of fresh new leaves and one or two plants have even decided to flower before the inevitable winter chill sets in.

Autumn is also an ideal time to get new wasabi plants growing so we’re busily planting hundreds of new plants. Although, in typical wasabi style, things happen very slowly and they won’t be ready for harvest until late 2012 at the earliest.

Authentic Sharkskin Graters Now Available!

As we all know, there are two essential tips to getting the best possible experience from ‘real’ wasabi paste: it has to be made fresh and it must be grated to just the right texture. Typically the Japanese use a sharkskin grater (samegawa oroshi) as the texture of the sharkskin grates the wasabi to a smooth paste.

Since we started Shima Wasabi, we have been trying to source authentic sharkskin graters and have finally had success! Our first shipment has arrived!

We now have available large graters with a grating surface of 85 x 70mm. The overall size of the grater is 130 x 85mm. Their arrival means that we will no longer be making and stocking our handmade, Tasmanian hardwood abrasion boards. We still have a couple left though, so let us know if you would like to own one of the last graters ever made!

The Real Deal

Sometimes consumers ask us what’s the difference between our fresh wasabi and the well-known green stuff in the toothpaste-like tubes called ‘Wasabi’. 

The simple answer is – THERE’S A LOT OF DIFFERENCE!

Those popular tubes usually contain very little real wasabi at all, and instead contain mostly horseradish and an eclectic mix of additives such as corn oil, salt, starch, acidity regulators (whatever they are), artificial colours, artificial flavours and other exciting and healthy things.  Amazingly some of them actually contain no real wasabi at all (see ingredients list below) so it appears the consumer is being a little misled... 

It’s not hard to see why many chefs call these tube products ‘fake wasabi’ and choose not to serve them to their clientele.

By comparison, our wasabi is 100% pure wasabi (Wasabia japonica, to quote its botanical name).  You don’t get unwanted extras like artificial colours, artificial flavours or anything else – there’s not even a scrap of horseradish to be seen. 

In terms of flavour, whilst real wasabi versus fake wasabi are not quite “chalk and cheese”, they are quite different.  Real wasabi has an intense hotness which dissipates fairly quickly, coupled with a subtle and pleasing sweetness and a broadness on the palate.  By contrast the fake wasabi pastes are much harsher in their flavour and whilst still being quite hot, they tend to leave a bitter aftertaste.  Many consumers also note an oily and somewhat chalky feel in the mouth from these products compared to fresh, real wasabi.

If you are a seafood lover, perhaps it would be like comparing real crayfish with that wonderful invention found in supermarkets labelled 'seafood extender'.

And what of the price comparison?  Whilst high-quality fresh wasabi sells for over $100 per kg, those wonderful little tubes of 40-odd grams of fake wasabi can be picked up in most supermarkets for around $4 to $7.  Seems cheap, until you work out this equates to around $100 to $175 per kg – and you may not be getting any real wasabi in them at all!  

What's in Season?

Hi Wasabi Lovers.

We've had a few enquiries of late wondering when our wasabi will be 'back in season' ? 

The good news is our fresh wasabi stems, leaves and leaf stalks are available ALL YEAR ROUND!   

We have achieved this through growing our crop in a climate-controlled shadehouse, which provides the cool and shady conditions wasabi needs to grow 'slowly but surely' all through the year (well, apart from a few days in winter when it drops to below zero and only icicles will grow...)

Our other product range, including specialty graters and pure dried wasabi leaf and stem powders for food manufacturers, are also available every week of the year.

Our only truly 'seasonal' products are our very popular wasabi flowers and baby wasabi leaves. These are available over Winter and Spring only.

Summer 2010/2011 Newsletter

Every season, we send out a newsletter to let people know what has been happening at Shima Wasabi. Here are a few articles from the Summer 2010/2011 newsletter - if you would like to be put on our mailing list, please let us know!

How we are Using Wasabi this Summer! Melina: Over the last decade, Christmas in our family has been all about breakfast, inspired by a trip my Mother and I took to Brazil in 2003. This year, I am bringing a Japanese touch to the breakfast table with some fresh wasabi to go with the local Wessex Saddleback Ham (http://mountgnomonfarm.blogspot.com/) that Guy Robertson and Eliza Wood produce up behind Penguin. I think it will be a winning combination!

Stephen: Smoked salmon is a firm favourite in the Welsh household and Christmas is a great excuse to buy extra. Barely a sliver of it hasn’t been consumed without a dollop of fresh wasabi on top. For an interesting variation, place a few thin slices of crunchy wasabi leaf stalk with the paste, giving a great combination of flavour and texture. I also visited an oyster farm just outside Hobart recently and came home with a big bag of fresh oysters. We combined them with all sorts of toppings and my nine-year-old daughter fell in love with them topped with grilled camembert and just a hint of wasabi.

Old Cable Station Long Lunch On Sunday October 10th, Charlotte and her team put on a fabulous Long Lunch at the Old Cable Station in Stanley, Tasmania... I guess there would be no surprises in me saying that the best course was naturally the Shima Wasabi and apple sorbet – extremely refreshing! Mind you, it was difficult Old Cable Station Long Lunch.

Summer Orders Summer is now well and truly here and along with it are high temperatures which can affect fresh produce in transit. We would appreciate all customers giving 48 hours notice when placing orders so we can chill your wasabi thoroughly before dispatch. This should ensure it’s still crisp and fresh on arrival.

New Website After having the same website since our inception in 2007, we decided it was time we had a face-lift! Our new-look website is up and running and better designed to help you learn about all things wasabi! Please let us know if there is any information you would like added. We hope you enjoy the changes! www.shimawasabi.com.au