Pepper pricing

One subject that often crops up when people are filling in the survey is that of Australian food products being very expensive and out of the reach of many people who have to manage on fixed incomes.

I understand this concern. I am no stranger to the idea of living on a fixed income.

I realised when searching the internet for Australian produced pepper – I’m never going to find it in the supermarkets – I had found a product priced to support their argument.

The price of imported black peppercorns on the supermarket shelves in the local foursome range , depending on the amount purchased and whether it is on special,from forty to maybe fifty cents per ten grams.

Compare this with the online price of Australian grown peppercorns. At this site, which I am using for the purpose of the exercise, 150g whole black aussie pepper plus the delivery cost, totals $20.50. Do the sums. This particular Australian grown item is only going to appeal to those people with stacks of disposable income.

I am pleased with my decision which allows a very generous lead time for this project. There is no way I am going to be paying that price for an Australian product. At this moment in time, 2014 looks very much like being black pepper free for ten days each month.

Not a prospect I am looking forward to, quite frankly.

The pepper chase

Sourcing Australian grown pepper is still simmering away on the back burner of my mind.  I have looked on line but as the words I use in the search engine define the result I get on the screen and it might be that I am not using exactly the right words to find the right results.  

What I did find today on the display shelves of the local library, was a wonderful book, Pepper by Christine McFadden.   

In this book there are chapters on the history of pepper, the pepper trade, another on the varieties of pepper and their origins and there are eleven chapters of recipes where pepper is always one of the ingredients.  The usual salads, soup, fish, poultry, meat and vegetable recipes are there together with the not-so-usual recipes which include pepper as an ingredient in drinks, desserts, cakes and biscuits. 

As intriguing as all the above might sound, I was on the lookout for any hint of the availability of Australian black pepper.  Looking in the index under A for Australia netted a zero result.  And then on pages 58 & 59 under the heading the great pepper family (there are 11 species listed here) I finally found an Australian related pepper.  Tasmannnia lanceolata is the common name for mountain pepper or Tasmanian pepper.   The description box informs me the leaves and berries can be used fresh or dried; the leaves have a lemony taste but care is needed as the flavour, although sweet at first, intensifies and becomes pungent and numbing.

 I will look for Tasmanian pepper berries at a later date, but it is not what I am looking for right at this moment. I want to find  Australian grown black peppercorns.   

At the very back of the book I find two possible sources here in Australia - Herbie's Spices and Vic Cherikoff Food Services. I put aside this brilliant book, full of pepper facts and figures, fantastic photographs and appealing recipes and turn to search the Internet. In a brief search I find one online source for Australian grown peppercorns and as might be expected cost is a significant factor here.  

Reluctantly I return Australian produced peppercorns to the back burner.

Refining salt

I have returned to the supermarkets take another look at ingredients listed on salt product labels.
You may think this a rather strange thing to do and you may be asking the question “Isn’t it just salt? What else can there be?”

I’m here to tell you there are other ingredients in with some of the salt products. I’m sure you will know about iodine and it is stated quite clearly on the label if the salt is iodised.

However there are anti-caking agents; the infamous numbers who make up part of our diet whether we are aware of it or not. The numbers here are 535/536, and 554. These will be found in the ‘pouring’ salts; the table variety and the cooking variety.

According to the information I found, when searching on the internet, 535 and 536 are sodium and potassium ferrocyanides respectively and are used as an anti-caking agent. Cyanides are found in some seeds and fruit stones and now you can have it in your salt. How good is that? The additive 554 sounds almost likeable – it is produced from a natural mineral making it almost acceptable. As I have lived a relatively salt-free life for some 30 years now none of this bothers me too much.

These additives are introduced to make our lives easier. Who wants lumpy cooking salt or a salt shaker that is clogged up every time you want to use it? We are very busy people these days; we want salt which pours instantly. Long gone are the days of solving the clogged shaker problem by putting a few grains of rice in the salt shaker.

Of course if you use the sea salt or rock salt varieties, without added iodine, there are no additives and the grinder in which most of this salt is packaged is free of any pouring problems.

And for all you people who have read to this point here is a link which will tell you a whole lot more about the history and use of salt in Australia.

I’m taking the easy road here and will be using Australian sea salt without any additives of any kind – my choice is McKenzie’s Australian natural sea salt. This way I don't have to concern myself about the country of origin for the additives - taking the additives out of the equation reduces the work load.

I’m off to the supermarket to get another addition to my Ausfood cupboard.

The Condiments - Part One: Salt

Salt and pepper.  In everything.

Today I'm looking at one of the condiments.

Salt; found in mostly every kitchen cupboard and on the table at meal times. According to Wikipedia, salt has not always been used just as a condiment;  there are biblical references, it has played a part in creating and destroying empires, salt was taxed by the French over many centuries and in American history it was a major factor in the outcome of wars.

Closer to home, here in Victoria, the history of salt production began in 1888 when Richard Cheetham - a manufacturing chemist from the UK - began construction on a saltfield near Geelong; six years later the first salt was produced. The Cheetham Salt Co Pty Ltd was set up in 1903 and the company expansion included new works at Laverton and in South Australia. Ongoing business expansion and joint ventures, both here and in New Zealand continued until the latter half of 2012 when this article in Deal Journal Australia covered the sale of the Cheetham salt business to Hong Kong company CK Life Science International. This purchase was  driven by the increasing demand in Asian markets for soy sauce, of which salt is one of the major ingredients.

And so to the local supermarkets and a close look at salt available for home use. If you think salt is just salt, you will have to think again. Here is are some of the choices you will find:

                                       Table salt 
                                       Cooking salt
                                       Iodised table salt
                                       Iodised cooking salt
                                       Sea salt flakes
                                       Iodised sea salt flakes
                                       Iodised sea salt
                                       Natural rock salt.

Is your head spinning yet?

In my quartet of local of supermarkets I found five different suppliers; an Australian company which has both local and imported salt, the supermarkets with their own house brands and a salt which is packed in South Africa from local and  imported ingredients.The latter is the cheapest in its line.

And then there is SAXA. In the mid 1960s Salpak, a joint venture between Cerebos and Cheetham Salt saw the beginning of SAXA and Cerebos salt manufacturing in Australia. Many of the different types of salt listed above are on the shelf under the SAXA brand. Each SAXA package or container was clearly marked with the logo "from the seas of Australia" which makes it eligible for the Ausfood list.

My choice of salt for the Ausfood cupboard is Kooka, another Australian salt from the seas of Australia. As well, there are other more specialised types of Australian salt but here I am dealing with the common or sea shore variety found on almost all supermarket shelves and available to everyone.

 Now the salt shaker/grinder/cellar has been filled, we will move on the other half of the condiment pair, the pepper shaker/grinder/pot.

The Condiments - Part Two: Pepper

 Part two of the condiment story is short and to the point.

Basic black pepper comes to my local supermarket shelves courtesy a handful of companies and is available in ground, cracked, packaged peppercorns and peppercorns in their very own grinder.

All of them are imported.

It troubles me to think I might have to forgo pepper if I am to take up the Ausfood Challenge.  I will give this matter some serious thought and maybe run a few words through a search engine and see if I come up with a home-grown product.

I am not very hopeful about my prospects of finding Australian pepper of the black peppercorn variety.

Not happy, Jan.