Media coverage - The Mercury: Testing times for a cause

Mission Australia recently hosted a five-course degustation dinner to raise funds for MA's Chigwell House in Tasmania. At the dinner, guests were asked to guess the key ingredients in each dish as well as the type and origin of each wine.

The below article on MA's fundraising event appeared in The Mercury yesterday.

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The dessert did us in.

Judith Sweet and I were doing some forensic dining at the Ultimate Taste Test, the dinner cooked by Paul Foreman to raise funds for Mission Australia.

Each of the five courses came with a list of questions.

Was the fish blue-eye, swordfish, spanish mackerel or stripey trumpeter? Was the special ingredient in the foam scallop, anchovy, urchin roe or mussel? We were right with the blue-eye and urchin roe, and correctly identified samphire as the green vegetation.

Samphire, also known as sea asparagus and sea fennel, grows in many coastal areas.

It has a salty taste and a firm, fleshy texture.

Ours, from Bruny Island, was collected by oyster farmer Hedley Browning.

Not the usual beady-looking succulent, it was more like a mini fern.

Paul liked its "nicely toned down" taste.

As the partner of a blueberry and strawberry grower, I'm ashamed to admit I did not pick strawberries in a berry consomme, along with blueberries and raspberries.

But, as Paul said: "You put ingredients together and it changes the flavour of them. Then you put the herbs in and it really makes it tough."

He had added basil, sage, rosemary and thyme.

Fundraising by way of an elaborate dinner is in marked contrast to the circumstances of the people the money will help.

Mission Australia's Chigwell House, in northern Hobart, is in an area with the highest proportion of single-parent families in the state.

It is the home base for a number of the 22 services the mission runs.

These include Parents Staying Connected, which teaches parenting skills, and Youth Beat, which sends a couple of youth workers with a van of information out to places where kids gather.

We were eating at Cooleys Hotel in Moonah, better known for chicken parmi than fine dining.

But Paul, who is food manager of the seven hotels in the Kalis Group, said regulars, too, enjoyed being taken out of the ordinary now and again to meet – tonka beans.

These South American beans, a favourite of Paul's, cost $500/kg and can be poisonous in great quantities.

They can be milled or grated into custards, foam, parsnip puree or, in this case, parfait.

They have a compendium flavour – vanilla, cardamom, clove, cumin and cinnamon are all in there.

So when we were asked what was in the parfait, we got it wrong.

We missed out on winning by two points.

Story published in The Mercury on Thursday 16 June.