GourMay’s Festival Day attracted increased number of those seeking a deeper interest in good, healthy food. ERLE LEVEY was there and spoke to yuzu grower Dave Moffat about his second year as a producer of this fascinating fruit.
“Yuzu wants to be difficult – from before it’s born to when it’s an old tree, it doesn’t want to play the game. It doesn’t like being grafted. You can do it, and we managed it in the end.”
If you were to pick the hardest, toughest, most spiky citrus fruit to grow … it would be yuzu.
Yet Imbil’s Dave Moffatt is passionate about sharing the amazing flavour of this unique citrus fruit.
He is encouraged by the second year of fruit from his planting of yuzu trees at his property.
The mysterious citrus fruit, that is right at home in Japan and the cooler climate of Australia’s southern states, is showing positive signs of adapting to the Mary Valley’s sub-tropics.
While yuzu is much like a lemon in many ways, it then confuses everyone by the differences.
Finicky, is one way of describing the growing of yuzu. High maintenance is another.
Then there is the difficulty in harvesting the fruit due to the large spikes on the tree.
Yet through it all there is this unusual flavour. One that is being sought by restauranteurs and by distillers.
Dave’s passion for yuzu was on show at GourMay’s Festival Day in Imbil when he was able to share the delights, but also the challenges of growing them.
The most cold-resistant fruits of all citrus, yuzu has a golden yellow, bumpy skin, large seeds and pulpy flesh.
It tastes like a cross between an orange a grapefruit and a lemon, and is not often eaten alone.
It finds many uses in Japanese cuisine, especially for its fragrant peel which is added at the last minute to soup, salad and slow-cooked dishes.
The juice or the peel of a yuzu is used as a steam vapour to protect against colds and flu.
Dave’s Mary Valley orchard now has about 300 trees, grown bio-dynamically and using approved organic sprays wherever possible.
“I tried to get started earlier but it was so difficult to get trees,’’ he said.
“I had to graft my own trees.
“We had someone with stock wood and got buds from Oz Citrus.
“We had 200 buds but ended up with 19 trees.
“Yuzu wants to be difficult – from before it’s born to when it’s an old tree, it doesn’t want to play the game.
“It doesn’t like being grafted. You can do it, and we managed it in the end.
“That’s what it’s like getting started in horticulture.
“The first harvest has been 180kg… it was enough to show that, yes, they do grow in Queensland.
“Up here we are on a latitude of 24 degrees but in Japan it’s a latitude of 33 degrees.
“We are much closer to the equator than they are.That’s been a bit of a trick to see if that would be okay.
“We had a problem with a fruit-piercing moth which comes from year to year.
“It’s all learning.
“Yuzu is a wonderful thing to grow.
“You grow up with the crop. No one can tell you when you try a new thing in a new area.’’ Dave harvested the crop in April and it is accounted for already with a providor of fresh fruit and a distiller.
“With yuzu, because of it being a very spiky tree, you get a tremendous amount of seconds.
“I have a distillery from the Gold Coast as well as Sunshine and Sons in Nambour that are interested.
“It’s the second year of them having a try of it.
“I gave them a cardboard tray in their first year which they were happy with.’’
Often in business, the first to engage with you will become long-term clients.
They are early adopters and will probably grow with the crop.
“They certainly are innovative,’’ Dave said Sunshine and Sons, “and I hope to build a nice relationship for a long time to come.
“You learn so many things. The moment that the flower petals fall off, you must stop the fungus.
“That’s not such a problem with a big grower but because of our extra humidity it’s another lesson learned.
“I hope to have better quality fruit and less marking from here on.’’
As it turned out the day at Imbil, I was able to introduce Dave to soil specialist Scott Robinson so they talked about composting and trace elements.
“I’ve got one tree that, while the other have decided to go to sleep, it has burst out in flowers,’’ Dave said. “I will see how that goes.
“You can see the trunks of the trees thickening up and that should see a four to five-fold increase in the crop over the next three years.
“I’m expecting that to increase next year and the quality of the fruit.
“I would like to get more restaurants on side.
“One nice thing about it is we can have fruit here well before anywhere else in Australia.
“There is a grower in Victoria and the thing is when I’m finishing the harvest he’s just starting.
“We’ve had interest from a Japanese restaurant in Noosa.
“There’s lots of development to be done as the product gets known. Will be able to reach out to more restaurants – not just Japanese but seafood as well.
“There’s a good product called yuzu kocho … which is a paste of yuzu and chilli. You just put a bit of that on fish and think: ‘Wow, what is that?’
“It means peppery yuzu in Japanese.’’
Dave also brought along samples of yuzu mayonnaise yuzu marmalade and yuzu curd.
It just goes to show you cannot judge a fruit by the roughness of skin texture … and the sharpness of the spikes protecting it on the tree.
