Canola is a real winner

A colourful part of the UK countryside is making its presence — and healthy properties — felt in Tasmania

It’s probably not about to bump olive oil off its perch as the darling of cooks and nutritionists, but good canola oil is muscling up to take on the juice of the olive.

Canola is much more at home in the soils of the UK (where it’s known as rapeseed) than are olive trees, and sales of posh rapeseed oil are booming there. In 2015, rapeseed oil sales grew by 24 per cent while olive oil sales dropped by 8 per cent.

Not only do paddocks (sorry, fields) carpeted in bright yellow spring flowers produce the seeds for the oil, but Japanese tourists are paying good money to walk through them.

Cold-pressed canola oil is a very different product to cheaper oils extracted with heat and chemicals.

In the UK, Hillfarm in Suffolk was the first and is now one of the biggest, producers of cold-pressed canola. Here in Tasmania, another Hill Farm is the first to produce cold-pressed canola, and also the biggest — because no one else is doing it.

Hill Farm Preserves at Sisters Creek produces the oil, although it must be said, it is actually grown at Redbanks, the farm next door.

Hill Farm canola oil is a state winner in the delicious Produce Awards. Owner Karin Luttmer is very pleased to have the recognition. Producers cannot put themselves forward for the awards but must be nominated by a chef or restaurateur.

Christian Ryan, co-owner and co-chef at Aloft on the Hobart waterfront, nominated the Hill Farm canola. He says it is a favourite in the Aloft kitchen.

“It’s a beautiful clean oil that has a delicate flavour; we use it as a replacement for olive oil in many recipes as it is a lot less overpowering with subtle flavours.”

He also likes its beautiful colour. The flavour is described as buttery and nutty, and Karin says it has a rich thick viscosity.

It keeps a lot longer than olive oil. Hill Farm puts a three-year best-before date on the oil, but Karin has had a four-year-old oil analysed and it had lost none of its good qualities.

Karin had worked at Hill Farm for seven years before she bought it from Carolyn Nichols last year. In 2006, Carolyn bought the business from Mary Walker (who started it as a Salamanca Market stall in 1986), and moved it from the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to the North West.

Now Carolyn’s son, Michael, manages Redbanks farm, where he grows the mustard seed for the biggest chunk of the business’s 50 or so lines. They send regular mustard orders to Japan and South Korea. Karin grew up in Israel, where she met her English husband Fergus, on a kibbutz.

Familiar with the growing popularity of rapeseed oil in Britain, Karin asked Michael if he could grow it. Yes, he could, he also bought a press and the first pressing was in 2013.

The canola oil has been quite slow to take off, says Karin, perhaps because of the pre-eminence of olive oil, but also because people do not appreciate that there is also a top-of-the range version of common canola.

Canola contains twice as much healthy omega-3 and omega-6 as olive oil, and half the saturated fat. Unlike canola oil from Canada and the US, the Redbanks canola is not genetically modified and no chemicals or solvents are used to extract it from the seeds.

Like extra-virgin olive oil, simple mechanical pressure, without heat, is used to extract the oil.

Hill Farm also produces canola oil infused with other flavours. The cumin oil is great in Middle Eastern dishes and has a particular affinity with beetroot. Ginger does well in Asian dishes and lemon is excellent with fish and in salads, and they both are useful in baking, replacing butter.

Hill Farm canola oil is sold at Hill Street, Alps & Amici, Deloraine Deli and many IGA shops.

I will look at some of the other Tasmanian winners in the delicious Produce Awards — Pyengana Dairy Company, Cygnet Mushroom Farm, Kindred Organics, Meru Miso, Tasman Sea Salt, Wellington Apiary, Weston Farm, Flinders Island Meat, Springfield Deer Farm, Blackman Bay Oysters, Mark Eather and Woodbridge Smokehouse — before the national winners are announced on August 7.

“It’s a beautiful clean oil that has a delicate flavour” CHRISTIAN RYAN