Added value
HAVING dealt somewhat unsuccessfully with family food waste last week, I have turned my attention to the ‘value-added’ concept. This is an idea much-touted by one of Fiji’s most favourite chefs, Lance Seeto.
It is also much used by the government to collect revenue through VAT, the value-added tax. It is the bit noted on the end of the ridiculously long print-out you receive from the shop cashier explains why stuff costs more than you thought it would. I think it is about nine per cent more, but it depends on what you are buying.
The chef’s idea of adding value is to do something a bit different from the basic food you are selling to make it tastier and more appealing to the palate. Something customers are likely to pay a little more for with a little more effort or innovation on the seller’s part. So there we were last weekend, zipping along the highway towards Nadi with the usual 27 tonnes of gear that must accompany any family with children.
This includes their own pillows (not that they sleep, they need to stay awake so they can keep asking if we are there yet) and several backpacks full of tiny toys. These toys are like water and seek their own level, gradually sifting down seatbacks, onto the vehicle floor and under the driver’s seat.
Miniature plastic cakes in hats and frilly dresses or superheroes made of tiny plastic blocks are hard on the feet and even harder on the backside.
Not to mention the terminal fuss they cause when someone decides they not only cannot leave the vehicle without the yellow tractor transformer or the set of terribly tiny farm animals; in fact, it may not be possible to actually live without them.
A lot of my time between Suva and Nadi is spent scrabbling about the vehicle floor looking for these things amongst discarded bits of breakfast and toys which are invariably the wrong ones.
So it was with some relief we made our customary pit stop at a coffee and souvenirs shop to check out the bathroom and get a caffeine hit. The village community here has thriving roadside stalls selling cooked corn, hot sila.
Fiji corn is rather like Fiji wild chicken, jungli murgi, both tough on the teeth to suit the local taste, although not necessarily mine.
It appears the chef’s message about spicing up the ears of corn with various sauces and flavourings is catching on. Some of the ears of corn are also roasted, rather than plain boiled.
We tested out the new products and enthused, then hit the road again.
I had made it plain I regard a trip to Nadi as an opportunity to buy vegetables for the coming week, especially those that are more expensive and less available in Suva and are probably more fresh from the roadside stalls.
I might have saved my breath. The driver had learnt from her father how to negotiate the highway in record time, mostly by ignoring the wishes and increasing whining from the back seat.
We shot past stands of duruka, mounds of pumpkin, bundles of long bean and heaps of bora bean, all of which I longed to possess.
“You should tell me sooner, I’m going too fast to stop now,” the driver would say, accelerating past an entire stall devoted to deliciously red watermelon.
In fact, she was going too fast for me to see anything from the back seat, apart from an occasional green blur as we passed mounds of bhaji or a brown streak of tavioka heaps.
I’ve missed a lot of lovely scenery that way too. People in the front would be admiring the misty mountains or glowing sunset on the ocean horizon while I would be saying “what? where?” until they said “too late, we’ve passed it now”.
But somewhere in Nabou, just before the green project building, we screeched to a halt as the smell of roasting corn wafted across the highway. The ears were small and soft, gently charred and rubbed with a secret mix in which I smelt garlic and a touch of chilli, served on a corn leaf.
It was all done while we waited, briefly. So good. The boiled ears were selling at the standard rate of $1, the added value ears were $2. They were the best value we had for the whole weekend. Along with the roti parcels from the little shop on the exit route from Nasoso.
For added value, don’t miss the mango junction at the Momi turnoff. Not only all sorts of mangoes but sliced and salted, chilli powdered or sprinkled with Chinese spices. We sat with puckered mouths all the rest of the way to Nadi.
My thrifty soul was somewhat affronted by the price of food in the hotel restaurants and cafés to which we took our visiting friends during the weekend.
Of course, they are dealing with a serious tax situation in the tourism industry, not only VAT but also a tourist tax and an eco-tax probably to offset the tax discounts to encourage investment in the industry.
But it seems to our overseas friends Fiji is pricing itself out of a market competing with places such as Indonesia and Vietnam. Perhaps during the coronavirus crisis Fiji could make itself more financially appealing while we have a clean bill of health.
All I had to deal with on the return drive were empty, sticky mango packets, chewed corn cobs, multiple bundles of bean and a two tonne watermelon resting on my foot. The junior generation slept most of the way, sated with the cornucopia of Fiji’s greatly valued local produce.