Recipe for mango salsa to serve with grilled prawns

This recipe is a winner - we tried it at our staff christmas party and it tasted excellent. . Serve mango salsa on the side with prawns or duck breast or scallops. We ate the salsa with cooked prawns - the hot spicy and sweet flavour of the salso worked well with the prawns. The recipe comes from Stephanie Alexander - 'The Cook's Companion'. Thankyou Stephanie!

Mango salsa

Ingredients
1 mango peeled and diced
2 slices of red onion chopped very finely
1 fresh red chilli, seeded and finely chopped
1/4 cup of chopped fresh mint leaves
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt
freshly ground black pepper

Method
Combine all ingredients and allow to stand for several hours before using.
We think that vietnamese mint would work well instead of normal mint too.

Drinking Mango Bellinis for Xmas

A christmas celebration with all our workers - we couldnt do it without the team.

Make a soursop daiquiri for christmas - here is the recipe

Prepare the fruit to get the juice
The soursop should be avocado soft but not squishy. Hold the fruit with one hand and peel away the skin with other hand. Once you have removed as much skin as possible, break the ripe fruit open, and remove the core and the flesh with your hands. Place the flesh in a mouli or a sieve and push the fruit through the mesh so that the seeds and pulp are left behind and the juice is collected underneath.

The cocktail ingredients
60 ml juice, as prepared above
45 ml bacardi rum
15 ml white curacao
5-8 ice cubes
a maraschino cherry for decoration

Method
Place all ingregients in a blender and blend until smooth, pour into a large cocktail galss and decorate with cherry. Yum!

Soursop Juice

We are currently researching a new product to add to our jams - soursop juice. We have received many requests for fresh soursop and juice from people looking for the fruit as a medication against cancer. Research has shown that the fruit, the bark and the leaves all have medicinal properties and anti-oxidants which have shown promise against cancer cells.

It is very difficult to send fresh soursop to the market as it is very perishable. It is also difficult to preserve the juice without adding sugar. We have imported a large pressure cooker from the US and completed a trial batch of bottling the juice and then heating it to extremely high temperatures to kill the bacteria. We are still testing the product to determine its USE BY date, but it appears to be at least a couple of months.

Hopefully this product may meet some of the requests we receive.

Tourism Award Winner

This year we decided to enter the Tourism Tropical North Queensland Tourism Awards in the categories Hosted Accommodation and Ecotourism. We were finalists in both sections but did not win either section. Instead we received the Judges Commendation Award. It was a lot of work to write the 30 page applications, host the judges on the farm, and attend two interviews, and it made us really think about our business and our achievements over the last year. We appreciate the judges recognising our efforts and commending us. It was good to get dressed up and have a great night out meeting everyone from the tourism industry

Congrats to Winners who were also from the Daintree:
Tourist Attraction - Daintree Discovery Centre
Ecotourism - Jungle Surfing
Hosted Accommodation - Red Mill House

Breakfast fruit platter in October

 

From left the fruit is soursop, solo papaya with lime, star apple, mangosteen, sugar bananas - this is part of our breakfast which is served to our guests on the verandah of their cottage each morning

Ugrade completed of our self-guided walk

Time for a celebration, after a full week working to upgrade the walking trail in our forest, and replace lost markers. Here are some of the local characters who joined us to celebrate with a glass of champagne - on the trail of course. Many thanks to our wwoofa - anna who did all the hard work, and took this photo.