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Benaiah Labs

Working
on it.

The kitchen behind Benaiah Foods. Native Australian ingredients, put through methods that mostly came from somewhere else — and the honest position is that some of it works and some of it is still being argued about.

Where this stands

Nothing in the range is for sale yet. Certification with The Kashrut Authority has not issued, so no claim about kashrut is made anywhere on this site until it does — and this page talks about method, not status. You can register interest against any line and nothing is charged.

The 0 lines →

The spectrum

Seven gels, one technique. They are built to sit beside each other on a plate, which is a harder problem than making any one of them well.

RedHorseradish and beetrootThe heat is the point. Beetroot carries the colour without sweetening it.
OrangeGreen mango and fenugreekAmba, held as a gel so it stops running off the plate.
YellowLemon myrtle and pepperberryLemon myrtle is more citrus than citrus. Restraint is most of the recipe.
GreenSamphire, cucumber and dillSamphire brings its own salt, so almost none is added.
BlueGarlic and butterfly pea flowerThe flower is pH-sensitive, which is what makes the blue hard to hold.
PurpleDavidson plumSour enough to need no acid at all.
PinkRiberry and anise myrtleRiberry reads as clove and cranberry at once.

What we are actually doing

Fluid gel, not purée

Low-acyl gellan set firm, then sheared back to a fluid. It holds a line on a plate and does not weep, and it carries flavour at a much lower sugar and salt load than a reduction would. The whole spectrum is built this way, which is why seven very different ingredients behave the same on the spoon.

Koji on lupin and faba

Two Australian legumes, inoculated and aged, then used the way a miso is used. Lupin ferments faster and reads sweeter; faba is slower and more savoury. Both are grown here in quantity and neither is soy, which matters to more people every year.

Wattleseed miso

Wattleseed roasted, ground and fermented long. It comes out closer to a dark miso than to coffee, which is where most people expect it to land.

Native syrups

Strawberry gum, aniseed myrtle, cinnamon myrtle, pepperberry leaf and Davidson plum, reduced separately rather than blended — each one is a different extraction problem, and blending first hides which part is doing the work.

Davidson plum umeboshi

Salted and pressed the way an ume is, over months. The plum is not the same fruit and does not behave like one; the method transfers, the timing does not.

Bunya A1

Still being tested, and not listed for sale. The bunya nut is seasonal, wildly variable between trees, and the harvest is culturally significant to the people whose country it grows on — which is a conversation to have properly before it is a product.

Two things we will not do

  • Call something kosher before it is. The certificate is the claim, not our intention to get one.
  • Use a native ingredient without the conversation. Bunya in particular is not just an ingredient, and treating it as one because it is interesting would be the cheapest possible version of this project.

The food itself is in Benaiah Foods, and what we cook with it is in recipes.