Rosella - you learn something every day
"Rosella went into decline from the 1980’s onwards because its owners at the time did not follow the original vision of the founders." Rosella company website
This was going to be about Rosella the company - and it will be - but when I started looking at it I found that rosella is a plant too (and a bird of course). Hence the 'you learn something every day' in the title. I had no idea that you could make rosella jam or indeed that this plant existed. To be fair I am not Australian, and I gather this is an old Australian thing - now making a comeback I suspect. The other thing that I learnt was that the very Aussie nature of the term 'rosella' is, in fact, a bit of misconception on lots of fronts.
First of all the company. Yes it was founded back in 1895 in a shed in Carlton and at its height expanded into a company owned by Unilever (for 40 years) a major multinational, until it lost its way in the 1980s and went into receivership. It was bought by a family owned company Sabrands, which I guess means it is South Australian. It also owns Sunraysia fruit juices. Nowadays the range of its products is comparatively small but it is back to its basic beginnings - tomato sauce, tomato soup, chutneys, relishes and pickled onions. Basic stuff and I have to say I'm not sure how you survive with such products in competition with home brands and other multinationals like Heinz. The new company began back in 2013 so I guess it has had time to find its niche. And presumably people still buy it. I wonder why though. Does it taste better? Is it some kind of loyalty to a brand? Is it a patriotic thing? After all I tell David off if he buys Scandinavian smoked salmon. Both Coles and Woolworths have it on their shelves.
These are very Aussie products and the company claims that they are made from all Australian ingredients. You can't really get more Aussie than tomato sauce - as we have seen. (I did a post on it recently.) The new company has redesigned the logo though. They have retained the rosella but not the same design. They describe it as:
“the most dramatic change in the company’s visual identity for 20 years. We have revisited the grassroots of our original logo whilst preserving the distinctive, native Eastern Rosella and have given it flight to represent the company continuing to keep pace with modern Australian eating. The new design will appeal to a new generation of Australian families by capturing the essence of our Australian Spirit, our vibrancy, energy and our free spirit.” Rosella company
All food Aussie, Aussie, Aussie stuff. The old logo is a rosella sitting in a tree - not in flight. And I now see that the new logo has also dropped the 'Australia's' bit which is curious if what they are hoping to capitalise on is the Australianness of it all.
Rosella is not the only company to use the rosella (and, it has to be said, it's not the crimson rosella which started all this off), for Arnott's too - another very Australian company - indeed another iconic Australian company - uses the rosella. Arnott's is also not truly Australian anymore - there is significant investment from Campbell's soups. But they do stress the Australianness of their product and they do manufacture here.
And they still use the rosella as a symbol of their Australianness.
The rosella itself (the bird that is) is a native Australian though.
Not so the rosella plant - even though rosella jam is, apparently, a real Oz thing. It even features on lists of bush tucker products. But it actually comes from Africa and is used all over the world. It's one of those plants whose every part can be used for something. In some countries it is mostly used for the fibre in the stalks. Indeed Wikipedia states that this is its main commercial use. The leaves are eaten, and the roots made into medicines, the calyx of the flower is used as food colouring and for syrups and jams. I think the flower can be stuffed and eaten too. My favourite use is in champagne - yes champagne:
"plac[e] one plus a little syrup in a champagne flute before adding the champagne — the bubbles cause the flower to open." Wikipedia
How cool is that?
It's actually a hibiscus, whose fruit has " a tart flavour with a raspberry/rhubarb/plum quality." says the Native Tastes of Australia site. They also say:
"It works well in either sweet or savoury dishes and goes well with ginger, chilli, and sugar, and fruits such as apples, peaches pears, nectarines and banana. Fabulous accompaniment for lamb, pork and game. Use it in sauces, jams, ice cream and pastries."
To be fair to the site it does say it is an introduced species, but there it is listed with all the usual and unusual bush tucker things. They obviously think of it as Australian. Which is perhaps because of the jam, which seems to be one of those kind of things that you find at country shows and in Country Women's Association recipe books.
If you want to know about growing it and making the jam you can do worse than go to a website called Self Sufficient Me. The writer there claims:
"the jam, in my humble opinion, being one of the best damned jams a person could eat or make..."
Mark Valencia - Self Sufficient Me
And I have seen the same opinion expressed elsewhere. I don't think you will be seeing many of them for sale here though. It seems to be a Northern Queensland thing. Maybe I can buy some when we go to Port Douglas in July.
Taste has a recipe but they have a disclaimer, which almost sounds like a warning, about it being contributed by someone and not tested by them. Dear oh dear! Obviously there are some people now making it commercially as the picture above demonstrates. I think it's a Queensland company and they too describe it as bush tucker. But it really isn't. That said I'm not sure that other countries make it into jam. Maybe that's the peculiarly Australian thing about it.
I will end with the birds themselves. This is a drawing by John Gould of the crimson rosella. The beautiful bird I saw outside my window and which started me off on this little path of discovery. The slightly less colourful one is not the female - it's the young version.
The birds are Australian. The companies haven't always been, and the rosella plant certainly isn't even though we seem to have claimed it as our own. But then Australia has a tendency to do that.
And I will look out for the rosella jam. It sounds very tempting.
