Gerti turns 100 – 15 June 2011
During a visit to Gerti in January 2011 we asked her what sort of cake she'd like to celebrate her 100th birthday – perhaps a lovely rich fruit cake? "Fruit cake?" she scoffed, "topfenstrudel!" she asserted with a far away look in her eyes. We could see that the very idea of this quintessentially Viennese cake transported Gerti to Vienna of the 1930s with its sophisticated café society. "OK" we said blithely, "we'll bring you a topfenstrudel". Little did we know what we had let ourselves in for...
So, just what is topfenstrudel? Imagine the softest baked cheesecake studded with brandy-soaked sultanas (raisins?), flavoured with vanilla and wrapped in layers of the thinnest, lightest, crispy strudel pastry and dusted with fine, white powdered sugar. Surely the queen of cakes. Utterly delicious, but it needs skilled hands to produce. And it's not something that's readily available in India. Problems of production aside, how would we transport this delicate and perishable item from Australia to a village in West Bengal (a three-day journey during summer) so that it arrives in perfect condition when the climate might be 48˚C and 70% humidity?
When we returned to Australia we investigated the transport of frozen product to India. Could we take dry ice? Could we transport what is essentially a gel, even frozen? Would the pastry go soggy? Could we take it on board as hand baggage? If so, what would we put it in? Would it stay frozen if it were put in the hold? We checked with AQIS, Qantas and freight firms and the more people we talked to the harder it all looked; in fact, the whole idea looked impossible. But we'd seen the look on Gerti's face and we couldn't let her down... Finally we talked to Adelaide foodie, Christian Reynolds, who put us in touch with the right person.
Enter Chef Cole Thomas, Culinetic's scientific chef extraordinaire. We posed the problem to him, met with him, told him the story and he said "I'm in!". His sharp mind was onto the problem and producing solutions with every sentence. Soon we had images of pastry produced separately from the filling, blast freezing, acetate film, a large, heavy-duty polystyrene box, dry ice and humidifiers. We needed more help to make this happen – and we wanted to tell the world about it. Surely this would be the most travelled topfenstrudel in the world?
Enter Frank Pangallo from South Australia's Channel 7 program, Today Tonight. Working closely with Cole and his team, Today Tonight followed the production of Gerti's topfenstrudel. From the 1929 recipe of Gerti's Vienese sister-in-law, to strudel advisors Harding and Elke Tinkler at Tanunda Bakery, to quark provider Ulli Spranz at B.D. Farms Paris Creek, back to the kitchen, to negotiation with Qantas - the Culinetic team and Today Tonight were there.
Gerti's story and the artworks of Kiron are key to the story so they take pride of place in the Today Tonight story (on air at 6.30pm CST Monday 13 June 2011) that you can see here.
As we write this we are on the way to Gerti with the topfenstrudel. Keep checking here for updates!
Here's Cole in the Adelaide Qantas Club sharing the sister to the topfenstrudel that's already checked in for transport to India with Gerti's Adelaide relatives.
If you have artworks by Kiron Sinha, or if you have information about Gerti and Kiron, please email us through the contact page.
