In the culinary world, the search for new and unusual ingredients has become the holy grail for chefs around the country - and Tasmania is developing a reputation for being a rare food producer.

There is black garlic, purple potatoes, pint-sized seafood and strange kinds of seaweed just to name a few.

Chef Karen Goodwin-Roberts used some of these ingredients to prepare a meal to challenge the palate for a special dinner held as part of Savour Tasmania on Friday night.

"We didn't want to scare people off, we wanted them to try the product," she said.

"Some people get this perception of 'oh, I can't eat possum', but once they try it it's completely different to what you perceive things to be like."

Possum pie was not the only unusual dish on the menu, with purple Congo potatoes, chrysanthemum leaves and rock Samphire also dished up as part of the rare foods dinner.

"I am sure there will be some foods people have tried before, but there will hopefully be something unique and different that people haven't tried," Ms Goodwin-Roberts said.

While the ingredients themselves may be rare, there is plenty of unusual food on offer in Tasmania.

The Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture's Professor Roger Stanley says the state is growing a reputation as a foods destination, and the rare and unusual foods will help build its tourism and export trade.

"Rare and unusual products - if you get the market, that niche market that's prepared to pay for them - it's a very good direction for Tasmania to go," he said.

Black garlic producers wanted to try something new

Black garlic producer Jacquay Christie says she and husband Bruce decided to try fermenting garlic in order to do something different.

The fermentation process to produce black garlic took four years to perfect. ( ABC News )

"Because there are a lot of people who grow garlic down here, I wondered what else we could do with garlic," she said.

The black garlic is produced on a farm at Huonville, south of Hobart, and has the same soft consistency as normal roasted garlic.

To produce it, raw garlic is fermented in custom-built ovens for 40 days - a process that has taken four years to perfect.

Ms Christie says she is keeping the fermentation secret close to her chest, after the "disasters" the couple went through to perfect the process.

"I must admit, we've probably thrown a couple of hundred kilos of all our beautiful garlic over the fence for the pigs to eat," she said.

These days, the pigs and the ponies are missing out. The black garlic is selling for about $88 a kilogram wholesale.

"It's amazing, it kind of tastes like it's very sweet but it's got something more interesting, got that hit at the end," Ms Christie said.

"It's lovely - you could eat a whole plate and have no garlic breath.

"A lot of [people] look at it and they say 'that doesn't look very nice' and then they taste it. They just fall over and can't get enough of it, so I think that's probably for me quite an exciting thing."

Pint-sized mussels draw attention of chefs

For Phil Lamb, of Spring Bay Seafoods, producing a rare food - pint-sized mussels called spat - was not the main game but an added bonus.

"Realising there was a market for it - I guess it comes from the desire from chefs and consumers for something that's a little bit different," he said.

"Since we have the capacity in our hatchery and our nursery to produce this product it made sense to offer it to the market."

Mr Lamb says that spats are "lovely, sweet and tender and [have] that salty sweetness you get from a young mussel".

There is a growing appetite for the small shellfish, with a number of chefs showing interest in the product.

"We've had Kylie Kwong down here, we've had Frank Mora and the Movida crew and we're using some of our mussels spat in July at a function in Sydney," Mr Lamb said.

The product that started as a side dish has become a point of difference.

"People are looking for novelty and so while it isn't the main, it certainly adds to people's interest and excitement over our product," Mr Lamb said.

"I think there's lots of little secrets that we haven't discovered or marketed and we're just the tip of the iceberg."