Bounty of the Bush
Native foods from the backyard garden are a source of distinctive flavours.
For years, he roamed the Aussie outback teaching suburbanites the secrets to desert dining; the Bush Tucker Man with his khakis, slouch hat, sturdy boots and grimy nails. While we chowed down on spaghetti in front of the box, he nibbled on wild berries, cooked up witchetty grubs and savoured native tubers blackened by the coals of an ingeniously built fire. “Now with this little fella here,” he’d whisper, bush-roughened hands breaking off the succulent tips of a desert pigface, “you break it off and suck out the nectar”.
Back in the living room, we’d nod in rapt attention, dig in to a second serve of pasta and feel safe knowing that if the Toorak tractor ever did make it past the city boundaries, then at least we wouldn’t starve.
Almost 20 years on and things are changing. Today’s Bush Tucker Man would just as likely be whipping up a tasty tea bread of bush banana, native nutmeg and bunya nuts, or marrying bush tomato with aniseed myrtle to form a delicious accompaniment to slow-cooked lamb shanks. A stainless-steel stovetop would replace the campfire, and the location? Just as likely Collingwood as Kakadu. Native foods have crept out of the desert and into our backyards.
In her three years at Brunswick’s CERES nursery, Clare Hart says interest in growing and cooking bush foods in the home has steadily increased. The traditional labour-intensive, water-hungry vegie patch is becoming an anachronism in an environment where the rising threat of drought-induced water restrictions is matched only by a mounting interest in the harvest of our native flora.
“More and more people are coming to CERES and to the nursery wanting to know about what their native foliage can do, or what their flowers can be used for,” she says. “The novelty effect of the Bush Tucker Man may be what people first relate to, but once they try the foods, they are won over in an entirely new way.”
The secret of bush food’s appeal lies in the complexity and newness of taste: mountain pepper with its strong eucalypt flavours, giving way to a spicy heat that builds and explodes on the tongue; the unique fruit and spice combination of riberry that leaves you contemplating cinnamon and clove with a subtle apple twist; the deliciously tart and acidic wild lime, unmatched by conventional citrus; or the spicy, piquant bush tomato, offering an edge sadly lacking in its tame South American namesake. With such inspiration to draw upon, home cooking once again becomes an adventure.
Annette Laidlaw was won over by native foods through her work with Narana Creations, an Aboriginal art, craft and education centre in Geelong. With a garden containing mountain pepper, warrigal greens, dianella and lemon myrtle, Laidlaw says incorporating the foods into her everyday cooking has become commonplace. Frittata with warrigal greens is a favourite, or Asian stir-fry with mountain pepper berries. “But I put too many dianella berries, (they’re like blackberries or raspberries), into my muffins once and gave everyone diarrhoea, so you do have to be careful,” she warns.
Juleigh Robins knowingly “umms” and “ahhs” the next day as I relate Laidlaw’s misadventure. As a Victorian chef and bush-food advocate, Robins has had 16 years’ experience growing and cooking with native produce and advises a cautious hand when first adding the flavours to common recipes.
Untamed by genetic breeding programs, the plants are generally more pungent in smell and taste than other common herbs, fruits and vegetables. For example, a lemon curd requiring the zest and juice of six lemons requires barely a handful of lemon aspen. For first-timers, 10 per cent of a recipe is a safe point to work from; say, for a kilo of weight, 100 grams of fruit, spice or herb should suffice.
For those of us still surgically attached to our metric measures (we can’t all be Jamie Olivers after all), cookbooks such as Robins’ Wild Lime or Wild Classics provide a helpful starting point. (See panel for other references.)
Of course, not all our native foods require such consideration. Wild raspberries will grow happily in a sunny backyard corner, producing sweet, small fruits without the invasive characteristics of introduced berry species. Add them to desserts, salads or jams as you would their conventional cousins. Warrigal greens are a profuse grower and make an ideal spinach substitute, while river-mint’s slight spearmint tang will add a fresh taste to salads, or use the dried herb as the basis for a magnificent crust for a roasted lamb rack. Native passionfruits are similarly easy to grow; at once creamy and tart, the fruit is a perfect complement to creams, icecreams and custards.
Sydney-sider Victor Cherikoff was one of the first to commercially develop bushfoods, establishing his business Cherikoff Food Services in 1983. Now advising some of Australia’s top chefs on the use of native flavours in the kitchen, Cherikoff says bush foods are a great way for home cooks to expand their repertoire.
It’s a point on which South Gippsland couple Gil and Meredith Freeman are quick to agree. Since the Freemans began growing bush foods on their 5.2-hectare property for commercial and domestic use almost two decades ago, every meal has become an exploration in native tastes. They use island celery in salad, dianella berries as an icecream topping and appleberries to make a to-die-for jam.
Freeman says most plants are easily adapted to cooking and genuinely innovative cooks will know what to do with them. For the rest of us, “the name will give you a hint. Now it’s the only way I can get my taste thrills”.
Coles Myer advisor Chris Mara recently began dabbling in backyard bush foods and says the difference a single lemon-myrtle leaf makes to a meal of foil-wrapped fish is incredible. “I add a fresh leaf when grilling and baking fish or chicken and it’s just striking; the lemony taste and scent is so much stronger,” Mara explains. “It just seems to enhance the flavour of the food that much better.”
It’s what every home cook wants - maximum impact for minimal effort. Neither foodie nor amateur chef, Mara’s experience highlights the ease with which this can be achieved. There is no learning of new techniques, elaborate tools to buy or new recipes to learn; simply plant, pick and prepare for real Aussie fusion cuisine using ingredients you don’t have to scour the suburbs for.
Southern Bush Foods Association member Libby Anthony believes it’s this ability of native foods to complement and enhance established cuisines that will win them acceptance in the long run. “You don’t have to go the whole hog and knowing this gives people a chance to get used to the foods in a normal diet.”
As for gripes about caring for a vegie patch, forget about it. The nature of most bush food plants makes them ideally suited to those lacking the time or interest in regular tending. In fact, while some of the smaller herbs will grow happily among conventional vegies, many of the larger shrubs and trees will need to be incorporated in to the wider garden or courtyard area.
Pest control also poses fewer problems. All gardeners spoken to refrained from using chemical sprays and were adamant its use was not required. The reason? With native pests come native prey. Fruit trees and vines, however, can be covered to protect ripening fruits from birds or pets (in my case, two hungry labradors). And from the tip of Tassie to the top of Cape York, there’s a plant to suit every garden and every meal.
So, what’s the catch? Though the popularity of native plants is growing, they may still be difficult to find in all but Melbourne’s specialist indigenous plant nurseries. And, as with all fruits and vegetables, the time from planting to first harvest may stretch to two or three years; in the meantime, there’s little, if any, fresh produce available commercially to fill the gap.
But that’s it. Once they’re in and grown, your native edibles will provide all the ammunition needed to revamp, re-style or re-fire the home cook. So there’s no time to waste. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta get planting and cooking. It’s rivermint-crusted lamb racks for dinner tonight.
Some food plants can be dangerous to consume if not treated correctly. If you are unsure how a particular plant should be prepared, contact the nursery you bought the plant from or other authorities.
RECOMMENDED REFERENCES
Wild Lime, by Juleigh Robins (Allen and Unwin, 1998)
Wild Classics, by Juleigh Robins, (Allen and Unwin, 2000)
Wild Food Plants of Australia, by Tim Law (Angus and Robertson, 1988)
The Bush Food Handbook, by Victor Cherikoff (Cherikoff Pty Ltd, 2000)
Tukka: Real Australian Food, by J.P Bruneteau (Angus and Robertson, 1996)
GOING BUSH
Vic Cherikoff shares his tips on matching edible Australian natives with your favourite recipes and cuisines.
Italian - Bush tomato is a fantastic enhancer for ordinary tomato, with native mint a tasty replacement for oregano or basil. Warrigal greens will replace spinach in pesto, frittatas or lasagne.
Chinese - Use aniseed myrtle in place of star anise and finely sliced water lily tubers in place of water chestnuts. Add lemon aspen syrup to soy and vinegar for an
Oz-Asian sauce.
Japanese - Mountain pepper and wasabi work brilliantly together, or roll sliced quandongs in Japanese-style, thin-sliced beef and bake in oyster sauce.
American - Appleberries will give a new dimension to apple pie and use lemon myrtle in lemon meringue pie for a deeper citric taste.
English - Muntries (a small berry) mix well with potato salad or make riberry scones to enjoy with cream. Use rivermint in place of conventional mint or wild limes in marmalade.
Indian - Make bush cucumber raita or use murnong (native sweet potato) in place of kumara in curries.
WHERE TO BUY NATIVE FOOD PLANTS
Kuranga Native Nursery 393 Maroondah Highway, Ringwood. Phone 9879 4076
CERES Bushfood and Permaculture Nursery Lee Street, Brunswick. Phone 9387 4403
Peninsula Bushworks 16 Hunts Road, Bittern. Phone 5983 6633
Bendigo’s Indigenous Nursery and Flower Farm 230 Tannery Lane, Mandurang.
Phone 5439 5384
St Kilda Indigenous Nursery Cooperative 525 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne. Phone 9645 2477
Victorian Indigenous Nurseries Cooperative Yarra Bend Road, Fairfield. Phone 9482 1710
Recipe
Warrigal greens and macadamia cannelloni with bush tomato and red capsicum concasse
In this recipe from chef Sun Hyland at the CERES Cafe, the macadamia nuts can be replaced with bunya nuts if preferred.
CONCASSE
a little olive oil
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 large red capsicum, diced
2 dessertspoons bush tomatoes
2 cans chopped tomatoes
50ml red wine
1 tsp salt
2 cups vegetable stock
CANNELLONI
300g feta cheese
100g macadamias
200g mushrooms
2 tsp mountain pepper flakes
300g warrigal greens
250g instant cannelloni shells
? tsp salt
fresh sea celery, chopped, for garnish
Method
• To prepare the concasse, chop the onion and garlic and fry in the olive oil until soft. Add the capsicum and bush tomatoes and fry gently for about 2 minutes. Stir in the remaining ingredients and simmer for at least 30 minutes.
• For the cannelloni filling, crumble the feta into a mixing bowl. Chop the macadamia nuts and the mushrooms into small chunks and add to the bowl with the mountain pepper and salt. Blanch the warrigal greens for 1 minute, rinse, drain, shred, and then add to the mix.
• Stuff the cannelloni shells with the filling, arrange on a baking tray and then top with the concasse. Bake, covered, at 200C for 25 minutes. Serve garnished with fresh sea celery.