NATURE'S DIET
Why bush foods should be on your menu
WORDS KATE ROBERTSON
NATURE'S DIET
Why bush foods should be on the menu
WORDS KATE ROBERTSON
Learn about nutritious bush foods during Firescreek Winery's Aboriginal Bush Tucker & Wine Tasting.
Eating a varied diet of foods as they come into season may sound like the latest health advice, but it’s nothing new for Aboriginal peoples.
Walkabout Cultural Adventures tour operator Juan Walker says, ‘Everything has a little season when it's best to eat. It’s also making sure that you change what you eat at different times of year, so you don’t damage that resource'.
A Walkabout Cultural Adventure guide will show you where to find bush tucker and bush medicines.
A proud Kuku Yalanji man, Juan teaches people how to find a meal and medicine from his Land and Sea Country in Tropical Queensland, on the southern side of the Daintree Rainforest. ‘We go along the coast to look for different food. So, beach almonds, mud crabs, mangrove periwinkles, and different things like that. If time allows, we do a little fry up.’
Discover traditional plants, foods and medicines during Koomal Dreaming's Aboriginal Food, Cave and Didge Tour.
Many non-Aboriginal people have become detached from the origin of their food and put little thought into where it comes from. So, whilst Juan enjoys seeing the looks on his guests’ faces as they experience the melt-in-your-mouth taste of a mud crab that they have caught and cooked themselves, it’s seeing them gain a greater respect for nature and what it provides that really brings him joy.
“I’m in a very fortunate position where I've been taught this sort of stuff and I'm able to teach other people about it as well.”
Whilst Juan's diet changes according to what's season, with seafood and mud crabs readily available throughout the year, mud crab is a regular and favourite dish at his house.
Juan Walker’s
Mud Crab recipe
(Serves 2)
Ingredients
1 mud crab (800 g – 1 kg)* 3 garlic cloves 3 chillies 30 ml brown vinegar 2 pinches of salt 1 tbsp coconut oil 1 tbsp butter 1 lime
Method
Finely dice garlic and chillies. Break crab into pieces (remove claws with hands, cut body up with a knife).
Heat coconut oil and butter in a wok. Add garlic and chillies, stir fry until the garlic browns.
Pour in the vinegar and add the crab pieces. Keep turning the crab until it’s cooked through.
Add salt, toss, squeeze on lime and serve.
*Substitute with local crab if you can’t go out on Country with Juan to find Australian mud crab.
Superfoods
The sweet and tangy quandong, with its high levels of vitamin C, and sandalwood nuts, which have almost twice the protein and three times the dietary fibre of macadamias, are just some of the edible native superfoods that Dale Tilbrook's guests sample on her tours. Dale Tilbrook’s passion for teaching people about edible native plants has earned her the title ‘Bush Tucker Queen’.
Eating in tune with the seasons ensures a varied and nutritious diet.
Dale Tilbrook, the Bush Tucker Queen.
Eating in tune with the seasons ensures a varied and nutritious diet.
Dale Tilbrook, the Bush Tucker Queen.
‘People call me the Bush Tucker Queen as I have a passion that borders on obsession regarding native edible plants and their pharmaceutical and nutraceutical qualities. This obsession has continued to build for the last 20-odd years and is something I never tire of,’ says the Wardandi Bibbulmun woman. ‘There’s a great big supermarket out there if you know where to look.’
Lemon myrtle tea is rich in calcium and antioxidants and has powerful anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties.
Dale’s experiences include sampling a range of bush tucker fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs and leaves to learn about their nutritional profile and medicinal properties, before enjoying some savoury and sweet bush tucker dishes. Dale also has an online shop that sells bush tucker foods, including bush basil, native thyme and lemon myrtle.
Dale Tilbrook’s
Chocolate and Wattleseed Biscuit recipe
(Makes 24)
Ingredients
100 g butter ½ cup roasted wattleseed* ½ cup white sugar 1 egg 130 g plain flour ¾ cup organic cacao ¾ cup brown sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract 100 g dark chocolate chips
Method
Line a baking tray with baking paper. Preheat oven to 180°C.
Place half the wattleseed in a bowl and just cover with hot water. Soak for 5 minutes.
Soften the butter and mix into soaked wattleseed. Set aside for 10 minutes.
Stir the white sugar into the wattleseed butter, then mix in the beaten egg.
Next mix in the flour, cacao, brown sugar and vanilla extract, then fold in the chocolate chips.
Place tablespoon-sized balls of biscuit mix, evenly spaced, on a baking tray. Flatten slightly.
Sprinkle with the rest of the wattleseed.
Bake for 8-10 mins.
*If you can’t source wattleseed, you can use granulated coffee instead.
Looking for more opportunities to try bush foods? Here are three more options:
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