Red's Bush Tucker thread

[Occy]

Had an extremely interesting trip during our visit to South Australia last week. Located 200 kms south east of Adelaide lie the dunescapes, ocean beaches and lagoon wetlands of the Coorong, home to the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginals. Saw massive cockle middens and waterholes in the sand hills, and the guide introduced us to all manner of bush food the original inhabitants used to eat. Tried some of the Samphire Red has previously talked about, along with something they called native cherries and some sort of edible root. It was a real experience to see how well they lived there with all the various flora and fauna (kangaroo, emu, water birds, fish and cockles) that was apparently so plentiful. Apparently they lived there like kings for thousands of years before white man came along and moved them on.

The cockles (what we call Pippi's in the eastern states) were plentiful on the beaches of the Younghusband peninsula, and delicious, and I didn't mind the taste of the samphire either. I dare say had I known what I was looking for I could have also found Red's famous warregal greens.

Something I didn't know is that a very famous Ngarrindjeri man called David Unaipon is featured on our $50 note. Google his name to see what an incredible man he was.

[noeskimo]

thanks for the posting help red...

all my old bush tucker pics are slides....but i'll take some more. plenty of stuff around.

the spiker (deer) in the pic did have a body..but i didnt take the camera with me out the bush and so the only pics i have is of the bits i cut off the deer when i got home. i didnt take a pic of the legs or back steaks....

i hope the pic isnt too 'rough' ?



.

[RedPhoenix]

Good stuff Occy! Yeah, the native cherries would have been nice at this time of year.

Red.

[Occy]

Red,

They weren't big but boy did they have some flavour, as did the samphire. Got to try that in a salad one day I reckon.

[RedPhoenix]

Midyim berries

These little fellas are generally found wild in south-east queensland, but you can often pick them up in nurseries along the east coast.
The fruit is small, but is probably one of the tastiest bush tucker fruits in Australia. They taste somewhere between spearmint and eucalyptus.

Generally a low-growing shrub, the leaves are small and pointy, with 5-petal white flowers, that often have a pinkish tinge.

The fruits are also small, but have a brown-speckled appearance.

If you can find enough of these, they're great to add to a salad.. I can't help myself though, and generally scoff them before they make it to the kitchen.

There are plenty on stradbroke island at the moment. Scour the edges of claytons road near amity, and you should find a few bushes with fruit around late summer/early autumn.

Red.

[ELM]

Looks like the finger nails are tasty as well Red

[RedPhoenix]

Looks like the finger nails are tasty as well Red

Keyboard fingernail clacking gives me the heebie-jeebies mate. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Red.

[Barrabundy]

I've somehow missed this thread. Around the farm where my house is I planted a heap of native trees about 15 years ago. One of my selection criteria was that they must attract wildlife and produce bush-tucker where possible. I'll try and get some photos to post of a few that haven't been mentioned here so far. There are only a couple that I eat although there are many more that are edible, they just taste like crap.

One tree that's in fruit now is the Damson Plum (Terminalia microcarpa). The fruit is small, almond shaped with a furry skin like a peach. You usually only get ripe fruit on low hanging branches because that's the only place the birds will leave it alone. Because the fruit is so small I pick a cupfull or so and shove them in my mouth half a handfull at a time. Chew, chew and spit the seeds out.

Cluster Fig (Ficus racemosa) is another common one and I have a few of those too. You can get good quantities of fruit for every month except May but they are a little like KFC...you need to eat them in the dark so you don't see the grubs you're also eating...they're always full of them!

Leichardt Pine (Nauclea orientalis) are another local species I have. They produce a good sized fig type fruit but the seeds are bitter. The leaves and bark have medicinal properties...if you're aboriginal.

and the list goes on, but not very interesting without the pics, I'll out some up when I ge the chance.

[ELM]

Looks like the finger nails are tasty as well Red

Keyboard fingernail clacking gives me the heebie-jeebies mate. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Red.

I blame the salt water for drying and cracking

[Barrabundy]

Our dinner tonight might be considered bush tucker by some. We had crumbed barra with a handful of chonky apples on the side.
We used to go crazy over these at school many moons ago so couldn’t resist when I came across a heavily fruited shrub leaning out over the water this morning. A wack with the paddle and they were floating all around me for me to collect.
It is more commonly known as chinee apple (Ziziphus mauritiana) and is a declared pest in QLD as it takes over grazing land.http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/documents/Bio ... e-PP26.pdf

As school kids we’d call the firm ones chonky apples and once they’d go mushy inside (they were a rare find) we called them “snotty gobbles”. The islander kids loved them and would take our mushy ones for their firm ones at a ratio of about 5:1.

[rawprawn]

Green Tree Ants

I love these guys. Ok, fair enough, they're not so great when you accidentally brush against a nest, and spend the next 5 minutes jumping around looking like you're doing some sort of masochistic slapping dance, but otherwise, they're a real taste sensation.

Yakkers in the northern end of Australia are probably pretty familiar with these guys. You may not be aware though, that they're really tasty. Their abdomen contains a variety of acidic compounds, including formic acid.

You might be a bit squeamish about eating insects, but it's worth giving these guys a go. Watch out for the front-end, they can give a bit of a nasty bite, but bite the abdomen, and you'll be pleasantly surprised by the lemon/lime taste.

Local aborigines would capture a large quantity of these ants within a bag of paper-bark, soak the bark quickly, then squeeze the resulting 'bag' to produce a lime-like cordial. Never tried this myself, but it would certainly make a reasonable replacement for lemon juice for a fish BBQ.

Red.

20050410-120437.jpg

Are these the ants we ate when in the Whitsundays?

[RedPhoenix]

Are these the ants we ate when in the Whitsundays?

Yup!

Red.

[rawprawn]

Are these the ants we ate when in the Whitsundays?

Yup!

Red.

Yep thats them they make your face go white and blotchy

[Zed]

Prickly Pear Fruit
Whilst not exactly a native, these seem to grow just about everywhere in Oz.

During spring to early summer, they produce large numbers of fruit, coloured somewhere between yellow and dark red. They're a touch hairy, and picking the fruit can leave you with lots of fine spines in your hands if you're not careful. Try to twist them from the leaves.

Peel the fruit in order to remove the spines. Do this by throwing them in a bowl of chilled water, and pick them up using some paper towel, folded over a few times. Make a lengthwise incision in the fruit, and peel back the skin (which is generally a bit tart anyway), using the towl to keep the spines away from your hands.

They're full of seeds, but the yellowish ones taste a bit like a watermelon to me. The purple/red ones are a bit sweeter generally, and are somewhere between a watermellon and a plum.

Good, colourful addition to a plate of fish. Slice into thinnish sections, and pop on top of practically any fish.

Can be used on icecream as a topping (add a bit of sugar) once you get rid of the seeds. I suspect It would make a reasonable sorbet too, but I've never tried making one.

Here's a link to prickly pear jelly:
http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1823,158 ... 00,00.html

Red.

Just wanted to toss in a little tip to this bastard fruit.

The best way to remove the spines is some open flame. Since this is bush tucker, you should be bush cooking too. Just skewer the pears on sticks and roast them quick over the flame. This does 2 things: a) it flames all the prickers off so they are easy to handle, and b) it matures the sugars in the pear a bit. I've eaten the pp's many times and flaming them is the best way to begin.

They hurt in the fingers/hand, just think how they feel in lips and tongue.

Z

[Rose]

Warragul greens and samphire also grow in South Australia, in the same kind of places as elsewhere. A few months ago, I think on Landline, I saw a short documentary on some people in Tasmania who are harvesting samphire and sending it up to the gourmet markets in Sydney, where it sells for $12 a punnet!

Red, have you ever tried the ripe fruit of native pigface? (the one with the pink flowers is the native variety) The skin is a little tough, but you can simply suck the contents out...not like anything else I've tasted, so I can't describe it, but it's good!

We also get lilly pilly down here, grown as a garden tree. Most people won't use it, but sometimes they'll let you pick some from their trees. There used to be a massive lilly pilly in Woolworths car park, but the developers have chopped it down, so I don't get to make lilly pilly tarts very often any more. I need to find a park that has a tree. I use them with the seeds still inside...the seeds soften when you cook them.