Cooking with Australian produce

In most cases, Australian produce is no more difficult or different to cook with than anything else on the planet. While Australian flora and fauna is decidedly unique, it's still made up of ordinary plant and animal life. We should be no more nervous of cooking with our unique flavours and textures than we are of cooking with sun-dried tomatoes, snow peas, basil and baby octopus (all of which would have been practically unhead-of 20 years ago).

I therefore present recipes and links to recipes that require no effort beyond actually finding the produce itself (which, granted, can sometimes present problems - which is the whole point fo rth eexistence of this site ... )

If you get confused about what it is exactly that's being added to these recipes, have a look at the Glossary. Tasting and supply notes are supplied with everything I've actually come into contact with.

If you'd like to discuss your bushfood recipes or queries with like-minded people, try the Australian Bushfood and Native Medicine Forums! (Registration required to post messages, but reading is unrestricted).

My adaptations

Each week, I find a reasonably ordinary recipe from one of my myriad cookbooks/food mazagines/online sites, and change one or two ingredients to equivalent Australian ones, to demonstrate how easy it is to use Australian produce in everyday cooking.

Some of the recipes have actually been tested before posting, some haven't. This is noted in the title. The early tested recipes are from my Eat The Coat of Arms dinner party in April 2004.

These recipes are in the process of being added to this site - please go to my blog in the meantime!

Other people's recipes

The following is a list of sites with recipes, or links to recipes adapted by other people. Full copyright details are supplied with each recipe, although I can't guarantee that I've actually contacted the author to get permission to reproduce their recipe on here.

Many of the other resources - books and product websites in particular - also contain recipe pages. I've tried to add these in as I find them, but I also recommend looking around various websites for information.

If you're an author whom I've mortally offended by quoting you without permission, please contact me!

  • ABC TV's Message Stick recipes page. Message Stick is a half hour magazine style TV program about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lifestyles and issues. It features cooking segments (among other things) from chefs Jacko, Black Olive, Lisa Nicholson, and Robert Lee. This page links to the recipes features on the show.
  • The SBS Food Lover's Guide To Australia Indigenous Australia recipe page. The Food Lovers' Guide celebrates Australian people, their cooking and their produce.
  • Benjamin Christie's recipes. Benjamin Christie is a young Australian chef who works with Vic Cherikoff as a television presenter, cookbook author, culinary educator and chef consultant. This page contains a growing selection of recipes employing a range of bush tucker.
  • Lemon myrtle recipes from the Old Bushfoods Magazine.
  • The new Bushfoods Magazine recipe pages.
  • Samantha Lane's bushfood recipes.
  • ABC's Bush Telegraph Food on Friday. "On Fridays, Bush Telegraph explores the fascinating world of food, from the way we grow it to the final pleasure of eating, and all the delicious bits in between. We get out teeth into questions about why we eat what we do, how our food industries are thriving and surviving and of course, have fun meeting the faces behind the delights that end up in our shopping baskets.".