Hello, Daisy. Hope these are of help (though you may possiby already have seen them).

http://www.cherikoff.net (also has a Bush Tucker Handbook which, accordingly to some, may be a little dated by more recent information about native herbs)

www.teachers.ash.org.au/bushtucker/more.html

Thanks Anna.

We should take a leaf out of the indigenous peoples book. They lived in this country for 40,000 years and lived off the land. One of my all time favourite aboriginal dishes is Barramundi with native fig and honey sauce, pan fried in goanna oil until the skin is crispy, seasoned with sea salt and served on a bed of wilted crispy lotus stems. Gorgeous.
Another great one is Kangaroo fillet steak marinaded in mountain pepperleaf, bush tomatoes and salt. Char-grilled over coals and served on sautéed forest mushrooms with a wattle seed mustard and wallaby cream and lillypilly sauce. YUM!!!

In my youth, I was Outback, and got into a right fix, which meant living off the land for a couple of weeks until rescuers arrived. Now, having tasted emu and kangaroo, I have NO DESIRE WHATEVER to try those again, or any other native meat! It perhaps explains why all the early pictures of the Aborigines show them to be skinny. To call those meats edible is a gross exaggeration!

I'll be quite happy with a pinch of lemon myrtle, or some mounain pepper, to flavour REAL food, thank you!

Aw, Daisy... never tried a kangaroo curry, Malaysian style?

I was just playing around. Here is a recipe I cook at home.

Beef fillet steak with mountain pepper sauce.

Grind in a mortar and pestle about 6 large dried mountain pepper leaves with half a teaspoon of sea salt. Crush 3 cloves of garlic and rub the garlic and a little olive oil into 4 premium fillet steaks. Sprinkle the mountain pepper leaf and salt mixture liberally over the steaks and rub in by hand. Cover the meat and allow to sit at room temperature for the flavours to infuse. Slice potato and sweet potato into rounds about 5 mm thick. Partially boil them in salted water making sure they are just still firm. Thinly slice an onion into whole rounds. Layer the potato, sweet potato and onion into an oiled baking dish. Pour half a cup of cream over the potatoes, season with pepper and a little freshly grated nutmeg. Pop into a hot oven (fan forced if available) until brown on top.
Add a tablespoon of butter to a hot pan and fry the steaks for around 2 minutes each side, cook them to your liking but DO NOT OVER COOK. They should feel firm by still springy when pressed with a fork. Remove the steaks from the pan and allow to rest briefly whilst preparing the sauce. Add a good swig of red wine to the pan to deglaze, remove from the heat. In a mortar and pestle grind a teaspoon of mountain pepper berries and 4 or 5 dried bush tomatoes (Solanum centrale). Add this to the wine in the pan together with a tablespoon of honey, a knob of butter and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Simmer briefly, transfer the steaks back into the oven to reheat (pour any juices into the sauce pan).
Cut a triangular section of the potato bake and place in the centre of a PREHEATED plate. Slice the fillet steaks almost all the way through in strips creating a fan shape. Arrange on top of the potatoes (work fast or it'll go cold). Simmer the sauce to reheat and pour through a sieve over the meat and drizzle a little around the plate for effect. Serve immediately.

Jamus, that sounds delish! Thank you.

I thought it might be worth mentioning, I've read, heard mentioned etc. several sources recommending the use of the native mint, Mentha australis in cooking. I recently aquired some of this great little plant and am growing it successfully in a pot. The smell of the leaves is VERY much like pennyroyal, and I trust my nose enough to suggest that it might be high in pulegone. the toxic principle in pennyroyal. Anyway, instinct tells me to take care with this herb.

Hmmm. I've never seen it, but I've read that its flavour 'is closer to that of peppermint than of garden mint'. If you say it resembles pennyroyal, then I'll probably choose to avoid it, too.

I hear that the aboriginal people used to like to roast native duck for long period of time in a medium oven, seasoned with herbs and bush limes, a little like the french Duck Lorange. Very nice I imagine...

Resurrecting, hope no-one minds. As I'm about to become a native food obsessive, I've been spending a couple of unemployed weeks accumulating information, links, etc on growing and eating the stuff. Sadly, a lot of the links out there are out-of-date - but recipes don't date, really :). There's a lovely set of links below.

In April I held a dinner party where the aim was to eat 100% australian native produce (right down the oils and herbs). Owing to a dearth of fresh greens in Sydney, it ended up as about 75%, but I was pretty pleased all the same. Roo and emu rolled in herbs, bbq'd and thickly sliced featured with bunya nut fritters, but the bush tomato consomme was pretty excellent too. Cooked in macadamia nut oil where oil was required. Full recipes are being written up and thrown on a website when I get around to it ...

Here is a link that might be useful: Samantha Lane's pages on bushfoods

Keep us informed when you get the site up and running!

Site's linked from "My Page" but it's still in the "getting there" stage :). Actually it's a weblog with a lot of side-links currently ...