Bush Cuisine

Kangaroo and Quandong

 There is nothing more Australian than kangaroo while the epitome of our bush tucker is the quandong.

 The name quandong is a Wiradjuri word from southwestern NSW, although you can find them all over the Outback, anywhere with red sandy soil.  They grow on spinifex plains, red sandhills, mulga country and often near watercourses and salt lakes.

 My grandmother’s people were German settlers, who eked out an existence in arid bushland near Morgan, S.A. She was happy when she came across the crimson fruits dangling from their droopy trees like Christmas baubles and ate them straight off the tree.  They used to grow abundantly in Central Australia but wild camels and cattle ate most of them.

 Although Aboriginal people have been drying quandongs for centuries, they are ironically easier to get hold of in the big cities than in the Outback, unless you come across fruiting trees during spring. Outback cooks have to order them from wholesalers in Adelaide or elsewhere, as not many are harvested around here, and many come from commercial plantations around the country.  Coles occasionally has them in the fruit and veg section.

 You can find kangaroo in the meat section of the major supermarkets.  Alternatively, drive really fast through the bush at night and you’ll find it wrapped around the front of your vehicle. 

 Kangaroo Blackfeller Way

 Slit open the abdomen and remove the stomach and intestines.  Poke a stick into each side of the cut and tie them together with the intestines to keep the juices in.  Dig a hole 40cm deep and big enough to fit the kangaroo and light a big lot of firewood.  While the flames are high, put the kangaroo on the fire to singe off the fur.  Remove from flames, scrape off the fur and cut off the tail, which is cooked separately.  Once the fire has subsided, excavate the pit and bury the kangaroo in the hot ashes.  Cook for 1 hour.

 Instead of digging a hole, you can cook the kangaroo for half an hour on each side over hot coals. 

Kangaroo Steak with Quandong Chilli Sauce

Cook your steak on high heat in a frypan or griller, turning over as soon as the blood begins to ooze out of each already- cooked side.  Do this until the blood stops coming out if you like it well done, or serve it sooner if you prefer it that way.

 Sauce: 

Place the following in a saucepan:

15 quandongs, roughly chopped

¼ cup vinegar

2 chillis, seeded and chopped

1 teaspoon salt

 tablespoon sugar

Simmer until the quandongs are soft and the mixture is “saucy”.  The cooking time will vary depending on whether fresh or dried quandongs are used.  It will of course take longer if you’re using dried ones, so add a little water if the mixture dries out before they are done.

 If you’re not game for the above, try these less gamey-tasting  alternatives:

The Great Australian Stew

 (This was a favourite recipe of my other grandma)

 500g kangaroo meat, diced

1 onion, chopped

2 potatoes, chopped

1 carrot, sliced, or pumpkin

1 stick celery, sliced

½ cup green beans or peas

2 tablespoons vegemite (or 2 teaspoons of some other ‘mite’)

1 tablespoon tomato sauce

1 teaspoon curry powder

1 420g can baked beans (optional)

 Brown the meat in a pot over fairly high heat.  Add the onion, then the rest of the ingredients, adding enough water to cover them.  Simmer 30-40 minutes.  If including baked beans, add them just before serving.  Bring the stew to bubbling point again, then serve. 

Kangaroo Kebabs

 250g kangaroo steak

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons oyster sauce

2 teaspoons vinegar

2 teaspoons chilli sauce

1 tablespoon honey

Dice meat, marinate for half an hour in rest of ingredients, place on skewers and grill.

Quick Kangaroo Curry

1 tablespoon oil

1 onion, chopped

250g kangaroo meat, cubed

2 tablespoons Indian curry paste

1 large tomato, chopped

 Fry onion until soft.  Add meat and cook on high heat until browned.  Stir in curry paste, add 2 cups of water, then tomatoes.  Simmer.

 Meanwhile boil 1 cup of rice with ½ teaspoon of turmeric. 

 While the rice is cooking, mix up a salad of 1 chopped Lebanese cucumber, 1 small clove garlic (finely chopped) and ½ cup of natural yogurt.

Moroccan Roo Stew  (for two)

 1 tablespoon oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

250g kangaroo meat, cubed

2 tomatoes, chopped

¼ cup lemon juice

1 teaspoon cinnamon, or 1 cinnamon stick

2 cups of stock (or water and stock cubes)

2 teaspoons dried oregano

1 cup couscous

Fry onion and garlic in oil until soft.  Add meat and cook on high heat until browned.  Add remaining ingredients except couscous and simmer 30 minutes.  Prepare the couscous according to packet instructions and serve the stew on a bed of couscous.

Quandong Pie

 Filling:     2 cups quandongs

                1 cup sugar

                5 cups water

                ¼ cup cornflour

Simmer quandongs, sugar and water 10 minutes, then add cornflour mixed with a little water to thicken.  Set aside to cool.

 Pie Crust: 2 cups plain flour

                1/3 teaspoon salt

                ¾ cup butter or margarine

                A little icy water

Sift together flour and salt, mix in butter and mix to a dough with the water. Divide dough in two and roll out on a floured board. Use one to line the pie dish, add filling and top with the other.  Brush with milk, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 30 minutes at 200°C.

Wattleseed:  Gundabluey

 Gundabluey is an Aboriginal word for Acacia victoriae, a small tree that grows all around the outback, and they grow like weeds here at Quorn.  They are one of the ‘big three’ in wattleseed production, the other two being Mulga (Acacia aneura) and the Witchetty bush (Acacia kempeana).

Acacia victoriae is known by some as the elegant wattle, and I imagine that the person who came up with that name kept their distance from them, because to me they will always be prickly wattles.

Prickly wattles and I go back a long way, my first rather unfriendly encounter with them being almost 20 years ago during my early days as a volunteer on Quorn’s Pichi Richi Railway.  This was a couple of years before I fell in love with the Richman Valley as I watched it go past a train window, and 13 years before I bought 14 acres overlooking that valley just across the road from the railway line.

I’d had the block for two years before I noticed it had anything taller than grass on it, and I started to become fond of the prickly wattles because they were actually taller than I was.  Then earlier this year I discovered they were bush tucker, and as a writer of bush food recipes, that made them my new friends.

There’s a guy around here Lyle Dudley, who lives south of Wilmington and has been harvesting wattleseed in the southern Flinders for ten years, and sells the roasted and ground seeds in little baggies.  I read on his website how he puts shade cloth under the trees and beats them with a stick.  The seedpods are usually ready around January to February, but this year they are late, so in early March I park on the side of the road and attack while my young daughters play in the car. By the way, Lyle's website is: www.members.westnet.com.au/bushfood.

As I am new to Quorn I feel like a big idiot whacking these trees with a stick and want to hide every time a car comes past, except people would recognize my distinctive car anyway.  And all the spiders rain down with the pods and start crawling around the car.  My harvest comes to an end when Isabel screams that a spider is crawling on her baby sister Maya.  Besides I’m not sure how to get the seeds out of the pods anyway, Lyle doesn’t mention that part on his website.

In the end I drive down to Lyle’s to see for myself.  I find his house at the foot of the range that is Mount Remarkable, a place he built himself and has powered with solar and wind energy, which is surrounded by tons of wattleseed, 8 to be exact, stored in plastic drums all around the place.  After showing me around his garden full of exotic fruit and vegetables, he takes me to the shed where he removes the pods from the wattleseed, with the use of a converted header.  Which leaves me with half a drum of wattleseed pods that I don’t know what to do with.

Back home I first try scrunching them in my hands, you have to wear gloves and the prickles go right through them, but a lot of seeds still stick to the pod.  Then I try making a little bonfire of seed pods, but the seeds don’t roast evenly enough, some are raw and others charcoal, and there’s no way to sort them out.

 At last I try roasting them in the oven in their pods (30 minutes at 160ºC) before crushing the lot and yandying, the blackfeller way of sorting seeds.  I use a plastic bowl instead of a coolamon, and it takes quite a while before I get the motion right.  You have to toss it in the air, and let the seeds roll to the bottom, then take the crap off the top.  There is a fine dust off the pods that gives me hayfever and asthma at the same time, and if you don’t wear a dust mask I’m sure you’ll end up with some lung condition.

In the meantime I started experimenting with some of Lyle’s wattleseed, it’s a great match with chocolate so I tried it in brownies and now I can’t stop making them.  Here’s the recipe:

 Gundabluey Brownies

250g butter

2 tablespoons wattleseed, roasted and ground

½ cup cocoa

2 cups brown sugar

2 cups plain flour

3 eggs, lightly beaten

¾ cups choc bits (milk)

Melt the butter over low heat, add the wattleseed (it releases the flavour), the cocoa, then the sugar.  Mix well, remove from heat and cool a little.  Stir in the flour, eggs and choc bits.  Put mixture into a square or rectangular cake tin, and bake 30 minutes in a moderate oven.

I’d love to have more wattleseed recipes for you, but I can’t get past these brownies, so you’ll have to wait.

By now it is May and the prickly wattles are in their growing season.  The rains are long overdue, but they don’t care.  You’ve got to admire the local plants; instead of looking worriedly at the heavens wondering when on earth they are going to open, they just get on with life.

 Tarla Kramer