Quandong

This tree grows all over the country preferring sandy arid conditions. Its taste is close to apricot crossed with rhubarb with a touch of cinnamon. Quandong fruits combine well with native peppers, mints and thyme. They work well with apricots, figs, bananas, apples, pears, chilli, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Uses: quandong port and chilli sauce, quandong jam, marinate and add to ice cream, steamed quandong pudding, quandong and macadamia stuffing.

Wikipedia: Quandong

Bush Tomato

The bush tomato is a true desert shrub that requires little water and thrives in the sun. The bush tomato is a prolifically growing fruit. It was a staple of aboriginal desert dwellers. They gathered the fruits, which flourished particularly after fire and rainfall, and then dried them. The dried fruits would be then ground and mixed with water to form a thick paste. This was rolled into large balls and dried again to be stored in the fork of a tree for later use.

Bush tomatoes look like yellowish cherry tomatoes with a green tinge. They must be dried before eating to reduce levels of alkaloids that can be dangerous. Dried, they shrivel to a rich reddish brown and look a bit like a raisin. This little fruit is probably more like a spice than a tomato and is best used in a ratio of 1 part bush tomato to 10 parts other ingredients. The taste is a little spicy, piquant, even curry-like. The flavour can be very bitter and overpowering if too much is added.

The best way to use the bush tomato is ground. It is best not to try to re-hydrate the whole fruit. Bush tomatoes are a great addition to almost any tomato based dish. They add dimension to casseroles and soups and additionally act as a thickening agent. They begin to re-hydrate, absorbing water and seasoning at the same time. If making a tomato sauce, add 100g bush tomato to 1 kg fresh tomato towards the end of cooking. Bush tomatoes go with chilli, pepper, cheese, olives, anchovies, onions eggplants, and tomatoes. In fact, most vegetables work well with the flavour of bush tomato.

Uses: tomato pizza sauce top with goat cheese and basil, bush tomato mayonnaise, sweet potato and bush tomato risotto, bush tomato and chilli salsa, bush tom and red wine sauce.

Wikipedia: Bush Tomato

The possibilities for the use of bush foods are endless. Who knows, we may all be scrambling about the base of a bush tomato tree in the dessert soon. At least we will know what to do with some of the fruits of this incredible array of foods.

Bibliography

• Wild Lime: Cooking from the Bush Food Garden, Juleigh Robbins
• A Taste of the Bush Vol. 2, Jill Richardson
• www.cherikoff.net
• www.bushfood.net
• Bushfood on Wikipedia