A TASTE OF COUNTRY
Sustaining life for millennia from desert to coast, Australia’s native plants are now adding vivid flavours, colours and textures to modern menus.
WORDS Patricia Maunder
Australia’s native ingredients have nourished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities for thousands of years. In recent years, they’ve moved from Country to contemporary kitchens as flavour- drivers used with care and respect. “We need to utilise what we have in our own backyard,” says Lee Cecchin, speaking figuratively and perhaps literally too.
The chef-owner of Broken Hill’s (Wilyakali Land) The Old Saltbush restaurant (part of the Indian Pacific’s Taste of the Outback Off Train Experience) has been cooking with native ingredients for decades, thanks to her early training in Alice Springs (Mparntwe). Today, she sources from an Aboriginal-owned supplier when she isn’t growing or foraging herself.
Across Journey Beyond’s restaurants, chefs are eagerly exploring the possibilities of native ingredients. At Monarto Safari Resort’s Kutjera Restaurant & Bar, Executive Chef De Buys Nortier experiments constantly, pairing native produce with Western cooking techniques. In Melbourne (Naarm), Eureka 89’s Executive Chef Renee Martillano values the access to ingredients rarely found elsewhere. And at Sal Salis Ningaloo Reef, Head Chef Raphael Beilharz has watched availability surge: “They’re much more available than five years ago.”
These four chefs, whose careers have taken them to Europe, Asia and around Australia, all agree that the rule when cooking with native ingredients is restraint. “They can taste very intense, so a little goes a long way,” says Raphael, who uses native flavours to enhance rather than dominate. You’ll see them folded into salt cures, infused in custards, or scattered through sauces, allowing the character of the main ingredient to lead.
What follows is a chef-led guide to a handful of native ingredient favourites – where they grow, how they’re used and why they matter.
BUSH TOMATOES:
SOLANUM CENTRALE
SEA PURSLANE:
SESUVIUM PORTULACASTRUM
BUSH HONEY
Lemon myrtle: Backhousia citriodora
Native to the subtropical rainforests of Queensland and northern New South Wales, lemon myrtle has been used traditionally to flavour foods and for medicinal purposes. Its leaves are aromatic powerhouses – antioxidant, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory – best known for a bright, clean citrus profile.
“Lemon myrtle is one of the most famous native ingredients for good reason,” says Raphael. “It has an amazing zingy flavour.” He extracts it from the tough green leaves as he would from bay leaves; ground in salt cures, for example, or infused in crème brûlée. It’s a favourite at Sal Salis as well as The Old Saltbush, where Lee harvests leaves from her courtyard garden.
“I love the invigorating smell,” says Lee, who fell for this tree’s bounty decades ago when she created a limoncello cheesecake with finely milled lemon myrtle leaves. On her menu: lemon-myrtle stacked prawns and lemon-myrtle and desert lime curd for DIY mini pavlovas.
Muntries: Kunzea pomifera
Known as muntaberries, emu apples and native cranberries, muntries are a traditional summer food in South Australia and Victoria. Small and firm with four times the antioxidant levels of blueberries, they ripen red-purple and bring a sweet-tart snap with a whisper of spice.
Muntries are the native ingredient Renee uses most at Eureka 89 because they are so versatile. “I can use them in both savoury and sweet dishes,” from tomato chutney to apple crumble. They’re a favourite with duck, where an accompanying relish amplifies the bird’s rich, gamey notes. Another plus: they hold their shape even when cooked from frozen.
Sea purslane: Sesuvium portulacastrum
Sea succulents such as karkalla are a common sight at Australia’s beaches, and also in the Sal Salis kitchen. Raphael uses sea purslane most often because of its salty, crunchy, jade-green leaves. “It’s firmer than karkalla, so you can finely dice and cook it briefly without it discolouring,” says Raphael, who also uses stems and trimmings to flavour sauces. Paired with local Shark Bay scallops, its natural saltiness dovetails beautifully with butter sauces and seafood. A resilient groundcover high in vitamin C, sea purslane has long been eaten raw and cooked by Aboriginal peoples and is also valued for stabilising eroded dunes.
Saltbush: Atriplex nummularia
Dozens of native saltbush species grow across Australia’s dry inland. Leaves have been used in many ways by Aboriginal peoples, from making poultices for wounds to grinding seeds to make damper. In today’s kitchens, Old Man Saltbush, or Atriplex nummularia, is prized for its gentle, savoury salinity and herbal aroma (think green tea with a hint of rosemary).
“I just love saltbush, the flavour it passes onto food, and it goes well with so many different things,” says Lee – fitting for her restaurant The Old Saltbush. Dried, it becomes a lower-sodium seasoning for sourdough and her slow-braised, saltbush-dusted lamb shoulder. She even collaborated on an Old Saltbush gin with Broken Hill Distillery. While Lee uses this plant in “almost everything,” including whole leaves in salads, she believes it’s “one of the native ingredients that isn’t utilised enough.”
Bush tomatoes: Solanum centrale
Of around 100 native Australian tomato species, desert raisins (Solanum centrale) are the most harvested. Long valued by Indigenous communities across central desert regions, they bring an earthy, caramel complexity and are rich in vitamin C, potassium, and antioxidants. “They look like little cherry tomatoes,” says De Buys, who first encountered them on a foraging trip and now folds them into the welcome butter at Monarto’s restaurant, Kutjera (a local word for bush tomato). He’s developed a tomato salad featuring bush tomatoes, which ripen from late spring but are good to cook any time, frozen or dried.
Blood lime: Citrus australasica
A CSIRO hybrid of native red finger limes and Ellendale mandarin, blood limes are small, vivid and intensely aromatic, ruby inside and out. “It’s almost like a finger lime inside, very much segmented,” says De Buys, who uses this fruit’s flesh as a garnish. “I think the best part is the skin though, it’s amazingly aromatic,” enthuses the chef, who is such a fan he planted a blood lime tree in his backyard. He finely chops and infuses the zest into dishes like smoked-eel pearl-barley risotto with local trout, then pickles and freezes it when it’s abundant in winter.When hunger calls, enjoy a light lunch while admiring local artworks adorning the walls at Geordie’s Cafe & Art Gallery. As evening sets in, join the social buzz with sundowners at Hotel Rottnest, or choose the quieter path: watch the sky blush in shades of rose and apricot over Parakeet Bay while you dig your toes into the sand. It’s life at its best on Rottnest Island.