Transcript

4.30.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated April May
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twenty twenty six. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a
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reading service intended for people who are blind or have
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other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the article titled how Australian
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chefs and farmers are rediscovering the ingredients that have been
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there all along. From kangaroo grass to kakadoo plums, native
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foods are redefining diner's taste buds and deepening their connection
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to the land. By j Cheshi's kangaroo grass covers the
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hillside at Yambura, Bruce Pasco's farm in the East Gippsland
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region of Victoria. In this sparsely populated rural corner of
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Southeast Australia, the native weed doesn't warrant much thought. It's
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a sturdy bulwark against erosion and catnip for livestock and
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marsupials hopping in from the forest to Pasco. Though, the
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seventy eight year old author of a groundbreaking and controversial
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history of Aboriginal agriculture, Dark Emu, it's something more profound
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a portal to Australia's past, when kangaroo grass planketed the
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continent before imported pasture grass arrived with sheep and cattle,
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and the indigenous inhabitants ground its seeds between stones to
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make flour for flatbreads cooked on hot coals. Pasco's book,
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first published in twenty fourteen, paints a portrait of life
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before European settlement that diverges from many history books. Australia,
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he argues, was not populated exclusively by nomadic hunter gatherers
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living off what they scrounged from the land, as some
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eighteenth century English explorers had described it, a characterization that
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was later used to justify rapid conquest. Pasco, while digging
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through archives at the Victoria State Library in Melbourne, found
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historical accounts that told a different story of encounters with
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people living in permanent settlements and using complex systems of
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agriculture and aquaculture with stone farming tools and fish dams
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and irrigation trenches. In the journals of Major Thomas Mitchell,
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an explorer and surveyor who traversed eastern Australia in the
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eighteen thirties and forties, Pasco read of grass piled in
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hayricks so that the desert was softened into the agreeable
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semblance of a hayfield, of seed made by the natives
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into a kind of paste or bread, and of land
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patches that resembled ground broken with the hoe. George Gray,
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another explorer of the same period, wrote of encountering frequent
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wells and land perforated with holes the natives made to
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dig up yams. In Western Australia, a settler named Jesse
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Hammond wrote of encountering a wicker favents built across a
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stream and a platform above it, where local people stood
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to catch the fish as they swam through the race.
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Synthesizing these accounts and others, Pasco's book became a pop
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history bestseller in Australia and a political lightning rod. Most
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of what it describes, he writes, disappeared as European settlements
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and agricultures subsumed or Aboriginal land and food culture. People
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would say, when we first came to this country, you
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could run your fingers through the soil because of the
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intensity of the agriculture that had been going on. Other
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people were saying, we saw Aboriginal people driving kangaroos in
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a mob, Pascoe told me on a springtime visit to
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his farm. I didn't learn that in my history classes
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any of that. It had been hidden from us deliberately. Pasco,
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a well known public intellectual since the nineteen eighties and
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the author of more than two dozen books of fiction,
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poetry and history, with an unread, truly white beard and
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a wide furrowed face, says that he likewise grew up
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with holes in his family's history. Raised in and around Melbourne,
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he learned about his Cornish ancestors, who had come to
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Adelaide in the nineteenth century to work in the mines
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on Australia's south coast, but only much later in life
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did he hear from relatives that he had indigenous ancestry too.
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He had also long dreamed of living off the land.
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When he was a young school teacher and just starting
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out as a writer, he lived on his own seven
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hundred seventy acre farm raising cattle. I was playing at
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farming because I loved it, he told me. The experience
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stuck with him even after he moved back to Melbourne,
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where he worked as a researcher for Victoria's Department of
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Education and later as a professor of Indigenous Agriculture at
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the University of Melbourne. Then in twenty eighteen, he bought Jumburah.
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In the years since, along with his life partner Lynn
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Harwood seventy four, also a former sp school teacher, and
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a pair of Australian cattle dogs, Pasco has worked to
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revive long ignored aboriginal foods and cultivation methods. The one
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hundred forty acre farm, a former cattle ranch, was cut
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from old growth rainforest along the banks of the Wallagaro River.
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Pasco is now working the land to grow a host
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of indigenous edible plants. Kangaroo grass, almost entirely forgotten as
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a staple of the Australian diet. Twenty seven percent protein
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he boasts is threshed into flower that's sold to local
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bakers and a few chefs in Melbourne through his culinary enterprise,
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Black Duck Foods, which seeks to influence Australian agriculture toward
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environmental sustainability and greater social inclusivity. In a small garden
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behind his home, caged to keep out kangaroos, wallabies and wombats,
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Pasco has planted neat rows of chocolate lilies, vanilla lilies,
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and bulbine lilies, native perennials with squat finger tubers dangling
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in bunches from the roots. He dug one out and
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handed it to meat to taste. It was extra crunchy
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like a radish and subtly sweet. You can shop it
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up and use it in dumplings, use it in a salad,
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eat it raw, fry it, bake it, put it in
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a curry. He said they're very forgiving plants and cooking
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because they hold their texture. In a makeshift nursery nearby,
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potted saplings of native quandong and courageong trees were beginning
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to sprout. When they mature, the quandongs will produce a
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tart fruit with twice the vitamin sea of an orange.
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The couragengs will produce edible roots with a sweet coconut taste.
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We bought this farm in order to try and educate
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Australians about their food. Pasco said it doesn't look like
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a conventional farm. It's wild food, a lot of it.
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In the nearly two hundred and fifty years since the
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so called first fleet carrying a one hundred and fifty
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British convicts established the first settlement in what would become
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Sydney in seventeen eighty eight. Australia has drifted steadily away
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from its native bounty. Subsequent waves of migration brought foods
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from everywhere else pork pies, lamb roasts, shrimp, wantons, lasagna.
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The original foods eaten on the continent for thousands of
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years were largely forgotten as indigenous communities came under assault,
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their languages outlawed, their belief systems eroded. The first thing
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that goes is culture. Pasco told me, genetically your Aboriginal,
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but you have no knowledge unless it's passed on to you.
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By the mid nineteenth century, many indigenous communities had been
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forced off their ancestral lands and were living on government
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rations of white flour, refined sugar, and tinned beef. In
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the popular imagination, the wild foods of the continent some
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sixty five hundred edible plants and animals have been documented,
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were reduced to survivalist fair known by the blanket colloquialism.
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Bush tucker, an archetype emerged of the ossy bushmen, most
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memorably caricatured on film by Crocodile Dundee in the nineteen
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eighties as a rugged individualist with enough Aboriginal food knowledge
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to survive alone in the outback. On Australian television there
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was bush Tucker Man, a former Australian Army officer named
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Les Hiddens, who from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety
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six traveled through remote regions, surviving on snakes, lizards and
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mangrove worms. But over the past forty years, as Australians
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have grappled with the legacy of policies and attitudes that
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decimated Aboriginal culture, some native foods have begun making in
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roads into wider notions of Australian identity. There has been
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a reappraisal, especially in the restaurant world, with chefs adding
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native finger limes and lemon, myrtle, bush tomatoes and cockadoo plums,
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kangaroo steaks and emo sausages to their kitchen arsenals. While
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popular tastes can be slow to change, a handful of
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chefs and TV personalities have broken through to the mainstream,
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many of them outsiders, it turns out, who are perhaps
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less burdened by the cultural baggage of growing up in Australia.
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Jean Paul Brunetaux, whose family moved to Australia from France
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when he was twelve, debuted one of the first restaurant
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men used to mix European cooking techniques with Australia's native
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ingredients when in nineteen eighty three he took over Round Trees,
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located in a Sydney suburb. Brunetou started his cooking career
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in the Australian Merchant Navy, and he got the idea
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for the reimagined restaurant while traveling the world. It dawned
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on me that wherever I went, I could eat local cuisine.
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He told me recently. If I was in Thailand, I
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could get Thai food. In Germany, I'd get German food.
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But whenever I came back to Australia, I always thought, well,
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we don't really have an Australian cuisine. At one port
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of call in New Zealand, he tasted the foods of
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the native Mayori people and a light bulb went off,
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I thought to myself, He said, hang on a sec
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what did the original people in Australia eat? He returned
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home from his tour of duty and began researching the
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traditional Aboriginal diet, as Pasco would do decades later. Bruneto
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read through accounts from early explorers and settlers. This was
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pre internet, he said, so it met libraries and historical texts.
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He began to track down ingredients and experiment. Every time
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I tasted something, I was wowed, he said. It was amazing.
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I thought, why isn't this used? Why don't we know
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about this? There's a cuisine in this. At Round Trees,
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the first Australian restaurant with a fully native concept, as
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Bruneto describes it, he served barbecued witchety grubs, wood eating
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moth larvae with a nutty taste in peanut sauce. He
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introduced urban Australians to quandongs and lemon myrtle, a tropical
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shrub with lemony leaves, and he successfully lobbied the government
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of New South Wales to approve the use of kangaroo
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meat in restaurants. It was pioneering work and I loved it,
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he said. By the nineteen nineties, a full fledged native
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foods movement seemed to be gaining momentum. In ten years,
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Australia's cuisine is going to be so new, so different
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from the rest of the world, that it's going to
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have an effect like nouvelle cuisine in France ten years ago,
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Bruneto predicted in the Montreal Gazette in nineteen ninety. Bush
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Tucker catches On read a headline in the Christian Science
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Monitor the following year touting the hot new trend in
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outback cuisine. But while niche businesses sprang up supplying native ingredients,
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promoting especially their superfood nutrient rich qualities, no explosion in
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restaurants focused on native foods materialized. When Mark Olif, an
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Indigenous chef from a sprawling suburb called Dapto on the
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coast of New South Wales, opened his first solo restaurant
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in Sydney in the mid nineties, serving crocodile meat lasagna
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and kangaroo loin with pepperberry sauce as a stand in
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for stekopovre. The new enthusiasm was already waning. Olive called
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his restaurant Midland, after historical feasting places found along the
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Australian coast, where Indigenous people left behind scattered and buried fishbones,
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seashells and other meal time detritus. His restaurant lasted only
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two years. People couldn't understand what I was trying to do,
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he told me recently. It was way ahead of its time.
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A gregarious, performative figure, Olive went on to study film
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and TV in Melbourne, and he found better luck promoting
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native foods when he successfully pitched a show to Australian
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TV called out Back Cafe. In the first episode, which
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premiered in two thousand six, he foraged for native ingredients
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and pieced together a telegenic spread, a salad of cold yabbees,
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a native crayfish pizza topped with smoked kangaroo ice cream
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infused with wattle seeds. It introduced Australians to a lot
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of indigenous herbs, spices, things they'd never heard of. He said,
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That's where my career started. The program ran for just
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two seasons, but it helped make Olive a celebrity. He
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has appeared regularly on telege since as a judge on
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the cooking competition The Chef's Line, as a co host
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of The Foraging focused on Country Kitchen, and has traveled
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the world as a sort of cultural ambassador. It's been
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a good forty years I've been working with this stuff.
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Olive told me of his experience promoting native ingredients, and
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it's only since reality TV started thirteen fourteen years ago
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that it's moved forward. For a while, Australians seemed most
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interested in engaging with native foods on television. Jacqueson Frillo,
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a Scotsman who settled in Australia in two thousand, was
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another chef and another outsider to make a name for
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himself by celebrating native ingredients on Australian TV. Like Bruneto,
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he had been startled to learn that the country had
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no widely recognized pre colonial cuisine to speak of, and
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he began visiting indigenous communities to learned about foods most
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chefs ignored. In twenty thirteen, he opened his flagship restaurant
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Urana and Adelaide, serving an elaborate tasting menu heavy on
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native ingredients. In twenty fourteen, I spent a week in
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the outback with Sonfrillo in a remote corner of the
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Kimberley in Western Australia. We slept under the stars and
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ate the wild food around us. A friend of Zanfrello's
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cooked us a feast of kangaroo tale the sinewy, gelatinous
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meat roasted in a pit he dug in the ground.
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Son Frillo spoke of his dream of creating a network
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of food suppliers through a foundation he intended to start,
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and of plans to catalog everything in a database of
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native foods. Sonfrillo's fame skyrocketed as he opened new restaurants
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and became a fixture on Australian TV as a judge
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on the cooking competition program Master Chef. He remained an
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evangelist for native ingredients, but three years ago, after public
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reports of financial mismanagement at his foundation, Zanfrillo was found
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dead in a Melbourne hotel room at the age of
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forty six. Although his cause of death was never made public,
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family and friends have suggested that Sonfrillo, who was married
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and had four children, died unexpectedly of natural causes. Today,
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Australia's most prominent restaurant showcasing native ingredients is run by
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another transplant chef, Ben Shuri from New Zealand. His restaurant Attica,
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is a high end yet understated gastronomic gem nestled between
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a massage therapist's studio and a veterinary hospital in a
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sleepy inner suburb of Melbourne called Ripponlia. In two thousand five,
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Shuri responded to an ad for a head chef job
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at what was then a modest neighborhood bistro. It lacked
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a clear eye identity, he recalled recently. The owner didn't
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work in hospitality and wasn't even present most of the time.
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He told me to make it whatever I wanted. Churie
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introduced a new menu that fused references from his eclectic
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background as a chef, a mix of Thai, French and
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Australian influences. It was more autobiographical than of any particular place.
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Soon the restaurant was racking up raves and food pilgrims
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flooded Rippamly. A decade ago, Schuie began a decisive shift,
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inspired in part by meeting Pasco, who was promoting Dark
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Emu at a food and ideas festival. That book had
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a profound effect on me. Schu Ree told me it
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totally flipped the script, dismantled the lie of Aboriginal people
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being solely hunter gatherers, and presented them as farmers, which
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of course they were. It was so obvious, it was
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right there. Schurie had already been experimenting with ingredients. He
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foraged himself. I poisoned myself multiple times, he told me.
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But Pasco introduced him to Aboriginal elders, who taught him
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the traditional uses of the foods he'd been collecting and
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other intriguing ingredients. He learned how to turn bunya nuts,
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the world's largest pine nuts, into a chestnutty puree. How
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to grill fish wrapped and bark from the paper bark tree,
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how to harness green ants as a tangy pepperys seasoning.
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Attica's chefs now cook almost exclusively with native ingredients. We
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haven't used hard hoof animals here for some time, said Shrwery,
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chatting in the restaurant's dining room. We prefer to use
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wallaby and kangaroo and emu and crocodile. Guests would begin
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arriving for dinner in a few hours. On a wooden tray,
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he'd laid out a selection of produce from the restaurant's larder.
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He held up a golf ball sized fruit with the
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bright purple skin. This ouh ray plum is intense, he said.
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It's sour on an almost unprecedented level. It makes an
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amazing jam. The fruit is also known as Davidson plum
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after a nineteenth century sugar cane grower, John Davidson, but
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Scheweery prefers the Aboriginal name. Davidson was a notorious murderer
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of Aboriginal people. He said, herein lies the trickiness of
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our country. There were also sprigs of salt bush, a
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wild salty shrub that grows on beeches and in deserts
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across the country. And red champagne finger limes with tiny
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sour pearls sometimes called citrus caviare bursting out from under
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their ruddy skin. My twelve course dinner that night included
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a miniature map of Australia, playfully constructed from thinly sliced
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raw fish, with tiny dollops of native produce deposited around
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various corners of the country, smidgeens of munch tree trees,
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tiny berries from South Australia that taste like spiced apples,
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of Geraldton wax, the soapy herbaceous leaves of a shrub
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from Western Australia of waregaal greens, a native spinach from
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New South Wales and elsewhere of rainforest cherry, a tangy
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sweet berry from Queensland. A buttery tart shell came filled
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with pepperberry cream and a sprinkle of green ants from
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the Northern Territory, adding a citrusy zing to the dish,
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which was served on a plate with hyperrealistic ants painted
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on it. Crocodile rib meat arrived on flatbread in a
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sort of sweet and savory gyro smeared with macedamia nut,
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yogurt and native honey. A classic Australian meat pie was
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stuffed with stewed kangaroo and paired with a shot of
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dark Emu Lager, a local beer brewed with native grass
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seeds and named after Pascoe's book. Schwelry has forged personal
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relationship with many of his suppliers, who are often isolated
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and working with very small quantities. We don't really have
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a consistent supply chain for some of these foods, he said.
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It may seem odd then that some ingredients I first
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tasted a decade ago have become big business, but not
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in the way chefs like Showery would hope. Demand has
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come instead from the pharmaceutical and beauty industries think skin
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creams made with finger limes and cacadoo plums, and shampoos
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infused with river mint. At the same time, Aboriginal owned
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businesses have been mostly left out of the expanding native
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foods and botanical sector, accounting for just two percent of
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all generated revenue according to a recent estimate. Pasco is
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working to even the playing field to pass down traditional knowledge.
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He explained, Aboriginal elders sometimes encourage younger generations to gather
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plants for interested outsiders, such as cosmetic industry representatives who
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show up in Aboriginal communities. They more or less donate
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those plants, and then the cosmetics industry think that's the price,
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Pascoe told me, so we're having to educate the market
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to be a bit more respectful. One morning in Perth,
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in Western Australia, I met with the founders of Gather Foods,
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an Aboriginal owned business, in their kitchen and a historic
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building of the Aboriginal Advancement Council, a civil rights group.
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The company launched in twenty sixteen as a catering business,
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before expanding to include events, food production, and a wholesale
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arm selling a wide range of native spices, herbs, jams
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and sauces. We started the business really to take the
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narrative back around native food, Jerry Mattera, a co founder
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and a trained chef raised in a small town south
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of Perth, told me. Along with funneling native ingredients into
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corporate catering gigs, gather foods hosts, bush Tucker talks and
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tastings experiences that offer tips on using, sourcing and growing
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native edible plants, with an option to include traditional dance
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performances and smoking ceremonies. The hope is to get people
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thinking a little bit differently about native foods. As Matera
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explained it, our ancestors have been here for over sixty
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thousand years and people should know that. The company works
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with the network of farms around the country to source
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native ingredients, which it slips into a range of sleekly
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packaged commercial products pints of chocolate, wattleseed ice cream, jars
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of chili and desert lime flavored roasted nuts, bottles of
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gin infused with salt bush and sunrise lime. This year
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on the waterfront in Fremantle, just south of Perth, Materira
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and his team are opening their own culinary complex with
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the cafe, retail shop and an event space, and they
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have been working on exporting their products globally. I feel
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like we're at the tip of an explosion, Matira said.
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Like many champions of indigenous Australian ingredients, Materia sees Pasco
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as a personal hero. All that he's about is bringing
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native food to the forefront, Materira told me. In twenty
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twenty four, Pasco published a new book, Black Duck, A
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Year at Yamburah, chronicling both life on his farm as
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it emerged from the COVID nineteen pandemic and the public
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reaction to dark Emu with pastoral sketches by Harwood. Since
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buying the property, he's tackled his share of logistical challenges,
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from staff and equipment shortages to devastating wildfires. While launching
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an agricultural business from scratch, He's made his life more
24:54
difficult by hewing closely to indigenous growing techniques. We are
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not applying fertilizer except in the very early stages, not
25:04
providing much water because part of the argument is these
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practices are sustainable and the old people did it with
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what was available, so we have to do it with
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what is available. He uses fire as a land management
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tool firestick farming. The Aboriginal community calls it conducting controlled
25:22
burns to clear out invasive vegetation and encourage new growth.
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The weather was turning windy. Harwood was preparing lamb stew
25:32
for dinner. Near By, a mob of kangaroos emerged from
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the forest to graze. As we spoke, Pasco noticed smoke
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rising from the river bank, and he popped down to
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investigate the embers of a fire lit earlier that day
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had come back to life. Jumping on to the dock
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where he moors his motor boat in the river, he
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grabbed a bucket and doused the burning planks, then rushed
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back up the hill. He returned a few minutes later
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with a vat of water and a powerful hose, and
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soon the fire was out. Kangaroo grass farming, it turns out,
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is rigorous work, and the business has been a struggle.
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But Pasco has hope. It's very boutique at the moment,
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he admitted, but sooner or later he felt sure it
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would catch on and if we have anything to do
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with it, there will be cultural acknowledgment and Aboriginal people
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will benefit. To hasten that change. In early twenty twenty five,
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Pasco brought on new partners at the farm, handing day
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to day management over to members of the local Indigenous community,
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and he has set in motion plans to transfer ownership.
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A few years ago, in the Sydney Opera House, Olive
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opened a new incarnation of Bidden, more than twenty five
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years after closing the first. It's a more ambitious version
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of the original restaurant, serving kangaroo prejute, crocodile tanduri, geraldton
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wax panacotta and cocktails made with green ant infused gin.
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Among restaurants, it may be the most high profile bridge
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yet between ancient and modern Australia, another step toward bringing
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native ingredients into the mainstream. At the restaurant's inauguration in
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July twenty twenty three, Olive spoke to some four hundred
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well wishers, who included his ninety year old father. Recalling
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his early days as a chef, Olive told the crowd,
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if you said to me that an indigenous bloke from
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Dapto would one day open a restaurant at the Sydney
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Opera House, I would have said, that's mission impossible. This
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concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader
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has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have
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a great day.