Growing Bush tomatoes and smokey water

An "old bushie" told me the other day that if you smoke some water and put it on your bush tomatoes they grow well. Bush tomatoes, as we know, grow in the heat of the desert and need a good bushfire to propogate. Now if you take your billy-can and put it over a fire and allow the smoke of the fire to get in the water then when its cold water your bush tomatoes, they will love it and prosper!

The bush tomatoes pictured opposite are the dried version, you can buy them from www.makingtracks.com.au. When using grind them first.

Bush Tomatoes

I've just got some new bush tomatoes in, they were a little hard to get last year due to climatic conditions. Bush Tomatoes are still native harvested and most of the time are dried in the sun.

Bush tomatoes grow in the desert areas of Australia they are an important crop and one of the Aboriginal people's most precious fruit.

The plants will grow in force for a few seasons and then dry off waiting for the next bushfire to regenerate. Aboriginal women collect these fruits when dried in their coolamuns (a carved wooden dish) grind them to a fine powder add water to form a paste, roll them into balls to be dried again and stored in the trees for use later, this way they would keep for many months.

The fruit, after drying in the sun, looks like a raisin and is a reddish/brown colour. They can make you ill if you eat too many of them when they are fresh, the drying process reduces the level of alkaloids in the fruit.

The bush tomato has a spicy flavour and can be used in many recipes. For recipe ideas go to www.bushfoodrecipes.com.au