PEREGIAN MARKET, SUNSHINE COAST

Yes, It's nearly Easter, just days away now....remember to support the Bilby when you think of Easter treats....I know that the bunny has developed into quite a character over the years and the silver foiled chocolate images with bright smiling faces and 2 big teeth do look cute....but the Bilby is one of our native animals and does need your support and protection. Keep it in mind.

I'll be at the Peregian Market, on the Sunshine Coast, this Sunday with a lot of Outback Chef products, if you're around please stop buy and say hello.

Have a safe and happy Easter break
Jude

ABOUT QUANDONGS

I love the name Quandongs and it seems to get everyone in.......I've had a lot of people ask me how to cook them .....they're a bit like cooking rubarb, you need to add a fair bit of sugar as they are fairly sour if you want to stew them to eat over cereal or as a desert with ice-cream.

Often known as the desert or native peach, although they're not a bit like them in look or flavour the name goes back to the days of the European settlers. It's a tart fruit with a large pitted kernel.

The Quandong is now grown as a commercial crop and the CSIRO have been studying it since 1973 to find out the ideal growing conditions...the quandong moth is a bit of a problem and when you buy them in dried version keep them in a cool and dry place.

The fruit itself is very high in Vitamin C (twice that of oranges) and has been a staple food in the outback for the Aboriginal people.

The best way to store Quandongs is in the dried form and to reconstitute put into cold water...approx 1 cup quandong to 1 ltre of water, simmer for a few minutes then leave to soak a few hours, or ideally in the fridge overnight. They will plump up to over twice their size and weight.

The liquid used for this can be boiled up with equal parts sugar to create a syrup and used over ice-cream or other deserts...."waste not want not" it's a fantastic bright red and so looks great drizzeled around the plate.

more on Quandongs and cooking tomorrow......

What happened to last week??

Hi,

Australia Day came and went so fast as did last week, I think having a public holiday on Tuesday confused everyone. I've been spending a lot of time upgrading the Outback Chef site, it's starting to look good, although it's a bit like house-keeping, the job is never done, you always see something new. But if you do have any ideas or suggestions for improvement, please let me know.

I got a heap of Mountain Pepper leaf in a few days back, the fantastic smell seems to overpower everything else. The pic in this blog is mountain pepper leaf growing in Tasmania.

There won't be any more pepperberries available until next season now, which will be towards the end of April. If you need any let me know and I'll put it on back order.

Have a great week,
Jude

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