Category Eat

Beet kvass is becoming well known among the fermented drink offerings now, but Sharon Flynn from The Fermentary in Daylesford, Victoria, loves this darker, more beer-like version made from bread.

Drink your stale bread? Yes! Ferment those leftovers and within a week or two it will have bubbled and fizzed into a delicious and nutritious drink with a flavour profile somewhere between cider and beer. Depending on how long you ferment your rye kvass for, and how much sugar you add to it, the wild yeasts can produce an alcohol content of up to 2.8 percent alcohol by volume, so this is not a drink for the kids.

There are many more familiar ways to make use of leftover bread. You can dry and use it for crumbing, for example, or turn it into delicious nostalgic puddings. But fermenting it into something else entirely is also a very satisfying thing to do with a stale loaf of good bread.

Laksa is a delicious medley of flavours originating in Malaysia and South-East Asia. Full of fresh ingredients, many are medicinal and most are easy to grow, especially if you live in a tropical climate.

Laksa has become iconic in the Australian city of Darwin, a multicultural melting pot that is reflected in its cuisine, colourful markets and local produce. From food stalls and restaurants vying for the fame of making the city’s best laksa, where recipes become closely guarded family secrets, through to the launch of the annual Darwin International Laksa Festival in 2019.

This understated star of fermented foods has been around for centuries, providing extraordinary bacterial assistance to the human microbiome.

If you’re into living, probiotic foods and you already have a sourdough starter bubbling away on your kitchen bench or a kombucha ‘mushroom’ gracing a dark shelf, then dairy kefir will need no introduction. Known as dairy kefir, milk kefir or simply kefir (pronounced kef-fear), this unlikely fermented food is thought to have appeared many thousands of years ago in Central Asia, when people began domesticating and milking animals.

While the culture itself looks like innocuous little cauliflower florets, it packs a big punch in terms of probiotics, with a list of beneficial bacteria and yeasts as long as your arm, far outweighing anything you will find in the highest-quality commercial or homemade yoghurt.

By using native Australian ingredients in your kitchen, you can prepare food that is better for our environment, is more sustainable and celebrates truly local food.

Damien Coulthard and Rebecca Sullivan are a South Australian couple who, through their company Warndu and book Warndu Mai, aim to regenerate culture, community, tradition, health and soil. Warndu means good in Damien’s traditional Adnyamathanha language, which is native to the Flinders Ranges country, with mai meaning food.

Rebecca has completed her Masters in International Rural Development and Sustainable Agriculture and is currently undertaking another masters in Food History. Damien is a teacher, an artist and proud Adnyamathanha and Dieri man. Together they’ve produced a cookbook that makes native ingredients accessible for all Australians through otherwise familiar recipes. The foreword is written by Yuin man and author Bruce Pascoe.

More and more people are willing to spend the extra money for organically grown and prepared food, with an Australian industry now worth $2.6 billion annually. So what’s all the fuss about and are there genuine reasons why we should be choosing organic?

We’ve all been there, standing in the supermarket looking at the organic chicken, small and pale in its plastic wrapping and three times the price of the plump conventional chicken alongside it. Or the plastic-wrapped organic broccoli next to its conventional naked offering, and we have wondered is it worth it? If we can afford it and, importantly, if we’re putting our family at risk if we don’t?

With summer comes a bounty of fruit, often in very large quantities. Dehydration is a relatively easy and effective way to make the most of the season’s generous gifts.

There are many ways to preserve fruit. You can turn it into jams, jellies, relishes or bottle it whole. But what makes dehydrating a really useful tool to have in your preserving kit is that it gives you a break both from working with hot glass jars, as well as recipes that often require large amounts of sugar.

Dehydration, however, requires you to simply wash, cut and place on trays. You can disappear while the hours-long process takes place, checking in occasionally to see how the drying is going. If dried well and stored in an airtight container, the fruit will be shelf stable and delicious for at least 12 months. Dried fruit has a greater concentration of nutrients, calories and fibre, so it’s best consumed in moderation due to its high fructose content.

Many people are surprised to learn that clover is an edible weed. We all know it well having grown up with it, wishing away sunny afternoons as kids searching for that elusive four-leaf clover.

Clover is the common name for plants of the genus Trifolium which, broken down in Latin, means three (tri) leaf (folium). It consists of 300 species of flowering plants in the legume or Fabaceace family.

Trifolium repens, or white or Dutch clover, is probably the most common in urban and regional areas. It has white or soft-pink flowers and the leaves boast distinctive markings. Red clover is also common; it’s similar in appearance to Dutch clover but its flowers are red and it has no markings on its leaves.

Becoming an urban forager means tapping into a resource of free and abundant food. But whether it’s foraging edible weeds, redistributing excess produce or even diving into a dumpster, there’s far more you can gain than just a free meal.

The savvy urban forager can dine out on gourmet cheese, berries, herbal teas and locally grown olives without ever stepping foot into a shop. But the philosophy goes further than just eating for free. You’ll reconnect with nature, save food going to landfill, learn plant names growing in your yard, parks and bikeways and connect with your neighbours.

Wild harvest

Wild harvest means collecting food that is often unknowingly growing around us and many of us discard as weeds. There is a bounty of culinary and medicinal plants ready to be put to good use. Close to the ground you will find dandelion, nettles, wild fennel, plantain and chickweed, while apples, figs, olives and riberries are a few examples of what can be found on trees and shrubs.