Local indigenous delectables to celebrate

Chef Andrew Fielke is one of the few non-indigenous for whom a visit to the botanic gardens is every bit as productive as one to the supermarket.

Chef Andrew Fielke in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. Picture: Roy Van Der Vegt

Chef and food pioneer Andrew Fielke is one of the few non-indigenous Australians for whom a visit to the local botanic gardens is every bit as productive as a trip to the supermarket.

Within minutes of arriving at the sub-tropical section of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, ­Fielke rummages through the undergrowth and comes up with a handful of sweet Illawarra plums and a giant bunya cone, the seeds from which can be used to make cakes, breads and pesto, with leaves from the juvenile bunya tree providing delicious greens.

The classically trained chef, who once worked at London’s Savoy Hotel, launched Adelaide’s Red Ochre Grill restaurant in 1992, popularising ingredients such as saltbush, wattle seed, samphire, myrtle and paperbark.

More branded Red Ochre restaurants followed in Cairns and Alice Springs to showcase indigenous ingredients to locals and the tourist market.

Now, in an Australian first, he has condensed decades of knowledge into an encyclopaedia of indigenous foods, Australia’s Native Creative Cuisine, documenting every delicious ingredient that can be found from the scrub to suburban backyards, and providing dozens of recipes for their use.

With the lockdown having forced Australians to explore themes of self-sufficiency and reconnect with nature, and with big-name chefs such as MasterChef host Jock Zonfrillo popu­larising his work with native ingredients at his restaurant Orana, Fielke believes the book has landed at a good time.

“I am passionate about us rec­ognising our indigenous food heritage because food is the story of who we are as a community and country,” he said. “Every major food country celebrates its food culture as a central part of its identify … but we have done a poor job celebrating ours.”

Fielke left the restaurant game in the 1990s to devote himself to sourcing, grow­ing and selling nat­ive ingredients through his business, Creative Native Foods, which operates from a warehouse in Adelaide’s Hindmarsh.

His business was smashed by coronavirus and at its worst fell to just 4 per cent of its usual turnover as restaurants closed and tourism and flights collapsed.

The good news is his business is returning, and he hopes to expand it further as a job creator for indigenous communities operating market gardens, and to showcase indigenous food culture.

“Food can be a pathway to reconciliation,” he said.