Native Australian Flavours – Edible Reconciliation on Everyone’s Plate

Australian chefs have been exploring native Australian flavours for decades – home cooks not so much. Edible Reconciliation aims to change that, while building careers in indigenous communities at the same time.

 

If you’re a member of Lambs’ Ears Cookbook Club (and if you’re not, you probably should be ? ) you’ll know we are cooking with native Australian flavours this month, with Nornie Bero’s “Mabu Mabu”. Australia’s First Nations people have been enjoying the tastes of our wide brown land for over 40,000 years, and Australian chefs have been exploring bush foods for decades, but home cooks have been slow to incorporate these flavours into our day-to-day repertoire – and there’s no good reason for that any more.

Cookbooks like Mabu Mabu show us how simple it is to add native Australian flavours into everyday dishes, and many products are becoming much easier to source. Most supermarkets have at least a few products based around native flavour profiles, and online stores like Herbies Spices and The Essential Ingredient offer heaps of products.

Here in Adelaide one of our major suppliers is Creative Native Foods, the concept of veteran Adelaide chef Andrew Fielke, who began the business back in 1991. He has an enormous range of fresh, dried and frozen native Australian flavours and products available both online and in his store in Hindmarsh.

 

Taking his commitment one step further, in late 2020 Andrew paired up with Yuin man Dominic Smith of Pundi Produce in South Australia’s Riverland, to form Edible Reconciliation.

Their goals with Edible Reconciliation are to make native Australian flavours a fundamental aspect of a modern diet for ALL Australians, while at the same time creating jobs and career and business opportunities within indigenous communities nation-wide.

This project looks to ensure a genuine indigenous supply chain, assisting communities by distributing their raw products nationally and internationally, and to add value to community produce from all over Australia – under their own brand and/or new local and regional brands.

They contract and source produce from indigenous growers, while encouraging sustainable growing practices, and distribute all Edible Reconciliation, Creative Native, Tuckeroo and Pundi Produce branded products through their Adelaide-based, majority indigenous owned business.

Fielke and Smith work hard stimulating further demand for native Australian foods, by means of ongoing and enthusiastic corporate and retail product development and demonstrations, while at the same time supporting exisiting growers and consulting with potential new ones who may be seeking assistance.

These two guys behind Edible Reconciliation are driven to connect indigenous and non-indigenous Australians to our native flavours and products, and also to sharing the benefits of sustainably produced nutritious native foods.

Look for the branded products on your supermarket shelves and ask for them in order to create a demand at stores. Check out the selection the brands offer and order online to begin making your home-cooked food authentically Australian. And join in with Lambs’ Ears Cookbook Club this month to begin exploring the exciting world of native Australian flavours.

 

 

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