Mike and Gayle Quarmby grow saltbush, a desert shrub.
Mike and Gayle Quarmby's six-hectare nursery in Reedy Creek in South Australia is a veritable native herb basket. This year, the Quarmbys will harvest 10 tonnes of old-man saltbush, a prolific arid-zone bush that is a very ''now'' ingredient with top Australian chefs.
Kylie Kwong uses it in place of spring onions or garlic chives in a pancake. ''It has a natural salty flavour,'' she says.
As well as saltbush, the Quarmbys also grow samphire, sea parsley, native thyme, river mint and warrigal greens. They are flown to Sydney and Melbourne once a week and sold fresh to restaurants and some retailers.
Native herb basket ... Mike Quarmby with a riberry plant.
It has taken the Quarmbys more than a decade to bring fresh Australian native plants to the retail market.
The business, Outback Pride, does not reflect the usual commercial model. It was started in 2001 with the aim of creating jobs and training for young indigenous people, fuelled by Mike and Gayle's desire to honour the memory of their 20-year-old son Dan, who died in 2000 after a tragic accident.
In the way that often happens after a death, they saw him reflected in all young people around them. ''We were in Alice Springs and saw him everywhere we walked and in the young Aboriginal people,'' Mike says. ''These kids had drug and literacy problems, few life skills and fewer opportunities. It seemed a natural thing to do, to help.'' On the strength of Mike's 40-year career in commercial horticulture, the couple came up with the idea of cultivating desert plants in partnership with Aboriginal communities. ''It had to be based at community level so that indigenous people would have some ownership,'' Mike says.
Having grown up in Alice Springs, the daughter of Albert Namatjira's mentor and initiator of the Hermannsburg watercolour movement in the 1930s, Rex Battarbee, Gayle's cultural connections were vital in forging the valuable community partnerships that would enable Outback Pride to grow and prosper.
''My parents changed their lives to be out in the desert and to work with Aboriginal people,'' Gayle says. ''They taught me that community and the well-being of the community is important. We're lucky to still have access to the old knowledge.'' The plan was for the Quarmbys to propagate and cultivate the plants at their South Australian nursery then send them to the outback communities to grow in their ''bush nurseries''. Over the next two years Mike and Gayle clocked up 250,000 kilometres visiting communities and criss-crossing the outback on a modern-day quest for botanical specimens that could be propagated and cultivated. It was a first on this scale. ''Cultivation of desert species had not been done like this before,'' Mike says.
Once the word got out, communities were keen to be involved, but nothing about the task was straightforward. Finding suitable and palatable samples of some plant species, such as passionberry (Solanum cleistogamum), was difficult but became a personal quest. The bush foods grown in different communities in Northern Territory and South Australia were initially made into bottled preserves and dried or frozen - and this is still the case with the plants from many bush nurseries. But a call from leading chef Peter Gilmore encouraged the Quarmbys to supply fresh produce, which they do from their South Australian farm. Gilmore is a fan of all the fresh greens the Quarmbys grow, as well as seasonal fruits from the outback communities, such as the intensely perfumed muntries (Kunzea pomifera), which look like miniature apples. ''They're different, and ingredients such as that trigger ideas,'' Gilmore says.
Gilmore and Kwong sing the praises of the sea parsley that looks like flat-leaf parsley, tastes like parsley and celery and has juicy, succulent stalks.
Kwong accentuates its ''fresh oceanic tang'' by using it in seafood dishes, such as stir-fried yabbies.
Both chefs urge home cooks to get to know these native leaves and fruits. Kwong's tip? ''Look for recipes that use similar ingredients and adapt them. I've found that they have a natural affinity with Asian flavours,'' she says.
Outback Pride at The Sydney Morning Herald Growers' Market this Saturday. For a list of national stockists, go to outbackpride.com.au.
Do try this at home
When it comes to trying native greens for the first time, the key word, according to Kylie Kwong, is experimentation. Outback Pride's fresh greens are packed in 100-gram bags, small enough to allow for plenty of experimentation in the kitchen.
''At first I studied them,'' Kwong says. ''Look, smell, pull apart, read and look at recipes … that's the best way to learn.'' The next step is pulling out the pots and pans.
Kwong experimented with cooking methods, from steaming to stir-frying, to determine the best ways of using these native greens. Here are some short-cut tips for your experiments.
Warrigal greens can be used in any recipe that calls for spinach, such as Chinese-dumpling filling, or steamed and dressed with olive oil and garlic.
Saltbush shines in stir-fry. It has a mineral, salt flavour. Kwong uses it in place of shallots in shallot pancake.
Sea parsley, also known as native parsley, can be used wherever parsley is called for. Works well in Italian-style bean salads and in Lebanese tabbouli.
Samphire needs only to be steamed. Dress with lemon-infused olive oil and serve as a side vegetable. Its salty tang goes especially well with seafood and eggs.
No comments:
Post a Comment