Australian Native Grub Smacks of--Well, Grub

Until a few years ago if you asked an Aussie about his native cuisine, he’d likely point to meat pies and Vegemite sandwiches. While North Americans took to their indigenous foods--wild turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes and corn--with gusto, Australians have turned up their noses at so-called “bush tucker”--the native foods that kept the aborigines alive for more than 40,000 years.

So I was surprised when a friend in Sydney invited me to dinner at an “Australian restaurant” last January. Surprised and--when he mysteriously added they were serving one of my favorite dishes--suspicious.

Over the last decade, I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the Australian outback and I’ve met many an aboriginal. In one such encounter I met a fellow named Bill and we came across a witchetty bush. Excited at the discovery, he went straight for the roots, digging them up and prying out great, thick grubs--wiggling whitish worms (the larvae of a giant moth) that are the size of a man’s middle finger. Without further ado he bit the head off, spit it out and catapulted the remaining grub down the hatch.

“You game?” he asked, dangling a plump specimen in front of me. Steeling myself with the thought that this would make a colorful addition to my repertoire of past meals that included stewed bear paw, sauteed jellyfish and whole baby spider crabs, I chowed down. An amusing little larvae, it tickled the palate with a pleasant nutty scrambled egg sort of flavor, but the mushy texture was, frankly, gruesome. “Good tucker,” Bill said, patting his stomach, a gesture I imitated because I could swear I felt something moving in there.

Back in Sydney civilization, I could not imagine seeing witchetty grubs on the menu. At least that’s what I told myself, while standing outside the door of Rowntrees Restaurant--a charming sort of place with pink linen and crystal on the tables, a French chef in the kitchen and housed in a nice old 19th-Century home in suburban northern Sydney.

But there they were, twice. We visited in January and although we later learned that Rowntrees had closed its doors, it was for eight years one of the country’s premier outback haute cuisine restaurants. French-born owner and chef Jean-Paul Bruneteau and his partner, Jennifer Dowling, had perfected an intriguing menu of exotic flavors that included Marraki Hot Pot of Buffalo Tails, Warm Salad of Barbecued Streaky Bay Octopus, leafy Warragal greens--a wild native spinach--and a salad dressing of Davidsonia, a smooth skinned purple rain forest plum. Moreton Bay Bugs--a tasty shovel-nose sand lobster--and Tasmanian Devilled Crayfish were among the main courses.

“If we want Australian cuisine, we need the indigenous flavors of this country. That is what makes French cuisine taste French and Thai cuisine taste Thai,” Bruneteau said, as he delivered our appetizers. Before me were a half dozen golden brown witchetty grubs expertly barbecued, neatly nestled in a small coolamon, the wooden, canoe-shaped bowl similar to those used by aboriginal women for food gathering. From their roasted hazelnut aroma, I could tell the little fellows had been treated to the grill. Light and crispy like tiny egg rolls, they were absolutely delicious. And the witchetty grub soup my friend sampled was so popular, it was sold for takeout by the restaurant.

With the increase in interest in native foods over the last five years, 30 to 40 indigenous ingredients are now readily available in Australia’s major cities, and restaurants across the country are experimenting. At the award-winning Tai Hung Tol Chinese restaurant in Darwin, Szechwan Crocodile was prepared with a fiery sauce, and at the Four Seasons Hotel in Kakadu National Park--a hotel built in the shape of a crocodile--I sampled a mild but tasty crocodile pate. Crocodile, which is low in fat, has the texture of chicken and a flavor similar to veal.

Like most game, kangaroo is also a healthy alternative to beef and reaches a culinary peak at Maggie Beer’s Pheasant Farm restaurant in the rolling countryside of South Australia’s Barossa Valley wine growing region. Voted one of the country’s three best restaurants in 1989, Maggie Beer’s serves a “gum smoked” kangaroo that is dark and tender--perfect company for a Barossa full bodied red wine.

Also at Maggie Beer’s, we sampled rabbit sausage in pastry with sorrel sauce, pan-fried saddle of kangaroo and tender wild pigeon, while looking out over a tranquil trout pond at the elegant country restaurant. The kangaroo served in restaurants is not wild, but specially raised on game farms.

Along with kangaroo, the giant bird emu is stepping off the Australian coat of arms and onto dinner plates across the country. Purchased wholesale from farms for about $14 a pound, emu goes into popular dishes at Rumpole’s Restaurant in Brisbane: emu pies, emu steak with a native pepper sauce and emu sausage rolls. The dark meat has the rich flavor and dark color of beef liver. The birds’ eggs are also used for emu egg crepes and pavlova, a popular dessert of meringue, whipped cream and fresh fruit.

Like Americans, Australians are fast food addicts and it’s not surprising that bush tucker has already hit it big at take-out counters. Across the tropical north, people are turning the tables on their notorious man-eating crocodiles and sinking their teeth into croc burgers and deep fried morsels of meat called “croc croquettes.” In Northern Territory restaurants, “Buff and Barra” is a kind of surf-and-turf of roast water buffalo and the Australian lung fish--barramundi--a combo that often appears on pub blackboard menus along with camel steaks. Camel has also found its way into the great Aussie meat pie.

With the explosion of interest in bush tucker, Australian bookstores now offer a wide selection of cookbooks with recipes for such dishes as Bogong Moth in cream sauce and Black Nightshade Flan (of the nonpoisonous variety). There is even a television series in Australia called “The Bush Tucker Man,” hosted by Les Hiddens, an army major who is a leading expert on edible plants. And “tucker trips” are becoming increasingly popular for both domestic and foreign tourists who travel to the tropical north and into the outback around Alice Springs where they actually hunt down and sample the witchetty grub au naturel . As the sea urchin sushi of Australia, bush tucker eating has become a kind of Down Under initiation rite.

To find out what these bush tucker trips were like, I boarded a small plane in the Northern Territory capital of Darwin for the 20-minute, 50-mile flight north to Bathurst Island. Bumping over pot-holed roads, my guide Michael and I stopped at the homes of Kerri-Anne and Mary-Margaret who were waiting with buckets, axes and shovels to take us foraging. Like all the residents of Bathurst and neighboring Melville Island, the aboriginal women are Tiwi people. By the time we arrived at the boat that would take us to a favorite mangrove forest on a nearby uninhabited island, our group had mushroomed to include a handful of relatives and children with time on their hands, all keen to participate on our bush picnic.

“Watch out for big lizards,” Michael warned only half-joking as we jumped out of our boat into the thigh deep, crystal clear and crocodile rich waters of the Arafura Sea and walked a mile or so across white sand to reach the island’s fringe of mangrove swamp.

The excitement and chatter of my companions did not give a hint that sinking knee deep into sulfurous mud with sand flies and mosquitoes in the sweltering heat was the least bit unpleasant. To the Tiwi people, mangroves are an outdoor supermarket stocked with shells, crabs, fish and their favorite: mangrove worms. Though soft spoken and shy, elderly Mary-Margaret wielded an ax with the muscle of a lumberjack, shattering fallen tree trunks in a single blow. She was barely done before everyone scrambled for a chunk of wood, drawing out the slippery whitish mangrove worms that had tunneled inside and gobbling them up on the spot.

Meanwhile, Kerri-Anne had stoked a campfire beneath the canopy of a shade tree. Quickly boiled, the mud crabs we had coaxed out of watery holes tasted like Florida stone crabs. The big hit with the kids were “long bums”--conical shells they had gathered from the swamp floor. The meat inside was pulled hot from the shells with a bent twig after a roasting in the ashes of the campfire. The consistency of calamari, the long bums have a flavor similar to mussels. All I could think of was how sensational they would be in the company of garlic butter and fresh crusty bread. The children whined for more as though they were candy. Once you get past their appearance, the mangrove worms taste like fresh, salty oysters on the half shell, though they are a bit gritty with mud. I’m certain not even Bruneteau with his magic whisk could transform the worms into dinner table fare. But I’ve been wrong before.

“Wattle it be?” joked Vic Cherikoff, owner of the small Wattle Seed Deli near Sydney’s Chinatown. On my last day in Sydney, I dropped in to see Cherikoff, who supplies more than 40 restaurants across Australia with bush tucker ingredients. We sipped cappuccinos made from ground and roasted wattle seeds in the deli-style health food shop, and nibbled a white chocolate wattle truffle. The wattle (acacia) is the most widespread of Australian trees and was so valuable as a source of food that aborigines warred over it. With a flavor that is a combination of carob and hazelnut, wattle is the most popular of Australian bush foods and one of the few that is commercially grown.

To stock his Bush Tucker Supply Company, Cherikoff pays dozens of aboriginal families across the country to gather native ingredients, encouraging them to start up small scale growing operations so that they can benefit from the knowledge they have shared. Cherikoff himself garners about $10,000 worth of bush tucker from “ornamental” trees and bushes throughout downtown Sydney. “We’ve really just begun experimenting with food from our own back yard,” says Cherikoff. “There are hundreds of new flavors out there waiting to be discovered.”

GUIDEBOOK

Bush Tucker in Australia

Tours: Most of the following can be booked in the United States through wholesalers. For information contact the Northern Territory Tourist Commission.

--Tiwi Tours half-day expeditions, $165 per person, and full day trips, $199, including air fare from Darwin; from the U.S. telephone 011-61-89-81-5115 or write: Shop 19, Star Village, Smith Street Mall, Darwin, NT 0800.

--During dry season, May to November, small groups spend two, three or five days at Putjamirra Safari Camp on Melville Island. Air fare, all meals and accommodation for two- or three-day stays range from $399 to $1,099 from Darwin; reservations must be made through Tiwi Tours.

--The Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory offers 2 1/2-hour walks, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with conservation commission rangers on an Edible Desert Tour at Yulara Resort, near Ayers Rock, for $8; book through most major hotels at Yulara Resort.

--Desert Tracks excursions from Alice Springs drive into the Outback for seven- and 10-day camping tours with the Pitjantjatjara desert people to collect and prepare bush foods, listen to stories and participate in traditional songs and dances. All-inclusive rates range from $1,060 for a seven-day tour to $1,462 for 10 days. (011) 61-89-528984.

Vic Cherikoff leads Bush Tucker Tours of various lengths from Sydney, including two-day bush skills weekends for $120 to 10-day tours for $1,600. For more details: Vic Cherikoff, Bush Tucker Tours, P.O. Box B 103, Boronia Park, New South Wales 2111; (02) 816-3381.

Where to stay: Four Seasons Kakadu hotel in Kakadu National Park; LB 4, Post Office Agency, Jabiru, Northern Territory; 011-61-089-79-2800.

Where to eat:

Pheasant Farm Restaurant, (near Nuriootpa) Barosa Valley, South Australia; (085) 621-286.

Rumpole’s Restaurant, North Quay, Brisbane, Queensland; (07) 236-2877.

Wattle Seed Deli, 37 Ultimo Road, Ultimo, New South Wales; (02) 281-9532.

For more information: Northern Territory Tourist Commission, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1230, Los Angeles 90067: (800) 468-8222 or (310) 277-7877. Ask for guide to aboriginal tours, arts and crafts, “Come Share Our Culture.” New South Wales Tourism Commission, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 450: (310) 552-9566. Australian Tourist Commission, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1200: (310) 552-1988.