419910 Tue Jul 10 18:20:28 -0700 2007 6 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 2737782 recently there was a wee discussion in another thread about this topic: "Ever since the new genetic testing technology has established a genetic link between Austrialian, Papa New Guinea, New Zealand Aborigines and Native Mexicans... I have been noticing some culinary similarities such as closed pit cooking etc., Could you educate me on ancient aboriginal cuisine?" I am a middle class, middle aged white cultural mongrel, so my entire experience of local aboriginal foods has been via a tourist. Here in southern Australia, these are/were the most popular methods of traditional Koori cooking: Aboriginal Cooking Techniques by Warwick Wright Traditional : 1. Roasting on hot coals: The basic technique for cooking flesh, including most meats, fish and small turtles. A further slow roasting, involving covering with coals and ashes may have then been employed to thoroughly cook the meat or to soften an otherwise tough meat. After cooking, the meat would be quickly consumed. For game, such as a kangaroo, the fur would first be singed off in the flames. As the carcass started to swell, it would be removed from the flames, gutted and the remains of the fur scraped off with a sharp implement. By this time the fire would be a bed of hot coals on which the carcass would be further cooked. It is unlikely that cooking would be complete by this method, the meat would be rare but probably relished by all, particularly the men of the group. Smaller game would be more thoroughly cooked by this method. Shellfish would be cooked briefly on the coals at the side of a fire so that, as soon as the contents started to froth, they were removed from the heat. This method avoided the shellfish being overcooked and tough. 2. Baking in the ashes Dampers and various types of bread were baked in the ashes. Care was taken to only use the correct type of wood from which the ashes were obtained. Some woods imparted an unpleasant taste or even caused irritation or discomfort to the users. most wattles seemed to have been successfully used for baking in the ashes, yielding a fine ash that did not cause irritation. Witchetty grubs only required to be briefly rolled in the hot ashes to cook them. Often damper or goanna would be placed on the hot ground beneath the ashes and covered with more ash to cook. A scooped out hollow was often made in which to cook yams and other small vegetables by then covering them with a further layer of ash and coals. 3. Steaming in a ground oven Ancient ground ovens still exist, particularly in the Wiradjuri area, along the Darling, Murrumbidgee and Lachlan Rivers. At Lake Urana in western NSW I have seen such ovens and only recognised them after having them explained to me. The ovens were prepared by digging out a pit about 90 cm long and 60 cm deep, taking care to collect any clay from the digging. The clay, usually fashioned into smooth lumps, would be placed aside until the pit had been filled with selected firewood and then placed on top. As the wood burned, the clay would dry quickly and become very hot. These clay lumps, nearly red hot, would be removed from the pit using sticks for tongs, the pit swept out and quickly lined with green leaves or grass on which small game such as possums would be lain, covered by more green grass and weighed down by the clay lumps. All this was covered with earth from the original excavation to prevent loss of steam. This method of cooking produced excellent results. In areas such as Arnhem Land, wrapping in moist paperbark from the Melaleuca trees is still a popular method of cooking vegetables and meat in a ground oven. Iron particles in ground ovens became aligned according to the magnetic field of the earth at the time the ovens were last used – from this the age of the ovens could be calculated, a bonus for archaeologists. Recent : 1. Boiling Adapting quickly to new technology, the Aborigines learned to boil foods in galvanized cans, drums, billy cans, aluminum pots and even more sophisticated cast iron pots, whenever such items were available. This probably led to the demise of the use of the ground oven and a change in nutrition. 2. Barbecueing The use of a piece of wire or a wire fork to hold pieces of meat or dough over red coals also seems to have been quickly adopted in some areas. 2003. Article originally written by Warwick Wright of The Australian National Botanic Gardens Education Services 2000 Paddymelon Australia - What do you know about YOU local "traditional food stuffs and their preparation??? Tue Jul 10 18:20:28 -0700 2007 86137 purple goddess 1 2737813 Apropos of this discussion, "Australian" food up until the 1950's meant English food...boiled cabbage, stringy meat, puddings and the like...Hell.. our Xmas in bang smack in the middle of summer, where the temperatures can get to 42degrees C.. and most people STILL cook baked ham/pork, turkey and baked vegies, with a boiled pud and sauce... Given the tyranny of distance, the post-war rationing and the culture of the times, that was all there really was. In the '50's migrant labour was brought in to help build post-war infrastructure, so Australia began (slowly and tentatively) to embrace other cuisines, such as Italian and Greek... I can still remember, as a child in the 60's going to my very first pizza resto.. and my parents approached this weird new food with caution. In the 70's we began to embrace Asian cuisine and by the 80's we'd grown out of dodgy "sweet and sour pork" and wholeheartedly begun gobbling bok choy and sesame oil and laksas and the like.. thus came the Australian/Asian fusion movement. Recently, we have begun to embrace the food of the traditional people.. and where as once you would have had to go on a Bush Tucker tour in the middle of the Outback, it is now pretty common to see Lemon Myrtle in a spice rack.. or Lilli Pilli jam on a menu... There are still very few restos that sell "Aboriginal" food.. it's still a bit of a novelty, but we're slowly embracing the "new" and delicious food ingredients that Aboriginal people have been using for 40,000 years!!! I've said it before, but when you live in a place that eats BOTH animals off its Coat of Arms, you're living somewhere pretty Chow Worthy!!!! Tue Jul 10 18:36:02 -0700 2007 2737782 86137 purple goddess 2 2739132 Very interesting... thanks there are definitely some similarities. What you call steaming in a ground oven is pretty much similiar to what we call Barbacoa or Pibil... aka as Barbecue (true barbecue) in the U.S. The part of the ashes is also interesting because ashes are used almost as a spice in some regional Mexican cuisines... and I thought this might be pretty unique there. Wed Jul 11 08:26:10 -0700 2007 2737813 42572 Eat_Nopal 3 2755909 Love your work PG - it's a pity so much of this remains a mystery to the average australian. EN, back to your query re polynesian ancestry, cooking in ashes underground is also what they call a hangi (pronounced hungy) in NZ. i have only been to one and thought the food tasted like dirt... whilst our native spices, berries, oils are definitely accepted in mainstream (lemon myrtle, lilli pilli, eucalyptus & tea tree oils (which sell for a fortune in UK), macadamia), I have doubts as to whether native australian foods, such as witchety grubs will take off - as Crocodile Dundee said, "you can live on it, but it tastes like sh1+!! but to talk about the food of aborignal australians would be akin to lumping every native american tribe/race/lineage together as we are talking about the same size land mass. what a coastal tribe would eat would differ greatly from those inland, and from north to south the coastal fauna and flora differs greatly... it's also quite interesting (to me at least) that a number of our native plants are largely therapeutic. Buscopan® (used for stomach pain) is derived from the leaves of an Australian native tree, known as the corkwood tree or Duboisia. traditionally the aborigines chewed on the leaves of the tree to alleviate cramps, nausea and hunger pains particularly whilst they were migrating from place to place. likewise the kakadu plum has an extremely high concentration of vitamin C (possibly the highest of all) it is most commonly used in moisturising creams rather than eaten these days for more info on australian native ingredients, look at http://www.cherikoff.net/cherikoff/ vic cherikoff is apparently "the man" when it comes to australian native ingredients another interesting reference http://www.newcrops.uq.edu.au/newslett/ncnl4-7.htm Mon Jul 16 20:01:22 -0700 2007 2739132 104230 kmh 4 2755937 "but to talk about the food of aborignal australians would be akin to lumping every native american tribe/race/lineage together as we are talking about the same size land mass. what a coastal tribe would eat would differ greatly from those inland, and from north to south the coastal fauna and flora differs greatly." Wholeheartedly agree... Down south, we get lots of midden heaps, where the local Koori people used to meet and eat enormous quantities of shell fish, just thrown in the coals.. but up in the plains above The Spur, there are still kiln-style ovens, for baking wallaby and wombat... Never done a hangi, or any inground cooking for that matter.... but I've eaten food wrapped in bark and slow roasted... Possum, if memory serves me.. Bloody awful. Tasted like mutton boiled in nasal spray. Mon Jul 16 20:09:38 -0700 2007 2755909 86137 purple goddess 5 2755948 LOL! literally! i just burst into outrageous laughter. still laughing! even the dog is looking at me funny! i am not sure, but i think middens can be found just about anywhere there is water (sea or estuary). there are some even in suburbs of sydney (e.g. lane cove river) i know for sure that if ii had grown up pre white invasion, i would want to be a coastal aboriginal person! Mon Jul 16 20:14:05 -0700 2007 2755937 104230 kmh 1 3067016 back to the indigenous food... i live on the border of redfern and the state government has set up the "redfern waterloo authority" to deal with a range of issues from planning and development, to community services. one of the initiatives has been to establish and indigenous function centre and catering. details on the october newsletter around page 6 http://www.redfernwaterloo.nsw.gov.au/other/newsletters/october07_newsletter.pdf there's not much info on the website, but keep an eye out... http://www.yaama.com.au/ Thu Oct 25 12:15:27 -0700 2007 2737782 104230 kmh