Bush Tucker and Meat Pies...
...nicely veganised, as this week's newsletter heads to Australia
The idea behind Plant-based Planet is not only to allow me to chat on about food, but to write about different countries, my take on their cuisine, and share some local recipes. So what better place to start than with ‘A’? Australia immediately sprung to mind….
Australia
I’m privileged and lucky enough to have visited Australia many times, and actually once drove from Melbourne to Alice Springs in a camper van that was decidedly not cut out for the journey, nor was I.
Roadhouse, Oodnadatta: Me, not quite Patrick Swayze….
I recall keeping a five kilogram block of cheese in the van fridge which kept me going in the remote parts of the journey. Another time, we were in Oodnadatta, in middle-of-nowheresville, watching the locals buying single bullets at the town store to go and ‘get dinner’!
Indigenous Australian food does, sadly, include kangaroo, emu and crocodile, but there’s a great variety of wild fruit and veg-based ‘bush tucker’ food that is not only a real treat, but increasingly making its way onto the menus of many a contemporary urban restaurant.
My own experience of eating in Australia started in the 1990s, when a brief east coast tour made me realise a couple of good things: the food in Australia is good – and goes way beyond ‘throwing another shrimp on the barbie’; and that their fruit and veg surpassed most I’d tried in the UK at that time, in terms of flavour, size and variety.
Common Aussie foods like sweet potatoes (kumara), avocados, pumpkin and mango were all pretty new and exciting to me back then, I must admit.
I think Australians seem to embrace their ‘veggoes’ far more readily than people in other countries. I recall staying in Byron Bay, and not noticing a specifically vegan or veggie restaurant – because everywhere had plant-forward options. Most menus – and I’m talking 20 years ago – had heaping healthy salads, and Asian-inspired bowls heaving with steamy goodness.
The Cook who didn’t cook
When the coloniser Captain Cook rocked up to Australia and claimed the east coast for Britain, he didn’t bother writing anything about food, busy as he was ‘discovering’ the giant continent, shooting locals, nicking spears and trying to work out what the hell a kangaroo (gangurru) was. Notably, at that time, ship’s cooks were often ex-soldiers missing a limb, with no culinary training whatsoever…
Anyway, I digress. Modern food in Australia – in my experience, at least, is bursting with goodness, despite the popularity of Marmite’s watered-down cousin, Vegemite. It’s a very modern and confident cuisine, shaped by immigrants and today, increasingly building on the country’s rich indigenous culture – despite all those famous Aussie pies.
Tuck into bush tucker
My ropey research (based on a population of around 26.1m, and 3% of the population stating they are vegan) suggests there are about 783,000 plant-based people in the land down under.
And these enlightened folk enjoy a great variety of veganised national dishes, and that abundance of awesome fruit and veggies.
Bush tucker – basically, stuff that traditionally grows wild, is worth a look. Quandong, for example, is a wild peach with a tart flavour, often used in desserts, jams, or eaten raw.
Kakadu plum
The Aussie Kakadu plum (also known as the salty plum, which puts me right off it) has the highest vitamin C content of any fruit in the world. It's used in cooking, as traditional medicine and in beauty products. In the UK, you can grab yourself a potful via Amazon – it’s only £76,174.60 a kilo!
Macadamia nuts are native to Australia, and I could eat a lot of them – they’re delicious. Sadly, I’m not planning to traverse the entirety of Australia on foot any time soon, so I try not to eat too many, as they are one of the fattiest nuts in Australia, other than when I’m visiting.
Warrigal greens, or New Zealand spinach
Warrigal greens are often blanched or cooked before eating to reduce their oxalic acid content. They are similar to spinach, but the flavour’s more complex. Despite Captain Cook’s unwillingness to reveal much about what he ate on his lengthy voyage and travels in Australia, we do know that it was Warrigal greens that helped his crew stave off the dreaded scurvy, alongside sauerkraut.
Moving on in our tucker trail, Bush tomatoes are small desert fruit, with a strong, smoky flavour, often described as a combination of caramel, tamarillo and sundried tomatoes. Eaten raw or dried, they are often seen in sauces and seasonings. They’re also full of antioxidants and essential nutrients.
Bush tomatoes are actually more akin to aubergines, and if you’re not careful, many varieties are poisonous and can kill you! Barbecue roulette, anyone?
The quite bizarre finger lime…
Finger limes is not an instruction, it’s a name, and these fruits are otherwise known as 'citrus caviar', due to the beads of lime juice that burst in the mouth. I like thinking of them as fruity pop rocks! They’re mostly used in dressings, drinks and gourmet dishes. And good news – people are growing them across Europe now.
Of course if you’re not in Australia, most of these bush tucker foods might be hard to come by, but some are offered in dried or powdered form. Just be aware of the environmental impact of buying such things if you’re on the opposite side of the planet.
But don’t worry, you’re not going to have to charge around the Outback with a field spotter’s guide to plants…there are plenty of awesome places to eat vegan food all across Australia.
Sydney, for example, at last count, had no less than 50 pure vegan restaurants and cafes, according to Happy Cow, the plant-based eating app.
Melbourne’s close to Sydney’s vegan scene, with 44 vegan eating places listed on Happy Cow. There’s also some great vegan markets, including the super-cool St. Kilda, where I once got accused of being a surfer, which caused me enormous pride for days. (I had borrowed a mate’s car, which had broken down on St.Kilda sea front, and the car happened to have a surfboard attached to it). The closest I actually ever get to surfing is on the internet.
For the record, the good folk adding to the Happy Cow app’s ever-growing list of worldwide plant-based eateries haven’t yet added any places in Oodnadatta.
And traditional Aussie food – such as chicken parm / schnitzel, pies and yes, even those shrimps on the barbie, have all been magnificently veganised.
Let’s have a quick look at how you can re—create a bit of sunshine-drenched Aussie food magic in your own home, with a few recipes.
Recipes
First up, if you do get hold of some Kakadu plums, these are worth trying. I love energy balls, but mine are normally nowhere near as exotic. The secret is to combine ingredients you love, and then sneak in the super healthy stuff like sea moss or spirulina and pretend you’re not looking when you add them.
Kakadu plum and ginger energy balls
Ingredients:
1 packed cup medjool dates - 220 grams, or about 11-12 dates
1.5 cups cashews (raw, unsalted) - about 200 grams
0.5 cup quinoa flakes, or rolled oats
2 tbsp cacao powder
5 tsp Kakadu plum powder
2-3 tsp ground ginger - adjust according to taste
3/4 cup desiccated coconut or 1/2 cup sesame seeds, or a mix of the two, to coat the balls
Preparation:
Leave the dates in hot water for 10-20 mins, to soften them up.
Remove the pits from the dates and place in a food processor, along with the cashews. Process so the dates and cashews break up, into a rough sticky crumb.
Add the quinoa flakes/oats, cacao powder, ginger and Kakadu plum powder. Process until the mixture forms a sticky dough. It will probably start to come together as one big ball in the food processor.
Scoop out heaped teaspoons of the mixture and roll into a ball. That’s the mixture, not you. You’re not a hedgehog. Roll the balls in coconut or sesame seeds to coat. Repeat with the remaining mixture.
Pop the energy balls in the fridge, where they will firm up a bit. Keep them stored in the fridge where they should last for a few weeks.
They can also be frozen if you want to keep them for longer.
Please note how desperately proud of myself I am, for not including a single ball-related innuendo in the above recipe. The recipe was originally found at Nourish Everyday https://nourisheveryday.com/kakadu-plum-energy-balls/
Pumpkin and Coconut Soup with Macadamia Pesto
This creamy, rich, indulgent soup is greater than the sum of its parts – and pays homage to every Australian cook, all of whom seem to have a recipe like this up their sleeve. As with a lot of Aussie food, the recipe nods to Asian and Mediterranean immigrants, while adding local ingredients to bring on a bit of pizazz.
Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves (or, if you are a garlic fiend like me, five or six!)
3cm/1.5in piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped. Mince if you like.
700g/1.5lb pumpkin or squash of your choice, peeled, de-seeded and cubed (trimmed weight, so buy about a kilo)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 400ml/ 14 fl oz can coconut milk
700ml / 1.25 pint/ 3 cups vegetable stock
Salt and pepper, to taste
Preparation:
Heat a big saucepan (one with a lid) over a medium heat, add the oil
Add the onion to the pan, and give it a gentle cook until it’s soft, translucent and you’ve stopped crying
Add the garlic and ginger, cook until fragrant – just a minute or two
Put the cubed pumpkin/squash into the pan, stir it all up, cover and cook for about 5-6 minutes, to release the pumpkin juices
Next, add the cumin, and stir it all for a minute, then throw in the can of coconut milk (I normally add a tiny amount of water to the bottom of the can, where there’s often some lovely thick coconut milk lurking, swirl it around and add it to the pan) and the vegetable stock
Bring it to the boil, taste for seasoning and adjust the salt levels if you like
Once gently boiling, bring it back to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes – or until the pumpkin is soft and you’re feeling like you need a sit down
Let the soup cool, then blend until as smooth as you like – ideally very…
For the Macadamia Pesto
Ingredients:
12 large fresh basil leaves
1 tbsp olive oil (or more, if you like it oiler, of course)
30g/ 1 oz/0.5 cup roasted, salted Macadamia nuts
2 tsp lemon juice
Preparation:
Pound all the ingredients in a mortar and pestle, or in the food processor. Mine has a cool little special attachment bowl purely for nuts and coffee and things like that - this is perfect for whizzing up a mean pesto.
Re-heat the soup and serve with a generous hillock of the pesto on top. I like to add a bunch of microgreens if I have any, because you always buy them and then realise there’s way too many of them and they’re not that good to eat on their own, so you lob them on everything. And they look lovely.
This recipe is taken from Celia Brooks Brown’s World Vegetarian Classics, a bit of a bible for me, tbh.
The ubiquitous chicken parmigiana – parm, parmy, call it what you will, has been masterfully de-chickened by the lovely Bosh blokes, here. It’s a dish served everywhere in Australia, and generally involves breaded chicken breast, topped with a tomato sauce, mozzarella and parmesan.
The Bosh guys use oyster mushrooms as the hero replacement for chicken, but personally, I like to use seitan as a chicken replacement, and there are millions of recipes out there – to the extent I’ll be doing an entire newsletter in future purely on the joys of seitan worship.
Pocket Warmer Pie
Pies are common in Australia, but differ from British ones in that they’re generally smaller, making them more of a snack – ideal at the footy, or to keep your wands warm on a cold day…
This version is the best I’ve found to date. Rich, tasty and filling, it seems authentic to my memory of eating a veggie one (or six) on my travels in Australia. I make them in my Yorkshire pudding tray, but don’t serve them at Christmas, you’ll only confuse people.
Equipment:
Large bowl
Rolling pin
Yorkshire Pudding/ Muffin tray/ pie tin
Food processor
Frying pan
Ingredients:
For the pastry
1 and a ½ cups all-purpose flour (mix half whole wheat if you like)
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 tsp sugar
5 Tbsps cold vegan butter (buy harder stuff, like Natura)
¼ cup vodka (ice cold)*
1-3 teaspoons cold almond milk
*trust me on this, I hadn’t been on the vodka when compiling this recipe
For the filling
3 cups of minced seitan
1 onion, chopped
Oil of choice for frying (I use spray oil, but it generally works better on a lower heat)
1 Tbsp vegan Worcestershire sauce, brown sauce or bbq sauce, as you fancy
1 Tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp cracked black pepper
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp liquid smoke
2 tsp mixed Italian herbs
2 tsp paprika
1 cup vegan stock - with 1 Tbsp all-purpose flour mixed into it
1/2 cup sweet corn
Note: You can do a ‘cheat’ version, which is often what I do – by buying ready-made pastry of your choice (check the ingredients, but most is vegan), and ready-made vegan mince from the freezer section. Or, go wild, used chopped mushrooms, walnut meat or lentils instead.
Preparation:
Pastry
Do the pastry first, so it can rest a while…if using shop bought, remember to defrost it the day before, or take it out of the fridge about 20 mins before you intend to use it.
In a large mixing bowl, stir the flour, sea salt, and raw sugar together until evenly mixed.
Add the cold vegan butter to the flour mixture. Use a pastry cutter, two forks, or your fingertips to cut the butter into the flour. Aim for the mixture to look like coarse crumbs with some pea-sized pieces of butter remaining. This texture is crucial for flaky dough.
Pour in the ice-cold vodka. The vodka helps make the dough tender because it evaporates during baking, reducing the formation of gluten which can make the crust tough. Have one yourself, to make kneading it more bearable.
Mix the dough gently with a fork to start combining the wet and dry ingredients. Then, add cold almond milk one teaspoon at a time, just enough to help the dough come together. You might not need all the milk, so add it slowly until the dough just begins to form a ball.
Once the dough starts to clump together, use your hands to gently knead it inside the bowl a few times to bring it together into a cohesive ball. Avoid overworking the dough, which can make it tough.
Flatten the dough slightly into a disk shape, cover it tightly, and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour. This chilling time helps the butter to firm up again and distributes the moisture evenly, making the dough easier to roll out and helping maintain its structure when baked.
After chilling, (the dough and yourself, hopefully), lightly flour a clean surface and a rolling pin. Roll out the dough to the desired thickness, frequently turning the dough and adding a bit more flour to prevent sticking.
Cut the dough into circles, and place the circles into your greased pudding/ muffin tray.
Cut double the amount of dough circles, as each pie will need a lid.
Alternatively, cut your dough into a large circle to fit a pie dish, making one humungous pie, which you can slice and serve as a meal.
Filling:
Finely mince the onion and seitan in your food processor.
Heat a large frying pan and sauté the onion and seitan over high heat with a generous splash of oil.
Add the remaining spices while it browns. When it's cooked it should resemble ground beef.
Turn off the heat, and add the stock with flour mixed in.
Stir for a few minutes in the hot pan until the flour takes over and the whole mass thickens into a groovy gravy.
Allow to cool before filling the pastry shells in the pudding/ muffin tray/ pie tin.
When you've lined each pan indent with a circle of dough, add the filling so that it's well mounded in each pastry shell.
Lay a top sheet of dough on each little pie, tucking in the sides with your fingers and slicing a steam vent in the top of each. Spray with oil and add a sprinkle of coarse sea salt, nooch or even seeds.
Bake for about 20 minutes at 200°C/ 400°F, until they're beginning to brown.
Traditionally, these kind of meat pies are served with ketchup, hot sauce or salsa. Go wild!
There’s an alternative, but equally tasty, posh pie recipe here.
Let me know how you get on!
Stuff You Should Know About
South Africa Rules Vegan Meat Can’t Be Seized From Supermarket Shelves
Jo’burg High Court recently overturned South African government plans to remove all plant-based meat alternatives from supermarket shelves.
A ban on the use of “meat” words for plant-based alternatives meant non-compliant products were set to be seized by South Africa’s Food Safety Agency in 2022. But following an intervention by the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa, the High Court granted a last-minute order to stop the seizure while a review of the ban took place. And the review concluded that the names – and the products – could stay.
I Could Never Go Vegan
I love a good vegan documentary, and this is a passionate film which dissipates all the pro-meat, anti-veganism arguments. Ok, it’s a bit preachy, but it’s got George Monbiot in it, and I love him. One in five people die because of an unhealthy diet! Shocker! I Could Never Go Vegan is out at select cinemas across the UK and Ireland from April 30th. I like to go and see any sort of film like this, to support the filmmakers and encourage cinemas to show similar content…
“I vant to bite your finger…lime”
Dracula was vegan
This is bizarre, but Vlad the Impaler, the 15th century Romanian prince who is widely held to be the inspo behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula, didn’t eat meat.
Scientists have been pouring (pawing?) over some of Vlad’s letters, inspecting thousands of fragments of proteins in the surface of the letters, and discovered a notable absence of animal proteins, suggesting bad lad Vlad was living on a plant-based diet.
However, they also reckon this wasn’t because he was into the ethics (he did impale 80,000 people, after all), but rather that food – especially meat – was scarce in that era. It also casually mentions that he suffered from a condition that meant he cried blood. I don’t think Vlad is someone you’d want to upset, right?
Cause of the Week
Help hamsters avoid a short, hideous life
How cute are hamsters? I mean, Smiffy was one of my first ever pets, a hamster with a fluffy Hawaiian skirt, and he was the best. When he died, my loving parents thought getting another would cheer me up, and I imaginatively called him Smiffy II.
So imagine my outrage when I discovered that in the UK they’re using hamsters for hideous medical tests – including being forced to inhale and ingest substances, having holes bored into their skulls, and being deliberately infected with killer diseases.
As PETA says: “Humans and hamsters are biologically, metabolically, and physically different. Testing on animals is not only cruel but also bad science that can hold us back from making scientific breakthroughs.
“The world’s forward-thinking scientists are developing and using non-animal methods that are actually relevant to human health for studying diseases and testing products.”
Hamsters are gentle animals with a remarkable sense of smell and a strong memory. They recognise their guardians and are aware of who spends most time with them. Each animal used in these cruel tests was an individual who didn’t want to die. They endured excruciating pain and anguish.
You can help stop this hideous practice – and put an end to all animal testing, by signing here.
And Lastly…
If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading. Help me grow a lovely audience of caring, compassionate people by sharing this far and wide. And, if you’re enjoying reading, let me know what you’d like to read more about.