Paul FenwickHey #Narrm #Melbourne folks. It's autumn, and a lot of yucca is starting to bloom.
What you might not know is that the flowers are edible, and honestly pretty good. You can eat them raw, but they are *much* better cooked.
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I might be a bit too tired to do a full write-up, but there's a tonne of basket grass (Lomandra longifolia) in seed right now.
I collected a number of seedpods, threshed and winnowed them, soaked and boiled the seeds, and added them to porridge. They were very inoffensive, and could be eaten on their own, but needed lots of boiling to soften.
Apparently they can also be milled and made into bush bread, but I don't have good milling tools, so porridge it was.
This is a plant you see everywhere in urban Australia, as it's a very hardy and low-maintenance native. It's also widespread in the bush.
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I'm rewatching Bush Tucker Man for the first time since I saw it as a kid in 1988.
I was prepared for it to be very problematic, but it's actually been not too bad. Les Hiddens seems to have some genuinely close friendships with many of the elders he meets, speaks some of the local languages, and makes a point of acknowledging whose land he's on.
Upon rewatching it's also clear that it had an enormous impact on my interest in #foraging later in life.
A tiny bit of flour and into the pan, and the result is actually edible!
It's nutty with fresh notes of sand, and the slightest hint of figs. It definitely feels like something you'd only eat when there's not much else available, but it's much better than I was expecting. Even Mr 8 had a piece and came back for seconds.
So Moreton Bay fig seed meal as a component in bush bread is definitely a possibility, albeit a high effort and gritty one!
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Yeah, this has way too much water in it, and it's just dissolving in the oil.
The result tastes good, though! I wasn't expecting that. It's nutty and crunchy.
So not good as the sole ingredient in a bush bread, but certainly has it's place in a mix.
Next step is to add a little flour as a binder, to see what that's like.
And after some hand milling it looks even less palatable now. I think I'm going to discover why nobody does this.
As usual for anything involving seeds, I have a bird supervising me.
Back at home, and I discovered that since I foolishly put some of my "dry" Moreton Bay fig pulp in sealed containers, it has since gone mouldy. However there's still a little bit left that's good.
I've broken the clumps up with my kitchen rock, pushed the result through a sieve, and winnowed the result. Winnowing was a little tricky, because the pulp dust isn't much lighter than the seeds.
The end result is this! A bowl of spoiled pulp, a bowl of somewhat separated seeds, and a bowl of coarse bits that didn't make it through the sieve. The winnowed pulp is gone on the wind.
Now to grind the mostly-seed mixture and see if I can make it into a paste and cook it.
I've collected a small basket of dried Moreton Bay fig seed/pulp masses. This didn't take very long at all, even with me being very selective to only grab the driest and cleanest ones.
I'm travelling at the moment, so I won't know if I'll have a chance to process these until I get back, but I imagine I'll want to lightly work them to loosen the seeds from the pulp, and then either winnow or float the mass to see if I can separate out the seeds.
I was wondering how one would remove the pulp to dry and separate the seeds, but walking under one of the trees reveals that no work is necessary. Moreton Bay figs are a food source for many birds and other animals, and they just leave the seeds after eating the pulp. All one really needs to do is pick them up.
Hello #foragingAustralia friends! I've long enjoyed eating Moreton Bay figs, but of course they have *so many seeds*. The seeds aren't disagreeable in taste, but they are dry and tough compared to domestic figs.
Has anyone any good experiences or references in grinding them and making a figgy bush bread?