Australia’s bounty of native foods sustained Indigenous Australia for tens of thousands of years. Rich in diversity, flavour and with some incredible health and medicinal benefits, the value of these native foods is finally starting to be recognised. Here are some of our favourite foods native to the Northern Rivers, the beautiful place we call home:
Finger Limes
Shaped like fingers and filled with little tangy citrus beads that pop in your mouth, finger limes are a rainforest plant native to SE Queensland and Northern NSW. They can be used anywhere you would use lemons or lime. Our native food stall, Playing With Fire, sells them fresh, and also adds their tangy flavour to their Pink Zinger Finger Lime Marmalade and Finger Lime Cordial. Playing With Fire also regularly stocks Finger Lime seedlings, which make an attractive and low maintenance plant in the garden.
Finger limes are filled with tangy beads that create an citrus flavour explosion in your mouth.
Davidson Plum
Another Northern Rivers Rainforest species, these purple-blue coloured fruit are extremely sour, but packed with antioxidants and extremely good for you. Some people eat them fresh, and can handle the sourness, but if you’re new to Davo plums, you might like to try them first in a jam or sauce with some sweetener added. Fresh plums available from Playing With Fire; jams and sauces available from Playing With Fire or Rainforest Foods. Rainforest Foods also makes an excellent Davidson Plum and Sweet Chilli Sauce.
The Davidson Plum is rich in antioxidants
Macadamias
Probably the best known and most widely enjoyed of the foods native to the Northern Rivers, macadamias need no introduction. You’ll find them in all forms at the market – fresh, roasted, honey-roasted, choc-coated, savoury flavoured, as well as in butters, pastes and oils. Try Rainforest Foods and Nudgel Nuts (Mullumbimby) for a big selection of macadamia products.
Lemon Myrtle
Made from the dried leaves of the lemon myrtle tree, lemon myrtle spice has a fresh and clean lemony flavour and can be added to tea, biscuits, cakes, sweets, salad dressings, pasta, soups, and curries. It is ideal as a sprinkle for fish, meat or vegetable dishes – simple and delicious. Available at Playing With Fire.
As well as these foods native to the local rainforest, Playing With Fire stocks foods from further afield. These include wattleseed, which has a rich chocolate nut flavour and can be used in place of coffee as well as in desserts and ice cream; mountain pepper, a spice native to Tasmania that’s similar to black pepper, but with more flavour, more aroma and more of a kick; and bush tomato, a small berry like fruit from the desert region that is related to the common tomato, but has a much more intense flavour. Yummy on a cheese platter.
Mountain pepper is similar to black pepper, but with more aroma, more flavour and more punch
