HEALTH

CHILLI AS STRONG AS THE KANGAROO’S KICK 

Throughout the past two weeks, Unit 1 Food Studies class have been exploring Indigenous culture, cooking techniques and ingredients used prior to European occupancy. 

On Wednesday 30 March we were lucky enough to utilise ingredients which hold immense cultural significance to Indigenous Australians. In this cook today we used fresh, sustainable kangaroo mince as well as a range of different vegetables and indigenous spices such as Native Australian spices of aniseed myrtle, akudjura, lemon myrtle, native pepper, and macadamia oil. 

In the past, Indigenous people relied on hunting and gathering their ingredients for each meal. The males went out in pairs or small groups hunting for animals with large spears. Whereas, females would have gathered the vegetables and spices used in their different dishes. Once all ingredients were collected, the produce would have been prepared and the kangaroo cooked in a large fire pit to be shared amongst the community. 

Today however, we (much less interestingly) bought our food from a supermarket. Due to industrialisation, our produce today was transported via trucks and onto supermarket shelves. Then again transported into our McKinnon kitchen. 

Instead of preparing and cooking our meal with handmade utensils, we utilised the equipment located in our kitchenettes. We combined all ingredients and panfried this into a commercial dish of ‘Kangaroo Chilli Con Carne’. The dish had a little kick to it, not too spicy, with just the right amount of chilli. You could smell the tomato paste. Roo meat is lean and high in protein and iron. The mince was tender and moist, and surprisingly, didn’t have a particular taste. The mince was enriched with the other ingredients which masked its flavour. The overall appearance of the concoction was quite vibrant in colour showing highlights of red and dark undertones.

We also utilised Indigenous spices to season our bush chips. Our bush chips consisted of pita bread, aniseed myrtle, akudjura (ground bush tomato), lemon myrtle, native pepper and the macadamia oil. These spices gave a very deep and complex flavour (although we may or may not have underestimated the strength of the spices, so it was slightly bitter).

Cooking with these ingredients today was exciting as many of us hadn’t yet tried them and were eager to embrace some of Australia’s native ingredients. 

Year 11 Food Studies Class & 

Ms Emily Tulloch - VCE Food Studies teacher