Whole barramundi grilled over open coals and dressed with a native Australian spice paste of lemon myrtle, wattleseed, and bush tomatoes — a contemporary expression of flavors that Aboriginal Australians have used for over 60,000 years.
The food knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is the oldest continuous culinary tradition on earth, stretching back at least 65,000 years. It encompasses hundreds of distinct language groups, each with their own relationship to their country's specific plants, animals, seasons, and waterways. To speak of "Aboriginal cuisine" as a single tradition is to simplify enormously — the Yolŋu people of Arnhem Land cook differently from the Arrernte of Central Australia, who cook differently from the Noongar of the southwest coast. What they share is a relationship with country so deep that the landscape itself is a larder, a pharmacy, and a spiritual text. Barramundi — known in many language groups by names that translate roughly to "large-scaled river fish" — is one of the most important food fish in northern and coastal Australia. It is caught in rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters from Western Australia around the northern coast to Queensland, and it has sustained Aboriginal communities in these regions for millennia. Traditionally, it was cooked in coals — the whole fish placed directly on embers, or wrapped in paperbark and roasted in the ground oven called an earth oven or kup-murri. The native spices used in this recipe represent a fraction of the over 2,000 native edible plant species identified by Aboriginal communities. Lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) grows in Queensland rainforests and has a lemon fragrance more intense than any lemon — it contains more citral (the compound responsible for lemon scent) than lemon itself. Wattleseed — from various Acacia species — has a coffee-chocolate-hazelnut flavor when roasted and ground. Bush tomatoes (Solanum centrale) are small, intensely flavored fruits that dry naturally on the plant and taste like sun-dried tomato with added caramel complexity. These are available from native food suppliers online and at specialty grocery stores in Australia. They represent a cuisine that is only beginning to receive the international recognition it deserves.
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