MasterChef star releasing native foods cookbook

BYRON Bay chef and MasterChef favourite Mindy Woods will give festivalgoers a sneak peek of her new cookbook Karkalla at Home at this weekend’s Byron Writers Festival.

While it isn’t being released until mid-September, the Bundjalung woman will talk about what inspired her to create the collection of native food recipes at the event.

“It’s my first writers festival as a writer – I’m usually providing catering,” she said.

“We come from an oral culture so it’s one of the first times information is being shared in this format.”

Woods, who was a finalist in the 2012 series of MasterChef, said some of her fondest childhood memories are of hunting for mud crabs, collecting pipis and foraging for ingredients such as karkalla on Byron Bay’s beaches with her nan.

She named her Byron Bay restaurant after the coastal succulent, also known as pig’s face.

While Karkalla closed in April, Woods plans to bring it back later this year at Conscious Ground organic farm at Myocum, where a lot of the native ingredients she uses are grown.

“We are taking Karkalla on country, which to be honest will offer way more of a cultural experience than what you can achieve in a bricks and mortar venue,” she said.

“We’ll be getting elders involved to do a Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony and talk people through native food over a long lunch. When we come together and share a meal that’s when conversations happen and we realise that we have more in common than we do differences.”

Woods said Karkalla at Home was more than just a cookbook, it’s also a reflection of country and culture.

“I really believe that to experience a culture you need to experience its food and as Australians we often forget to experience the culture that’s been here since the beginning of time,” she said.

“It’s incredible to think that we have 6,500 ingredients that are unique to the place that we call Australia, and most households wouldn’t have anything but macadamia and lemon myrtle in them.”

As well as profiles on more than 40 native ingredients, including macadamia nuts, berries and plums, the book features more than 100 recipes.

They include breakfasts such as scrambled eggs with warrigal greens and main meals like kangaroo burger and paperbark smoked barramundi.

There are also desserts such as pavlova with native raspberries and lilly pilly, plus lemon myrtle margaritas and other cocktails.

“The pipi chowder is one of my favourites,” Woods said. “Pipis just really bring me back to country and remind me of my childhood.”