‘You don’t need culinary training to explore the potential of these ingredients’. A look at seven native food cookery books written by Indigenous cooks and chefs 2006 – 2025

    5 June 2025

    June 2025

    The article looks at seven native plant cookbooks written by Indigenous cooks and chefs between 2006 – 2025. It looks at the authors’ reasons for writing the book, summarises what is in the books, and gives a recipe from each book.

    The seven books are:

    • Mark Olive’s Outback Café. A taste of Australia  – Mark Olive (2006)
    • Coo-ee Cuisine  – Dale Chapman (2016)
    • Warndu Mai. Good Food- Damien Coulthard & Rececca Sullivan (2019)Mabu Mabu, An Australian Cookbook– Nornie Bero (2022)
    • first nations food companion  – Damien Coulthard & Rececca Sullivan (2022)
    • Bush Foods & Botanicals – Sharon Winsor (2024)
    • The Australian Ingredients Kitchen – Elder Bruno Dann & Tahlia Mandi of Kakadu Plum Co (2025)

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    Paul van Reyk
    My first essay on food was in Year 10 - people seemed to like it. It took me 56 years to come back to it, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My focus is on Anglo-Saxon settler culinary ways in Australia, roughly from the first days of colonisation to the 1960s - 1970s. I particularly write about stuff that has not been written about before but is very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon Australian table. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing.