Aotearoa and Australia · Volume 01, Fire, the Stone Trap and the Reef Garden · Cooked by cue
Bunya nut paste
The Bunya Mountains, southern Queensland
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Researched
- 22 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Bunya nut, harvested during the pine's triennial mast-fruiting cycle and described in language as "mother's milk," roasted then ground into paste at the historic gatherings named above. This chapter states plainly that bunya nut is genuinely unobtainable in the UK, and, per the Sourcing section below, essentially unobtainable at any real commercial scale even within Australia, given its short, three-yearly harvest.
As tradition built it
Roasted, then ground by hand into a paste.
Ingredients
No written recipe exists for bunya nut paste: it is made at the gathering by cue, and the chapter gives the method as it is told on country.
- bunya nuts, harvested during the triennial mast-fruiting cycle
Method
- Roast bunya nuts.
- Grind by hand into a paste.
What a modern chef changes
Macadamia, named honestly as a substitute
Rung 4
Ingredients
- macadamia nuts, roasted
Method
- Roast macadamia nuts to a deep, even colour, matching bunya's own roasted character as closely as an available nut allows.
- Purée in a high-power blender to a genuinely smooth paste, reproducing by machine the fine, even grind hand-pounding achieves with real labour.
- State plainly on the plate or in any menu description that this is macadamia standing in for bunya nut, not bunya nut itself, in keeping with this chapter's own house rule against letting a UK ingredient quietly pass as the real one.
Notes
Using macadamia, this chapter's honest UK substitute, named as a substitute rather than disguised as the real thing.