WEAVES: Wild Foods Tour with Diego Bonetto.
When you ride along the Cooks River often enough you’ll one day spot a botanical gathering led by Diego Bonetto. Diego combines art, science and history to tell stories that reveal the nutritional aspects of local vegetation and what we call weeds.
You can find Diego here: https://www.diegobonetto.com/
There’s centuries of insight and wisdom on offer and while a couple of hours won’t make you an expert it’s enough to enrich understanding and experience of the life around us in the riverside parklands and offer a tantalizing glimpse of pre-colonial indigenous diet and possibilities to add to our tables today.
Diego is a natural storyteller and the experience is as culturally insightful as entertaining and informative.
This is nearly 12 months ago and I need a refresher course but I dug out my notes and I think I’ll need to gather and prepare a dish to share here:
Warrigal Greens can be stir fried or added to dumplings but you must first boil for at least 30 seconds, the oxalic acid can disrupt the kidneys if eaten raw.
The Pigs Face can be served with Warrigal Greens and is also good with Gin and Tonic.
…so Warrigal Dumplings and Pig faced G&T, there’s a mission.
More ideas here: https://districtbulletin.com.au/a-flavour-starter-of-indigenous-food-recipes/
Eats Routes & Weaves 