I have been thinking a lot about native food recently. But not as much as Jude Mayall, also known as the Outback Chef, thinks about native food. She is a passionate advocate for eating the food grown on the land we walk on and she has been supplying chefs, home cooks, distillers and manufacturers with a vast array of native ingredients since 2005. The dream was always to have her own place to share her passion and two weeks ago, she opened the doors to The Wild Food Farm in Rhyll, on Phillip Island, and the dream became a reality.
Hi Jude. I’ve been reading about you and I don’t really know where to start because you have such a rich story to tell. You sound very creative in food and in art. Did it start in Solingen in German with learning confectionery or where did it all begin?
Food and art have always been a big part of my life. They have always been there as a given. I grew up in a family where we had fruit trees and we were growing things and I also grew up with a mother who was an amazing cook. So I guess like so many other chefs around, the family influence was there.
Something about confectionery started to really interest me and I don’t know why; I have no major answers there. I got to know a few confectioners who had been in the business all their lives and they started to teach and tell me a few things because I was curious. Then I thought I should get some qualifications and learn a whole lot more about the background; things that go into confectionery…sugar is a big thing, all sorts of fats into chocolate and the ingredients…I wanted to learn the theory of it. I went over to Germany to the Confectionery College over there and studied there for a little while and then came back. Then I worked with these confectioners who had been in the industry all their lives. For them it was a really hands on experience and I find that’s a really important thing with food or anything really.
At that stage was it more artisanal or was it more industrial?
I think it was more artisanal. It became industrial. Once you get into a business, it becomes industrial. I did three pretty hard years on the factory floor that were very industrial. I think I had a stress fracture in my wrist for I don’t know how long. You’re lifting up big heavy batches of hot fudge and at that stage we were doing what they call fire cooking. That’s where your pot is over a flame all the time, whereas now you find with a lot of confectionery they go into vacuum cooking and microwave cooking and things are really rushed through. I guess I really kept that artisanal side to it with the fire cooking because that’s where flavours really develop, even in confectionery; everyone knows how sugar cooks and changes from white to the beautiful caramel flavours and that goes through into any sort of confection you make and we kept it that way. We were making big batches of fudge and nougats and rocky roads and all manner things. It was amazing and really lovely actually. But it was a lot of heavy lifting and getting to know what your batch looks like when it cooks and when it comes up to temperature. Working with people who had that background and experience, whether it was sugar pulling or making a batch of nougat or looking at a pot that’s coming to boil and looking when it’s ready. These guys never used temperatures or anything like that, it was amazing. They just knew the batch and knew the bubbles. That, to me, was a really unique experience. So, while I had gathered my theory and done my own study as well as trial and error, which can be a scary thing, but you do always learn a lot from it, but working for those three years on the factory floor was really amazing. They had so many lovely stories to tell and rich tales about the background of the places they worked.
Where was that?
That was back here in Melbourne at places like Cadbury and Darrell Lea and Ballantynes, places that have changed over the years.
They probably started off as small companies and then really grew.
That’s going back a lot of years now and then a whole lot of new rules and regulations came out and they had to change to fit in with the health department and local council requirements. I think confectionery has changed quite a bit. But learning it from the basics is good fun.
Were you then able to go off and create your own things…in a Willy Wonka kind of way?
It was probably more of a wonky kind of way. But for me experimenting is always a thing. I probably hardly ever follow recipes really. I’d think, well, maybe I can try this and add a flavour or work with different things. That flows over into food. I have always cooked. I used to cook with my mother. She used to do a lot of things. She was doing a lot of stuff at Emily McPherson it was then, William Angliss now, and then she was one of the first students of Elizabeth Chong’s Chinese cooking classes. So even from an early age we were having all this amazing Chinese food, so it was all about experimenting.
When we moved from the country down to Melbourne and Dad was a wholesale fruit merchant in the Vic market, he used to bring home a whole lot of really amazing things that people just weren’t seeing on their plates. I remember when Mum showed us seaweed and I didn’t know what to think about it.
How forward thinking.
Yeah, I think I learned to make stir-fry before I learned anything else. I guess going back Australian food was pretty conservative, you know, meat and three veges was really the rave then and now we have such an amazing multicultural population living here and amongst our chefs. Our food in Melbourne, and really all over Australia, is incredible. We have this amazing of food and fusions and all sorts of other things coming into play.
I really think native food is important for this country. It’s what grows naturally. It comes down to your own philosophies and mine is that if you eat what the land you walk on produces, you’re going to be a lot happier and you’re going to relate to that land a lot more. I have nothing against imported spices, but we have to have that component this land produces naturally because that’s all the minerals and all the elements we need to absorb.
That’s where I like to think that Australian native food, it’s now shaping all that and bringing it all together, whether it’s an Asian influence or a Greek influence or a Middle Eastern influence. I work with chefs and supply chefs who are part of that. Native food is shaping what our food is all about.
And it must. I think whatever side of the controversy surrounding Bruce Pascoe we stand on, I think he is right that there are so many underutilised plants that grow naturally here without the need for as much irrigation. Were you a forerunner in introducing people to these ingredients?
No. I wasn’t. There have been other people who have come before me and paved the way and there are a lot of amazing people who have been in the native food industry for a long time. Outback Chef started in 2005 and before then I worked for a while in an indigenous art gallery. I have always really liked that. I guess the stories of indigenous art really showed me a lot about what is going on. I discovered that there was all this food out there and we know nothing about it. When I started Outback Chef, I was getting into the herbs and spices to get into it.
How did you gain entry? Did you have to go and talk to the community? Were they open to it?
I already knew a lot of people in community through the art world. At that stage I was living up on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and I really wanted to know more about native food. I started talking to a few people in the industry; some indigenous and some non-indigenous and then it took off from there. I had a few herbs and spices and bits and pieces, you know, you start doorknocking. No one wanted to know about it. Firstly, they weren’t all that interested because they had all these preconceived ideas about native food. They didn’t see it as belonging anywhere, even though the first colonists ate native food, but then English food started to come in.
Those who were interested said they didn’t know what to do with them and that was the biggest thing. There were little lightbulbs that flashed in people’s head when they smelled lemon myrtle and thought it smelled really nice…that was probably one of the most familiar ones, but when I introduced some of the peppers or the wattle seed, they didn’t know what to do with it. But I really believed in it and knew there had to be a way to sell the stuff.
I also really believe it is important for this country…and this is really going out there…but I really think native food is important for this country. It’s what grows naturally. It comes down to your own philosophies and mine is that if you eat what the land you walk on produces, you’re going to be a lot happier and you’re going to relate to that land a lot more. I have nothing against imported spices, but we have to have that component this land produces naturally because that’s all the minerals and all the elements we need to absorb.
So when I was thinking about how I could sell it, I had a lightbulb moment and thought, right: curry; everyone knows what to do with a curry, I’ll make curry. I did Outback Bush curry, red curry and yellow curry and then I put them in commercial wraps and started selling them. They were a little slow to start with, but I am still selling them, and they have really taken off. A lot of the chefs buy kilo bags of them. I use lemon myrtle, anise myrtle and some of the peppers and so it goes on. From there I went on and created a range of teas, just looking at what is already there and what people know and creating the flavours. So while I sell native food, I think you work it in with other things. For example, you can make a batch of muffins and use some lemon myrtle or some wattle seed. You could mix lemon myrtle with dried apricots and coconut; that’s a really nice little combo and stick that in your muffins. I’m not saying go all native, but look around and incorporate it. You can use warrigal greens…and I have so much of that growing on Wild Food farm at the moment…you can use that instead of spinach. You can blanch it if you want to take out some of those bitter tones or mix it with spinach as well. If you’re making spinach feta pastries, you can put a few warrigal greens in or a bit of pepperberry in or wattle seed.
When did you make the decision about Wild Food Farm?
For pretty much all Outback Chef’s life we have been operating out of a warehouse and website and then I go out and give talks and go to restaurants, but I have always felt I just wanted to go that step further. it started out as a bit of a fantasy, and I was told it was only a fantasy. But I wanted an amazing place where everything was growing. But then the fantasy became a dream and now the dream is a reality. I had an opportunity when one of my clients going way back used to buy things from me and he and his father put a lot of plantings on this property that had just been bare bones.
Where is it?
Rhyll, on Phillip Island. They ran it as a trout and bush tucker farm. The fish were the main thing where people could come and fish trout in the dams. They sold it and the next lot came in, but the bottom line was, it then lay empty for quite some time. I went down and had a chat to my client and he said it would be good for me and I looked at all the work that needed doing around the property. The café they had opened was a shell and needed a lot of attention and the property did too, but it was one of those things that kept needling me and I kept thinking about how nice it was and how I could do it. I talked about and did a lot of facts and figures; I work with a business consultant. Then I just said to him one day, ok I’m going to do it. He asked if I was going to jump in the deep end and I said, yes. I told him that I had decided I could swim really well in the deep end, so let’s see what happens. That’s how it has come about. We opened the café a couple of weeks ago. It is still very new and there is still a lot of work to do, but I am so happy with it. It is looking great.
We have the café and produce store. I want to do a lot more in the produce store with all the jams and preserves, oils and vinegars and all those lovely things we can do to really showcase how amazing native food is and what can be done with it.
When you originally started, were you getting more of those ingredients from further north?
A lot did come from the north. Northern New South Wales is pretty good for native food.
Is it different? Are there different things from here? Will you still be accessing suppliers from other parts of Australia?
Yes, from all over. I have now developed to the point where we are supplying a lot of chefs and restaurants, cafes, distillers and a lot of manufacturers, so we need a lot of stock. That was another thing; freezer space was always an issue, storage space, chiller space…I just never had it but now on the property we’ve got heaps of space. It means that we can seriously look at getting a list together to be able to supply people and continue the supply. Before I could only store a certain amount of fruit in season and then a manufacturer might buy up half and then restaurants take it and I’d like to get to the point where I don’t run out before the end of the season.
Most of the chefs now are right into foraging; they love it and that’s a brilliant thing and it’s getting other people really interested. The chefs really love seasonal produce and most native food is still wild harvested and seasonal. That’s the beauty and the frustration of it at times.
I can smell all the spices and herbs but…well, I hadn’t forgotten, because I have spoken to a lot of chefs who use your products…but I hadn’t thought about what you might do with all the fresh produce. It’s a huge job you do. How many different ingredients do you deal with?
I don’t know. I have never counted them. I am so used to them coming and going.
How does it work? Do the chefs come to you and tell you what they need, or do you tell them what is in season or what they should try?
It’s a bit of both. If there is a chef who suddenly need to do something for Australia Day or an occasion where they have to make food with an Australian flavour, I would have to work with them and give them some ideas, then you have other chefs who know about native food and they ring up and ask if I have various things and I say yes or no, depending on the season, and ask them what they are doing and talk to them about possibilities and other things to try. Often it’s a talking thing. There has to be discussion. It’s better for them to talk to me and I encourage that so that then I know what they are after. I think the other thing is that I do my own deliveries, which is good and bad because it takes a lot of time but I have really got to know my regular chefs really well. I go into the back of their kitchens and they show me what they are doing. So say I might get someone way up in Queensland and they’ve got all this stuff, I know who might be interested. Then you create a whole lot of links. We work together.
And otherwise, who do your suppliers sell to?
There are a few of us out there now. There used to be a lot less but now there’s a lot more. I’ve got really good relations with all my growers. I deal with indigenous and non-indigenous growers, wild harvesters and also a lot of indigenous communities. There are some fantastic things happening on community now. Say with Kakadu plum, where they are going out to homelands and getting the plums. Often on community, say up in Arnhem Land, there’s just a wealth of amazing food with beautiful flavours. It’s not possible to bring it all down to work with on a commercial level, but there are amazing things out there. I don’t believe we have even scratched the surface. We’ve got the staple basics and they are increasing; from lemon myrtle and anise myrtle, the native peppers, then you go into the native limes, quandongs, Davidson plums, wattle seed. It is becoming a lot more everyday, whereas it wasn’t 10 years ago.
So you will be out at Phillip Island permanently now?
Yes, We’ll leave this little warehouse and be out there and have it all in one area. We are going to work with a lot of schools so they can come and see food growing; culinary schools, all that sort of thing. I hope people can get a good education and understanding from it. I have some local indigenous people there who will put some good input into it; I have some guides there who have some great stories from around there. I’m pretty excited about it.
Wild Food Farm, 30 Rhyll-Newhaven Road, Phillip Island