First Nations Food Companion

A groundbreaking celebration of the most accessible and popular Australian native ingredients and their uses in the everyday home kitchen.


'This book brings ancient foods into the modern kitchen. Every page is full of fascination. A walk in the bush will never be the same.' Bruce Pascoe


We know more about pine nuts than bunya nuts, kale than warrigal greens, but there's an edible pantry of unique flavours that First Nations people have been making the most of long before anyone came up with the word 'foodie'.


Welcome to a food-lover's guidebook to the First Foods of this continent. Including an informative guide to more than 60 of the most accessible Indigenous ingredients, including their flavour profiles, along with tips for how to buy, grow and store them.


After that, 100 delicious recipes: all featuring native ingredients, and including tips for substituting regular pantry ingredients where needed - including Bush-Tomato Cheese on Toast, Anise Myrtle and Macadamia Poached Chicken, Myrtle Tea Cake, Quandong and Davidson's Plum Iced Vovos and more. Plus features and recipes for an Indigenous medicine garden, as well as how to set up your pantry and freezer, and the best places to find native ingredients in shops and online.


From the award-winning founders of native food enterprise Warndu. Damien Coulthard is an Adnyamathanha and Dieri person of the Flinders Ranges, an international artist, cultural educator and former board director of the South Australian Native Title Service. Rebecca Sullivan is a food educator and author, regenerative farmer, Yale World Fellow and TV presenter.