First Nations Food Companion

A groundbreaking celebration of the most accessible and popular Indigenous Australian 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.

About the Author

Damien Coulthard is an Adnyamathanha and Dieri person of the Flinders Ranges, an international artist, cultural educator and high school teacher. He is a former board director of the South Australian Native Title Service.

Damien's wife Rebecca Sullivan (@grannyskills) is a food educator, regenerative farmer, Yale World Fellow and TV presenter who has featured in ABC's Gardening Australia as well as on Channels Nine and Ten. She has a masters in sustainable agriculture, worked in the UK Slow Food movement and teaches natural living and cookery at River Cottage UK and The Agrarian Kitchen in Tasmania. Her writing can be found in in Peppermint, ABC Organic Gardener, SA Gardens and delicious.

Together, Damien and Rebecca are co-founders of Warndu, a native food enterprise and ethical lifestyle brand which runs pop-up restaurants and workshops, employs local indigenous and non-indigenous people. Their first book, Warndu Mai, was awarded the best cookbook in Australia at the Gourmand Awards.