Dips, party food, snacks & entrees

[Shalem]

My household likes to eat some dips and snacks now and then after a hard day's work.

What bush tucker dips, finger foods, snacks and entrees have you eaten or cooked? Do you have any recipes to share?

[Shalem]

Sometime ago, I made crackers sprinkled with ground native mountain pepper, and some others sprinkled with crushed macadamia nuts. The flavours were quite mild so I think next time I make these, I'll add them into the dough as well as sprinkling more on. I reckon ground native pepperberry sprinkled on the crackers would look really pretty with their purplish colour.

I've got the recipes floating around somewhere, but there are a couple of bush tomato dips using sour cream and ground bush tomato, which I have yet to try.

I made a spinach dip once to go into a cob loaf. Perhaps warrigal greens could replace spinach on this one, and go as a stuffing for a wattleseed cob loaf.

[Shalem]

My mother-in-law taught me to make one of the easiest dips. It's just add bottled relish to softened cream cheese.

The cheap Dilly Bag recipe booklet I bought a while back has some good quick ideas and photos for this topic. One of them is similar to my in-law's idea of adding bush tomato relish to cream cheese, or flinders relish to cream cheese & sour cream.

I've got these bottles, try later with pics.

There's few other recipe ideas for this topic on www.thedillybag.com.au, not sure right now if they're all in that recipe booklet, at least I don't think the dip recipes are on the web, but this type of dip is easy to make and can be tried to taste without using set quantities.

[Shalem]

These are the slimmer version of hot dog rolls I made with Laucke breadmix, the dough for which can be made by hand or appliance (more info under Breads).

I haven't tried this (photo later) if I make some, but an idea for finger food or for children's lunches & parties could be make hot dogs with native meat sausages, native cheese, bushfood sauce (etc).

Then slice each hot dog into a number of pieces.

Maybe best just to slice in half. If 3 or more pieces, the fillings may fall out but see what happens.

[Shalem]

Here, I've made some bushfood dips.

They come from The Dilly Bag recipe booklet.

The top dip has Outback Pride's Kutjera bush tomato relish beaten together with softened cream cheese.

Bottom dip has Outback Food's Flinder's Sweet Relish beaten with softened cream cheese and some organic sour cream.

Really simple to make. To soften the cream cheese, I either leave it out of the fridge or use the microwave at defrost cycle 30% power taking approx 1.5-2mins with a 1000W microwave for 250g cream cheese block.




Bottom left: Flinders Sweet relish

Appears to be mainly green peppers (capsicum taste) but has aniseed myrtle and mountain pepper native spices.

Disadvantage: small neck of the thin bottle. Not all my teaspoons fit through.

Advantage: all natural. Use as a dip, spread or sauce.


Bottom right: bush tomato relish

Sweet Tomato relish bottle says gluten free....double check this when you buy it.

Has 12% Kutjera (bush tomato), wattleseed, lemon myrtle, native pepper.

[Shalem]

Pork Meatballs with DAVIDSON PLUM SAUCE

rich plum sauce

Davidson Plum Sauce

Used recipe from Qld Bushfood Assoc (www.qldbushfood.com).

Mine's a dark sauce, probably because I used dark chocolate port. It had a distinctive taste of BBQ sauce with a hint of tamarind chutney.

If interested in buying ready made davidson plum sauce, it's quite likely there'd be something in the Online stores topic (or other stores).

Meatballs

Threw in whatever I felt, and whatever quantity "bit of this and that" etc.

Bush tomato relish, native spices (Cherikoff D'Downunder's mintbush marinade), fresh chopped mint.

Note: I would've put fresh native herbs in instead, if I had any access to them (or knew anything about them!). Would've probably used native meat if I had some to spare.

[Shalem]

Type of HOME MADE DUKKAH

A Dukkah originated from overseas and consists of nuts, seeds and spices.

Many types of bush dukkahs are available from a number of online stores (though I've tried any yet).

There are sweet and savoury bush dukkahs.

Savoury dukkahs are used with oil (either together or separately) for which to dip bread into. They're also used salad sprinkles or coating meats.

My dukkah has: crushed macadamias, crushed pecans, Aussie Furikaki & Mintbush marinade spices (both from Cherikoff D'Downunder). I used the furikaki as it comes with sesame seeds and native spices.

[Thomas B]

Bunya nut and avocado dip

This recipe is good because you can use a few of those bunya nuts that have started to dry out and go hard. Use a food processor to combine avocado and bunya nuts and pepperberries to taste. I haven't added anything salty, but it doesn't generally need it.

[Thomas B]

I don't know if I should put this here, but my lunch two days ago was mashed sandpaper figs (Ficus coronata) with yoghurt. It's not quite a dip, but it is a snack. I think this is a winner combo. Go to your local sandpaper fig, get about 15 figs, put into a large bowl and mash with a fork until a syrupy consistency is reached. Pour onto yoghurt. The furry skin gets macerated, so it doesn't irritate the tongue the way it does when they are intact and the colour is incredible. For anyone in Sydney, look along creeksides in wet sclerophyll forest.

[Shalem]

Kangaroo Prosciutto Ribbon Sandwiches

Cut with electric knife as it doesn't squash the sandwich.

Party or finger food.

Best to use mayonnaise/sauce/dressing to prevent fillings from falling out and add taste.





Another way to cut and serve these.

I wasn't entertaining at the time to make enough of these, and didn't have a lot of proscuitto left, to demonstrate how it could look arranged on a platter.

[Shalem]

FOCCACCIA


More info/pics in Breads topic.

Using Bush Tomato seasoning, wild thyme herbs & an infused oil blend (lemon myrtle, coconut, chilli), all from Cherikoff Dining Downunder.

[Shalem]

BUSH TOMATO NATIVE BASIL DUKKAH

with Chilli, from A Taste of the Bush.

Has hazelnuts, seeds, Bush Tomato, Native Basil, chilli, sea salt.

This dukkah smells and tastes really good.

On their website, I think the store owners wrote that they make up their dukkahs fresh each week.

[Shalem]

BUSH TOMATO DIP

Yoghurt dip made of Easiyo dip packet mix and natural yoghurt. The mix (and their other flavours) can be bought online and just needs yoghurt added so takes about half minute to make the basic dip. Handy to be able to keep packets in the pantry for later on.

Good as a basic dip, but I like to add extras to Easiyo's tomato dip like seasoned salt, olive oil, sundried tomatoes, basil leaves, red onion, bush tomato seasoning.



Dip mix, yoghurt and Bush Tomato seasoning.