The spice is right: wattleseeds
Posted by kathryn in Dinners, Dairy, Vegetables, Winter and Recipes
Australian bush foods are always something that have intrigued me, but I’ve never really known what to do with them.
This month’s Spice is Right is about using a locally grown spice in combination with fresh and local produce, in a dish that reflects the flavours of home. This month I was in the mood for experimenting and thought it was time to try out something new – a native spice.
Many of the bush foods and spices are unique to Australia – they’ve been grown, harvested and cooked here for thousands of years and way before Captain Cook set foot on this land.
Today the variety of the food choice in Sydney is amazing – Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Turkish, Spanish, Indian . . . on and on goes the list and yet these indigenous foods are rarely used. If the aim this month is to create a dish that reflects the land in which you live, then for Sydney it also has to reflect our melting pot of cultures.
Since living in Sydney, my favourite tree has become the wattle and their bright, golden yellow, fluffy flowers are in bloom at the moment. So, for this Spice is Right, I’m concentrating on wattleseeds. They do not solely grow in Australia, but they are very Australian and the wattle or Acacia is our national floral emblem. Indigenous Australians have been using the seed, root and bark of wattles for thousands of years as both food and medicine. The early colonists included branches in the construction of their houses using the “wattle and daub” method – hence the name wattle.
There are over 700 species of wattle in Australia, of which about 100 have edible seeds. The seeds have to be dried and roasted before use, as fresh wattleseeds contain thiaminase, an enzyme which breaks down vitamin B1. Wattleseeds are high in protein (about 26%), contain polyunsaturated fats and are about 30% fibre. They also have a low GI and can reduce the glycemic effect of any foods they contain.
Dried and roasted they look a bit like coffee grinds and have a slightly bitter, nutty flavour – kind of a cross between bitter chocolate, coffee and hazelnuts, hence they’re often used in sweet recipes. However, I wanted to make something savoury and so with the help of " Spice Notes ":http://www.ozevillage.com.au/herbies/store/index.asp?product_id=9082 by Ian Hemphill, I’ve been playing around with wattleseed blends and having fun in the process.
My final recipe is for a wattleseed spice blend which can be used in many different ways. I’ve combined it with ricotta from the Blue Mts and some winter vegetables, all grown in the greater Sydney area. The dish is a combination of cultures – the indigenous wattleseeds, the slightly North African feel to the spice blend, baked ricotta is something I always associate with Italian food and what could be more Sydney than a stack!
Wattleseed Spice Blend
- 3 tablespoons cashew nuts
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
- 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
- 1 teaspoon wattleseeds
Dry roast the cashews, sesame seeds and coriander seeds in a frying pan until toasted. Be careful not to burn these, as they tend to change from toasted to blackened very quickly. Add the wattleseeds and then grind together in a mortar and pestle (or a spice grinder).
This spice mix can be used with meat or fish or added to burgers. You could also sprinkle over mixed vegetables before roasting. I purchased my wattleseeds from Herbies.
Baked Wattleseed Ricotta Stack
Try to get fresh ricotta, cut from a cake for this recipe – most supermarket delis sell ricotta by weight. Serves 2
- 2 potatoes, washed (leave the skins on)
- 1 red onion, peeled and cut in half
- 200g pumpkin (again I left the skin on)
- 100g green beans
- 250g fresh ricotta
- 2.5 teaspoons wattleseed spice blend
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
Heat the oven to 220°C.
Thinly slice the potatoes, red onion and pumpkin, you want them in about 5mm slices so they cook quickly. Place on a baking tray with the green beans. Drizzle with half the olive oil and put in the oven, on the top shelf, for about 20 minutes. Turn the vegetables over half way through the cooking time.
Meanwhile place the ricotta cheese in an ovenproof dish and sprinkle with the wattleseed spice blend. Drizzle with the rest of the olive oil and place in the oven, underneath the vegetables, for about 10 – 15 minutes, or until the ricotta is slightly brown and feels solid when touched.
To serve, carefully place half the vegetables on a plate and top with a slice of the baked ricotta.
16 August, 2006
Comments
This sounds so easy, I’m going to give it a go. It’s amazing how piling them on top of each other turns vegies from a side dish into a centrepiece.
Never imagined baking green beans but the less pots used the better in my opinion.
On a picky note the Australian floral emblem is specifically the Golden Wattle or Acacia pycnantha and personally my favourite. :-)
[…] Kathryn brings a lot of her expertise as a nutritionist and herbalist to her Australian food blog, Limes & Lycopene, and I find it gives her writing a unique voice that is always fun to read. Here she tells us about a unique Australian bush spice–wattleseeds. What a great name! She tells us that it has an interesting flavor, somewhere between dark chocolate, coffee and hazelnuts, and it is most often used in sweet recipes. However, she used it in a spice blend that included sesame seeds and cashew nuts, and used it to flavor baked ricotta cheese that was used to top roasted vegetables in a recipe called Baked Wattleseed Ricotta Stack. It looks and sounds delicious, Kathryn, thank you so much for sharing it with us! Now, we just need to know if we can get wattleseeds where we live! […]
Emma, it is really easy and REALLY good. Richard stated last night, this was the best flavoured ricotta I’ve made – which is is a big call because I bake ricotta a lot. Plus, I’ve now got a small jar of wonderful spice mix to experiment with. I’ll be publishing another post either later today or tomorrow about other ways to use wattleseeds.
And . . . thanks for picking me up on my floral emblem faux pas!
it is amazing just how small this planet really is as we leap into the future. Kathryn, I am pleased that you discovered Wattleseeds as a flavouring. I invented the product in 1983, building on the Aboriginal use of the lightly heat-parched seeds as a grain. Mine was an accidental over-roasting and I invite anyone interested in food history to read more on my cherikoff.net website.
One thing though: Wattleseeds are a lot like coffee in that they really give up their flavour when they are brought to high heat with water. Unlike coffee, boiling Wattleseed is fine and actually pulls more flavour than lower temperatures. I often boil a quantity (say, 2 tablespoons in 1/4 cup of water) and then store it in the jar I’m using to microwave/boil. The liquid is perfect in sauces, whipped cream, ice cream and beer while the grounds are perfect in bread and pancakes and would really work well, simply drained and added to your seasoning mix.
Please be aware that not all wattles have seeds which are edible and old recipes using the wattle blossoms might sound exotic but can’t be recommended either. You wouldn’t go foraging freely in a supermarket without knowing what’s food and what’s pet food or soap. We can’t expect the long supermarket (that strip along the roadside these days) to be more friendly.
Fortunately, Wattleseed is available around the world through the magic of e-commerce. In fact we recently shipped 200g of both Wattleseed and Wattleseed extract to Alaska. I guess it was going into an instant Wattleseed ice cream.
Lastly, there’s every reason to include commercially available Wattleseed in your diet since it was one of those foods protective against diabetes and obesity. And as a weight-loss food, there’s nothing better to give you that satiated feeling from a really low GI meal.
I never knew this was a spice! as well you included the picture of the tree. This tree thrives all over Delhi, and its common name is – Australian Wattle (Acasia auriculiformis)! Do I have the correct tree? Next time I see it blooming, I am gonna harvest some and cook this healthy dish. I’ll have to substitute the Indian paneer for the Ricotta, which is very very similar, if not the same.
Thanks for your comment Vic and I’m certainly aware of your work and websites, from the research I did for this blog post. In working on this recipe, I trialled both boiled wattleseeds and the ground and roasted version and to be honest I didn’t find a huge difference in the final flavour. Given that it’s an extra step and I really try to keep my recipes simple, I decided against including that stage in this recipe.
One other note, in looking for uses for the rest of my wattleseed liquid, I put some on my porridge this morning (as per one of your suggestions from the GI newsletter) and I have to say that porridge, wattleseed and a bit of maple syrup is a fine, fine combination.
Anita, lovely to hear from you. Yes wattleseeds are a spice, but I’d strongly recommend against wildcrafting the seeds. Most species of wattleseed are toxic to us humans, plus they have to be correctly dried and roasted in order to destroy the thiaminase enzyme. My picture is of the golden wattle, which is not edible. How lovely to know they thrive in Delhi, it’s such a beautiful tree, I would suggest you just appreciate it visually and don’t try to harvest any of the seeds!
One of my first wattleseed experiments was with paneer cheese – I made my own and mixed in a combination of sesame, coriander and wattleseeds before pressing the cheese. It was delicious, but then I stuffed up the final recipe by cooking it with too much spinach and making it too bitter. The cheese itself was gorgeous though.
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