Weekend Cooking: Sounds of Silence dinner at Uluru

Last week we fulfilled a dream of mine and visited Uluru in the red centre of Australia! It is a place that I have wanted to visit for years. We were supposed to go in September of last year, but.....you know.....Covid happened.

It was such an amazing place to visit, and I could write for ages about the experience,  but today I wanted to focus on the food side of the trip. Whilst shows like Masterchef have contestants regularly using native ingredients, I wouldn't suggest that it isn't really that mainstream yet. I think I have tried a cheesecake before that featured native ingredients, but I didn't really enjoy it, so I was a bit concerned that I wasn't going to like anything, but, in the end, I needn't have been concerned.

On our first full days at the resort we did a lot of the free activities, one of which was about bush food. Whilst the area around Uluru is full of shrubs and low trees, we were assured that there was plenty of food about, if you know what you are looking for. It was also important to know about different varieties because they may have very different properties even though they are part of the same family. For example, there was a type of leaf called senna that you could eat, but there was a very close relative called chocolate senna that is a laxative so you don't want to eat at the wrong time! In addition, the guide talked about honey ants, witchety grub, bush tomatoes, desert plums and so much more. It was very interesting! 

At the end of that talk we all got to taste Wattleseed Shortbread which was delicious. It is a minimal amount of wattleseed that is added into the recipe - just enough to give it a distinctive taste. I have shared the recipe below.

The highlight of our trip was the Sounds of Silence dinner. What a night. It started with sparkling wine and canapes as the sun set, with views of both Uluru and Kata-juta in the distance. During dinner there was a didgeridoo being played and then there was a talk about the stars. Given that there is so little light pollution out there, the amount of stars you can see in the sky is amazing compared to in the city.

I am guessing that the little boxes containing the canapes are to keep the event COVID friendly rather than having someone walking around offering up platters.

We then had a starter of bush tomato soup, which didn't taste dissimilar to normal tomato soup but maybe a little sweeter.

There we moved onto a buffet dinner. I can't remember what all the different meats were, but the coleslaw type salad that you can see in the photo included shredded crocodile in it, which was actually very nice. You could do something similar with chicken or fish quite easily. The fish was delicious as were the lamb cutlets, and I am really going to have to play around with roasting cauliflower because that was delicious too!

The dessert was also buffet and all of them were delicious and all had at least some native flavourings in them too, ranging from bite sized (two bits at most!)  brownies, to cheesecake, crumble tarts and pudding with custard

The people at our table included an older couple who ended up not living too far from us, an older lady, and then one young English couple and one young American who had both been working in Australia for a couple of years and were making sure to see as much of the country as they could. The wine flowed freely, as did the conversation. 

It was a magic night!

Wattleseed Shortbread

200g unsalted butter, softened

90g icing sugar

1 egg yolk

250g plain flour

2g baking powder.

5g wattleseed

Preheat oven 1t 190C (374f)

Lightly cream the soft butter and sugar

Mix in the egg yolk

Fold in the flour, baking powder and wattleseed

Roll into small balls

Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden brown, then cool on a wire rack.

Weekly Meals

Saturday: Airport dinner where there was very little open!
Sunday: Seafood Chowder Pie
Monday: Takeaway
Tuesday: Garlic Lamp Rump with Capsicum and Walnut dip and fattoush
Wednesday: Pineapple and chicken kebabs with rice

Thursday: Pork Vindaloo with rice and salad
Friday: Pizza (family dinner)

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