For the past two years, Wild Forage Australia has supplied locally harvested produce to restaurants from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast.
It’s capitalising on a growing global trend of picking fresh from nature, and serving ‘wild edibles’ with locally grown meat or seafood, to create what some see as a biosphere on a plate.
Nick Blake runs the business from his home in Coolum while working as a head chef, and developing his experimental menu, at Black Bunny Kitchen in nearby Alexandra Headland.
Nick credits his Burmese, Parsi, Irish great-grandmother for his love of hot, sweet and sour flavour profiles.
“She was a lady in waiting at the court of Rajasthan. And my grandfather later became a Brigadier General in the Burmese Army, and a full British Colonel,” Nick says.
Nick’s business Wild Forage Australia aims to introduce people to the delicate flavours of local provenance, harvested from hinterland rainforests and from the seashore.
At a tree-lined roadside on the Blackall Range, Nick forages for red-flowered pineapple sage.
“For me, foraging is about connecting to the landscape, and it’s about utilising the ingredients that we have at our fingertips, “ says Nick.
Pineapple sage, a flower that's common along the hinterland regions. Source: Supplied
“Pineapple sage is common throughout the hinterland regions, also common along all our roadsides under dominant tree cover, it does really well with the shade and moisture,” says Nick.
Chef Zeb Gilbert from Wasabi at Noosa is foraging with Nick. Zeb plans to use the pineapple sage in a Japanese beverage known as Shochu and to make a sugar syrup for desserts.
“It’s good to use everything from the local environment. So this is just emphasising our local area, that’s the main focus,” says Zeb.
Indigenous communities in Australia have foraged wild foods for more than 60,000 years.
Nick himself began foraging as a child while growing up in Fiji.
“So it’s nothing new,” Nick says.
“Foraging was something we did on the weekend, and I used to swim in the creek and pick guavas, chokos, tapioca and breadfruit and bring that all back for mum to cook up. I suppose having all that tropical produce on our doorstep was something quite natural to us as kids."
After arriving in Australia, Nick continued foraging for fun, but in 2016, the idea for a business took shape.
Nick as a child in Fiji. Source: Supplied
“I was doing lots of hours in the kitchen as a busy sous chef and I wanted to find my own style and get some additional inspiration outside the restaurant.”
Down by Little Yabba Creek, under a canopy of rainforest trees covered by noisy fruit bats, Nick harvests watercress.
“[It's] an exotic species not a native one, and it can become invasive,” Nick explains.
“I have environmental science qualifications for I wanted to bring the two together somehow,” says Nick.
Invasive species can spread to cause damage to the environment, human economy or human health. Many of the foods Nick is licensed to harvest are not native to the local area, so he is also helping the environment by thinning these plant communities.
“I started reading books and learning more about foraging, then I was lucky enough to work at a famous Sydney restaurant drawing on the European tradition of foraging,” Nick explains.
“And I came back home to the Sunshine Coast with all this new knowledge and I really wanted to improve the local experience, and share some of the knowledge with some of our local chefs."
Since 2016, Nick’s business has flourished and he now supplies local chefs via Suncoast Fresh, a local food distribution company.
“Being a forager, it’s really important to know what product you’re picking and really getting the ideas correct: what the flowers look like, what the leaves look like as there’s a lot of things that are very similar."
“You could actually be picking something that’s poisonous!” he says.
Nick’s ‘pick list’ species are all approved by the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection.
Nick picks old man's beard. Source: Supplied
“And they’ve actually ticked them all off against what’s nationally accepted as species of least concern or whether they’re native or restricted species.
“It’s very important to go out with someone that actually knows what they’re doing, and has been picking and has some credentials because public safety is very important,” he explains.
Nick is the grateful winner of a $2,000 fridge freezer through BizCover’s BizGiver program, which aims to help small businesses overcome challenges.
Nick uses the fridge to keep his produce fresh and crisp.
“If I’m going out on really big foraging days and the plan is to wire it into my truck and take out with me pretty much all day and keep my product in perfect condition."
On the rock ledges near Point Arkwright, chefs Nick, Zeb and Chris are combing the rock pools and harvesting seaweed, including sargassum meticum known as Japanese wireweed.
Chris has foraged a small amount of ulva lactuca, or sea lettuce, and will use it at his restaurant The Long Apron to flavour sago crackle and add texture and a bit of salt to various dishes.
Nick, Zeb and Chris are combing the rock pools and harvesting seaweed. Source: Supplied
“And, if we're doing a seafood dish, we’ve got seaweeds from the area and the same rocks the scallop may sit on, has the seaweeds growing next to it,” Chris explains.
At Noosa restaurant Wasabi, Zeb says local seaweeds are used to flavour soups, to add colour and texture to sashimi, or as a base for the foam to enhance crab or fish dishes.
“We’re lucky enough to work in restaurants with a fantastic clientele who are happy to experience something new and they want something new,” Zeb explains.
Back at Black Bunny, Nick prepares a sashimi of local yellowfin tuna, with some of the produce he’s collected.
“I’m using local amaranth from the Mooloolah Valley, then pineapple sage for its herbaceous flavour and some of the flowers as decoration as well,” says Nick.
Local yellowfin tuna sashimi dressed with the produce Nick had foraged. Source: Supplied
“And to bring that whole story together, I’m using some of these local seaweeds, some of the soft tops, that we picked earlier this morning.
“I’ve just done a little brunoise of green apple and cucumber and dressed that with a little bit of Queensland finger lime."
The result served to friends Chris and Zeb is a fresh plate of seafood dressed with a medley of local plants collected from bush and beach.
“Foraging is about going out there, and connecting to the ingredient, and learning to taste and feel inspired again, and we’re returning to the source, to what it should be about,” says Nick.
