The Oldest Foods on Earth: A History of Australian Native Foods with Recipes
JOHN NEWTON
NEWSOUTH, $29.99
On   April 2, Noma Australia closed its doors. The 10-week "residency" by celebrated Copenhagen chef Rene Redzepi and his team in a temporary Sydney restaurant site was notable for many reasons - the almost $500-a-person price tag, tickets that sold out in minutes, and the number of Instagram images generated by one single meal.
To advocates of an Australian food culture that looks to its deepest origins (rather than simply the cuisines of other nations), Noma Australia was more than that. It offered hope that chefs and cooks across the country might truly start to celebrate "our own". 
Noma's philosophy gives centre stage to often little-known but fiercely local ingredients. Its chefs spent weeks exploring the Australian "pantry" for unusual and surprising ingredients. Crocodile fat, anyone? The restaurant's highly original 12-course menu of mostly indigenous produce has created a mini-boom for producers of native ingredients. "And about bloody time," John Newton cries.
Otherwise, as this author and sometime journalist relates, the history of Australian food has been a mostly sorry tale.
"This is a book," he writes, "about the unique flora and fauna that nourished the Aboriginal peoples of this land for over 50,000 years" - foodstuffs that were virtually ignored by European Australians since the days of early settlement. After all, these were the foods of "the wild, untamed, uncivilised, naked other".
Drawing on the writings of explorers, colonists, 19th-century cookery writers and contemporary researchers, Newton describes a pre-settlement food world as one in which Aboriginal people ate well and with seasonal variety. Subscribing to more recent, and much debated views of that period (Bill Gammage, Bruce Pascoe and others), he argues against the notion of Aboriginal people as opportunistic hunter-gatherers, instead describing a complex system of Aboriginal land management that offered access to thousands of native food species and a nutrient-rich diet.
The effect of white settlement on these practices - and the subsequent loss of native food knowledge, productive soil and good health - is well documented.
Newton makes no bones about the reasons: colonial pride and hegemony, disdain, perceived racial superiority, plain ignorance and ultimately, perhaps, plain old "food racism".
A gloomy premise for a book, you may be thinking. But the real joy and contribution of this well-researched treatise (born out of a doctoral thesis) are Newton's contemporary tales of the producers, "pioneers" and "converts" who work with Australian native foods. And the cast of chefs who use them - Noma's Beau Clugston, Kylie Kwong, Peter Gilmore from Sydney's Quay and Matt Stone of the Yarra Valley's Oakridge Winery among others - and supplied the recipes that illustrate each chapter.
Their stories, and tributes to early-adopter restaurateurs such as Jean-Paul Bruneteau (Riberries and Rowntrees) and Raymond and Jennice Kersh (Edna's Table) not only add colour and context. Their work underpins Newton's theory that cultural change is in the air. The Noma effect may be ongoing. (Aren't we always great at following trends when inspired by what's happening beyond our shores?)
Whatever the chances of   January 26 (Australia Day or Invasion Day) being marked by a new, Thanksgiving-like tradition of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal Australians sitting down to share a meal of native ingredients (Newton's suggestion), this book shows the way towards reconciliation, both with our past and the history of our food.