Wattleseed is a foundational native bush food and was one of the first native ingredients explored on this native foods journey. We quickly learned to appreciate its nutty, savoury-sweet taste and cocoa/coffee aroma … and a 1kg bulk pack of roasted ground seed quickly became a pantry (and baking) staple. Wattleseeds are part of our sourdough loaves, grandkid “anzac-style” biscuits, flatbread sprinkle, dukkah elements and more. However I also learnt they make an excellent binding agent – in curries, sauces and stews – and there are of really great recipes online. One of my early favourites was Nornie Bero’s wild mushroom & wattleseed risotto (I love the wattleseed pangrattato) and I have bought a couple of her recent cookbooks. And over the past week in the kitchen, I have been exploring a new face of wattleseed in the form of wattleseed mustard.
Wattleseed mustard
Now it’s been a while since mustard had a significant spot in my kitchen. Used to regularly go through 2kg jars of Dijon making Boston beans, glazing ham, coating roast veg etc… so this has been a good reminder of just how much punch a good mustard carries. So I made up a jar of wattleseed mustard at the beginning of the week,
Vegetable “sausage” rolls
The first dish out featuring the mustard were some vegetable rolls, which, like the mustard, are based on a recipe in Nornie Bero‘s recent Native Ingredients Every Day cookbook. However I swapped the original all-warrigal-greens filling for a mix of mostly mustard leaves and kale and then doubled the mustard volumes to make it more prominent. Result: a properly spicy, mustardy lunch … so I have dialed-back the mustard a notch in the recipe.
Mustardy roast beef and vegetables
Next I tried the wattleseed mustard as a marinade on some eye fillet, with a good result. Initially the mustard flavour here didn’t come through as much as hoped, so here I’ve increased the amounts of marinade in my recipe. Then as a follow-on I roasted some mustard-glazed pumpkin which was perfect. Up next, mustard-glazed cauliflower is on the list for this week-end. so why all the mustard dishes? Well on a practical note, the 400g bottle of homemade mustard I made will only keep about three months. So next round it’s a make-as-you-go condiment rather than a big-batch pantry item.
Wattleseed in the food forest
We planted a wattle patch in the food forest last year — around 60 Acacias. Now there are over 1,000 species of wattle indigenous to Australia, but only around 100 species produce notionally edible seeds. And significantly fewer are suitable for cultivation. The most common commercial species is bramble/ elegant wattle (Acacia victoriae) and in the food forest we planted a batch of these … and seven other local edible Acacia varieties. Only half the wattle patch seedlings have survived through their first year, but we have a good batch of seedlings in the nursery ready for a follow-up planting this spring to fill the gaps. And down the track, we still plan to host a harvest party where we all learn how to collect and roast our own wattleseed crop.
Why wattles & wattleseeds matter
Now wattleseeds taste great but they have a few other special attributes.
- Wattleseeds get some clever help getting into the ground. Many species produce a seed with a small, nutrient-rich attachment (an aril) that ants find irresistible — they cart the seed off to their nest, eat the aril, and leave the seed safely tucked underground, often to sit dormant for years until a bushfire cracks it open. Free labour, built in!
- And it’s not just an Aussie story. Since the 1970s, Australian wattles have been planted across parts of Africa’s Sahel — including Niger — to help fight desertification and provide a drought-hardy food source, so our backyard bushfood has quietly been doing double duty as a global good.
- Also the Golden Wattle is Australia’s official floral emblem … and we have a national Wattle Day on 1 Sept each year, marking the start of spring … there’s a wattle image on every note in the Australian currency … so I am sure they must be special:)
