Boiled, fruit-filled and drenched in flaming brandy sauce, Christmas puddings inarguably occupy a crucial place in the Australian Christmas canon.
However, proud Wiradjuri man Herb Smith wants to make the Christmas dessert more Australian than ever with the stone fruit quandong, which First Nations peoples have eaten for thousands of years.
Smith, a local of Wellington in inland New South Wales, is the co-founder of , a fully Indigenous-owned and operated company that's a leading supplier of bush food in Australia.
"The idea behind Dreamtime Tuka was always to share the nutritional value and cultural wealth of certain Indigenous foods," Smith tells SBS Food. "Something like a quandong Christmas cake creates cultural knowledge of Aboriginal foods, and takes that knowledge to people in the wider community. We're increasing people's appreciation and understanding of a history that's lasted many, many centuries."
A quandong Christmas cake creates cultural knowledge of Aboriginal foods, and takes that knowledge to people in the wider community.
In December 2018, Smith and his business partner Andrew Fielke debuted the Dreamtime Tuka quandong Christmas pudding. It's self-saucing and made with fruit, featuring native quandong. It also includes a special spiced rum.
After a killer year in sales in 2019, the quandong pudding is back in stock just in time for Christmas, alongside a wattleseed-flavoured .
Quandongs — sometimes known as native peaches or in the Wiradjuri language, guwandhang — are as tart as they are bright red, with a flavour profile reminiscent of apricot, peach or rhubarb. They're also chock full of vitamin C, which is of an orange. But that's not all they're good for, as South Australian certified quandong expert Neville Bonney explains.
Dreamtime Tuka has also made a Christmas bar cake that features wattleseed Source: Dreamtime Tuka
"We know it was used as an ointment for different ailments, particularly sore backs and things like that," . "It was also used because [of] the oil within it. If you put a stick in and light it, it will burn like a candle."
And, coincidentally, they happen to work exceptionally well as a Christmas pudding filling — not only as a burst of flavour to counter the spice-laden cake, but as a tool for sharing culture. As an Indigenous ingredient perhaps not well known to non-Indigenous Australians, the tiny quandong may have the power to bridge cultural divides and get people talking.
"A lot of people have never even tried quandong," Smith tells SBS Food. "This cake represents a chance to try the fruit in a context people are familiar, with sharing food at the Christmas table."
Andrew Fielke, a chef who shares Smith's passion for Indigenous food, developed the recipe for the quandong Christmas pudding in 2018. "It's like edible reconciliation," Fielke .
It's like edible reconciliation.
Running Dreamtime Tuka puts Smith in a unique position where he's not only thinking about company profitability, growth and development, he's also facilitating and strengthening connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
It means he occasionally receives phone calls from customers recounting unexpected incidents of cultural exchange.
"I spoke to an Indigenous woman who'd travelled on a Qantas domestic flight next to a non-Indigenous Australian woman enjoying Dreamtime Tuka's ," Smith recalls about the snack that the company supplies to Qantas. "She told me this woman had no idea what lemon myrtle was, or what Dreamtime Tuka did, so she ended up running an informal information session.
"Our products created a situation where an Aboriginal woman ended up giving cultural education on a plane! She told me the experience made her feel proud to be Aboriginal."
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Dreamtime Tuka is making an impact on the ground, too. In November 2019, Smith launched the Dreamtime Tuka Pathway to Employment program, an initiative that works to offer youth from disadvantaged communities opportunities for meaningful employment.
"I'm passionate about food and educating people, and this is the other side of the coin. As a young man in a town that didn't offer a lot, I was given an opportunity to expand my horizons. Today, I own my own nationally recognised company," he says. "If I can take two kids from a disadvantaged kids community like Wellington, they could end up as classically trained chefs in Paris, you know?"
If you're looking for a dessert that speaks volumes this Christmas, opt for a bush tucker pudding.
As Herb Smith's late grandfather , "good tucker and a full belly makes you sleep and have good dreams."
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