Food Safari

120 years ago this was the most multicultural place in Australia. Up here on the far western

coast was a boom town built on the local purling industry which brought together Aboriginal

Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysians and Filipinos. They all shared their food and

their recipes and a distinct new cuisine was born. Welcome to the deliciously different

world of Brunford.

Join our food safari to learn how to catch and cook the world's best chilli mud crab.

The secrets of satay and peanut sauce are one tonn party at sunset. The freshest marinated

fish, Brun's favourite Chinese long soup, exquisite pearl meat and a luscious Brun mango

cheese cake.

Brunford is quite different to any food to find anywhere in the world. This food is so

local that you can only experience the taste of eating Brunford by being invited.

It is a full of different Asian flavours from the purling days. Also the Aboriginal influence

made it very interesting because even the style of cooking is quite different. What it's

allowed us to do is to use the seasonal foods and then add the flavours of the Asian cooking.

Sounds like heaven on earth. It is heaven on earth.

Raelene McKenna grew up in a Malaysian Aboriginal family of nine children. She's a health professional

who's known in town as the Curried Chicken Queen. The recipe passed on to her from her mother.

For all Brun people, good food starts with an Asian grocer and a few key ingredients.

So, it's all basically used in everything. I think I've even seen it used in pasta dishes.

No. Even in our normal casseroles, chicken casseroles, beef casseroles, soy sauce is one of

the main ingredients here.

For decades, Brun locals used a particular brand of soy sauce made in Singapore called

Young's. When it ceased production in the 1980s, everyone tried to recreate its distinct

flavour. That was the only soy sauce we had in Brun, other than the kickermint sauce. And

heaven quite found one exactly the same as the Young's soy sauce. So it was a sad time

for a lot of Brun families.

So Raelene Rice was a big part of what did you ate here?

Yes, and sometimes meals only consisted of rice. Very popular in our homes now, even

within the indigenous communities.

Glutton, which is used in a lot of our cooking also, mainly in our chilli dishes.

So that's the shrimp paste, very smelly.

Very smelly, but the flavour is absolutely beautiful. We used this in our blanchang, our

chilli blanchang or sambal. Chicken stock.

Yeah, I love this stuff. I probably wouldn't leave home without it. I used this in my gravy

is everything. Another ingredient that's probably in every household is the Clive of India curry.

It was the only curry powder that was available. I love this, but probably not as much as

my sisters loved this stuff. They can eat this straight from the can. Many use this in

curries, also coconut rice and also in some of the salay sauces.

So Raelene fresh produce. What are some of the key things in the Brun spectra of?

The lemon grass, chilli, garlic and onion. With the lemon grass, we tend to use a lot of

this in cooking fish. Also, traditionally, a lot of people use this in cooking turtle.

A lot of the veggies we see here are still quite new to local families. They tend to stick

to what they know or what they've grown up with. So you're using the same ingredients

that they've deppiered for the years.

In Old Brun, with its wide streets and shady houses, there are a number of families who

have established themselves over a couple of generations. One of them is the pig rooms.

There also a world-renowned band who still live and record in Brun, their songs full of

local flavors and stories.

Alan Pickron is the eldest of the seven brothers that make up the Pickron brothers, and he's

the glue that holds his family and friends together.

We're on the table, help yourself. So this is a typical broom get together.

Yeah, broom, broom style, eating, adding up, adding up the open. Yeah.

Fliars and all. Yeah, but everybody brings a plate.

Part of it is you just invite certain people and you don't have to say what to bring

you anything. So they know if they're invited.

So if you want something special and you know that person cooks, you actually invite them.

That's fantastic. But there's food here that you don't have anywhere else on it too.

This is stuff we've just been having for a long time. So we can remember a fish soup which

is this time with you salmon in the right season. We use blue bone. We've got some pork,

ade buh. Ade buh. Ade buh. I have to say ade buh because that's

all I know. Yeah, we've got a beautiful fried rice here from the master himself.

The master. Yeah. We have a dish in this thing who's

changed. I'm here with this full Filipina so I get now to have full Filipina start

on stuff which is new. Kilo in. Gold skin. So it's always evolving.

Yeah, and another really special dish to our family who cooks soup. Very special. I

rang my daughters to say we're having that today and they're in Perth and they're just

kicking they're not here to have it. When we have that, that's something special going

on. Yeah. And a satay I can say.

Roomb people will say satay. They will say satay.

You've got brim food history almost on the table, don't you? The mix of all the people

who came is sort of apparent in the food. Pretty much. Yeah. Even though you know,

it's on one family but like I said, you're in Bajamanelles and then they have a link to

another culture. So we you get that added into your into your dishes. Very nice.

Alan, it's a real honor to be here. Thank you. No, thank you for coming.

It was pearls that brought together people of so many diverse backgrounds. Originally

pearl shells were gathered wild on the beaches. Later divers collected them from deeper

water and now they're cultivated. And as well as the beautiful pearls, one of the hottest

tickets in the food world is pearl meat. Just north of Brum is the Willie Creek Pearl Farm

which keeps some of the pink tada maxima pearl oysters to demonstrate how pearls are made

and which part of the oyster is edible. Inside here, hopefully, we're going to find a

pearl. A bit of force. Oh, look at that. Is it? Oh. Is it finders keep his mouth? And

what's that? That's a little cashy pearl. And I'm as excited about the pearl meat

as the pearl. So show me which is oyster, which is pearl meat. Okay. So basically the

oyster is this part here all around the outside of the shell. We've got the main part,

the bit that we all eat is this part here. This is called the adduct muscle which is known

as pearl meat. So tastes like something out of the sea but it's not scallop or abalone

it's somewhere as unique. It's unique. This is a really firm piece of meat. It's responsible

for opening and closing that shell so it's a real tough piece of meat. So we tenderise

it a lot at the time. You just throw it around a bit on the deck of the boat and it's

all good to go. Heading it just tenderises it. You see the difference in the texture of

that one now. So this one that hasn't you pressed that you feel? You're right. You know.

Paul Palina was one of many people of Aboriginal background who were the backbone of the purling

industry. Spending 23 years as a pearl diver working on board the pearl luggers that sailed

up and down the coast. When I first went to sea I worked with nine Japanese. We all had

to take turns in cooking and very luckily for me they didn't want to eat the food that

they assumed that I would have cooked for them so they taught me how to cook. Soya sauce,

sugar, a little bit of garlic, some ginger, and a little bit of chilli.

I put the pearl meat into the... Yeah, yeah, I'll put a bit in there. The next one is a lime

which is squeezed. Probably is about half of that. This is a very simple one. This one here

is my favourite because it's so simple and crazy for garlic and ginger. Japanese had chopsticks,

saying, Aboriginal's where you use spears. Okay. So you can just spear one, spear away in here.

The Japanese style one. Yeah, as a sundae now it makes you drink more beers, be more

sociable. It's wonderful, never? Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Oh, my pleasure,

yeah. The aroma of satay has always been part of

broom. For many decades there was a satay stall outside sun pictures, the delightful old

outdoor picture gardens and every family get together would include the famous dish.

Speaking mechana is the satay expert in her family. Satay is something that you could

certainly smell in the air. Quite often there were different families, male families

that would be selling it and there would be a cook-offs. And so you're now going to share

the secrets of the broom satay. Yes, I am. I'm sure that a lot of broom people would

be waiting for this. This slice of meat up. Just insulinise bite-sized cubes.

I'm just going to put some lemon grass in here. Garlic gives it a beautiful flavour.

And so it was onion, too. It's actually very nice. Soy sauce, clove of india curry, of

course. Vicky then add sugar, salt, ground cumin and coriander. We weren't given precise

measurements to the recipes. What we had to do was use our five senses and you feel

satisfied that the marinators mix right through, put it aside, cover it and put it in the

fridge to marinate overnight. And part of that learning our guests is getting the young

ones to then thread the satay so they know what it feels like and how it should smell

and stuff. That's right and our children come and handy for that.

You can't have satay without a rich peanut sauce. And Vicky's version starts with fried

diced onion. She adds smooth peanut butter, makes a sauce by adding water, thin sprinkles

in salt and sugar. Always good to have some sweetness in the sauce,

tomato sauce from the bottle, but a quarter cup. Of course, soy sauce is going to give us the

color. This is just coconut cream, makes the sauce a lot more richer as well. Have a taste.