Nundle Heirloom Recipes

Lost Delights:

Heirloom Recipes &

Old Country

from

Nundle Go For Gold

Chinese Easter

Festival 2014

 

with Jacqui Newling

colonial gastronomer

 >

sydneylivingmuseums.com.au

HEIRLOOM RECIPES

Thanks to Mona Warden who has shared
some of her favourite traditional biscuit recipes.
As a general guide, place biscuits on a lined
baking tray and bake at 180° C for 10–12
minutes or until nicely coloured.

DUNKERS

4 cups SR flour; ½lb (220g) margarine;
1½ cups sugar; ½ teaspoon each of nutmeg,
cinnamon and mixed spice; pinch of salt;
3 eggs; vanilla essence

Rub the margarine into the flour and spices.
Add the sugar and salt, then mix in the egg and
vanilla. Roll pieces of mixture into a ball and
flatten lightly into desired biscuit sizes.Delicious ‘dunked’ into tea or coffee to release the spice flavours.

 

WADDIES SADDLEBAGS

4 cups SR flour; 1 teaspoon bicarb soda;
1½ cups sugar; 1 cup butter or margarine;
2 eggs, beaten; 1½ dessertspoons golden syrup;
1 teaspoon nutmeg, mixed spice and lemon
essence; 1 cup dates, chopped; milk

Rub the butter into the combined flour, sugar,
spices and soda, add the dates, then mix with the egg and syrup and enough milk to make a
dough soft enough to roll out and cut into desired shapes, then bake.

NANCYE SWAIN’S SAGO CUSTARD

2 tablespoons sago; 1½ cups water; pinch of
salt; 2 cups carnation milk; 2 tablespoons sugar;
2 eggs; vanilla essence; pinch of nutmeg;
2 teaspoons butter
Boil the water with the salt, add the sago and stir
until the sago is transparent. Add the milk and
sugar and stir until well blended with the sago, remove from heat and cool.
Pre-heat oven to 180° C. Beat eggs lightly, add vanilla then stir into the sago mixture. Pour into
an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with nutmeg and
place butter on top. Stand dish in a baking dish
half-filled with cold water.
Turn oven down to 150° C and place baking dish
in oven. Bake for about 1/2 hour or until set.
Remove from the hot water and allow to cool.
Nancye likes to serve this with stewed rhubarb.

 

JUDY WIGGAN’S BAKED RICE PUDDING

Put 1 cup rice in a saucepan and cover well
with water. When cooked pour into a baking
dish (rice should have absorbed the water; if not, drain away excess). Add a small cup of sugar,
cover well with milk (about 2 litres) and mix with
a spoon. Bake in a 200° C oven until the pudding starts to brown on top. Turn off oven and allow
the pudding to cool a little before serving.

 

WILD FOOD

‘Making do’ with old country favourites –     
eel, rabbit and ‘roo’.

Country people have always been resourceful.
When times were tough in colonial times
kangaroo was a bushman’s staple and eels were
a handy catch. Rabbits became equally useful
once the wild population spread north from
Victoria in the 1860s.

‘The thing is to have a young rabbit otherwise you need to get into the soaking them in salty water.’

The local catch could be curried or stewed,
crumbed or hashed. Eels were made into patties
and rabbit dressed up with bacon for a poacher’s
‘filet mignon’ or a French-style terrine.

‘A very simple rabbit recipe is to … cut the meat
into bite size pieces then flour, egg and
breadcrumb them and deep fry for about 5
minutes – it’s the original popcorn chicken,
except made of rabbit.’

Kangaroo lost its appeal in the early 1900s but
some Nundle locals still catch eel and rabbit
for the pot!

Special thanks to Gae Sipple, Maree Boland
and Margaret Schofield for their families’ recipe
tips on taming wild food for the table!

 

COLONIAL CURRY POWDER

This curry blend is adapted from Australia’s first published cookbook, The English and Australian cookery book, for the Many and the Upper Ten Thousand, by Edward Abbott in 1864.

120g turmeric; 100g coriander seed; 50g black pepper; 40g mustard seed; 35g cayenne pepper (or substitute mild chilli powder or paprika);
10g each of mace, cinnamon and clove

Use ground/powdered spices. Combine all the ingredients and mix well. Store in an airtight jar for a few days before using. Keeps for 12 months.

 

OLD-FASHIONED LEMONADE

Squeeze lemons and strain the juice into a measuring jug. Dissolve an equal amount of sugar as lemon juice in an equal amount of boiling water so that you have one part juice,

one part sugar and one part water. Top up with ice-cold water and enjoy!

Many thanks to Megan Trousdale and the
Nundle community for sharing their food memories and family recipes.
For more Nundle heirloom recipes, seewww.nundle.com.au

For more ‘lost’ ‘forgotten’ and colonial recipes go to The Cook and the Curator blogs@sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/cook

Celebrating our Chinese heritage

CELESTIAL CITY:

 SYDNEY’S CHINESE STORY

Museum of Sydney

29 MARCH 2014 to 12 OCTOBER 2014

Celestial City: Sydney’s Chinese Story weaves
a rich tapestry of the lives of Sydney’s early
Chinese – market gardeners, goldminers,
merchants, diplomats – and celebrates the
pivotal role the Chinese community played in
shaping modern Australia.

With archival photographs, stunning family
heirlooms and personal stories, the exhibition
tells an absorbing tale of cultural diversity,
racial tensions and pioneering identities that
spans almost two centuries.

From glamorous tearooms to opium dens,
race riots to mixed marriages, Celestial City captures both the darkest moments of Australia’s multicultural journey and the triumph of one of
our most influential and respected communities.

sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/exhibitions