Mindy Woods and First Nation Flavours

It’s a typically glorious spring day in Newtown in Sydney’s inner west, yet even still the room seems to visibly brighten when Mindy Woods arrives, fresh from a busy morning in television studios and bookshops promoting her just-released cookbook, Karkalla at Home. The publication is many things: a cookbook, yes, but also a sumptuously illustrated and photographed celebration of Bundjalung Country (encompassing Byron Bay and the Northern Rivers of New South Wales), and an invitation to experience the generous abundance of this First Nation’s way of life.

 

“Some of my best experiences as a little girl were being out on those beaches with my mob, going out and doing the pipi shuffle, going up into those beautiful sand dunes and picking the bush lollies like karkalla and samphire and all those things,” Woods says. “Then my nan building the campfire and us cooking the food on that fire: mud crabs, pipis, fresh fish, paperbark, lemon myrtle. I thought, ‘I’m going to create that, and I’m going to bring people into that’.”

 

For Woods, the book is a capstone on an extraordinary decade. After her first appearance in the public eye back in 2012 on MasterChef Australia, Woods set about building her repertoire of techniques in a continual journey of storytelling and creation, achieving in that span of time what many chefs work their whole lives towards. Without formal training beyond what her father Gary, a former chef, had taught her – “I was a trained physiotherapist, not a cook!” Woods laughs – it was an extended period of learning, “training in kitchens, learning your mise en place, how to structure a menu, knowing how to do service, all those things.”

Throughout it all, her dad was an enormous source of support, even in moments of doubt. “He said, ‘You cook with love, you cook with spirit, and that’s why your food is spectacular.” Woods appeared on MasterChef again in 2022, with new skills and with a venue of her own – Karkalla at Bryon Bay – under her belt, and was once more warmly embraced by the audience. Her food, then as now, is inviting, innovative, yet familiar and approachable. These are everyday recipes, from curries to burgers, sandwiches, salads, stews and seafood. The vast wealth of native ingredients that Bundjalung Country abounds in – finger lime, saltbush, pepperberry, karkalla – are deftly demonstrated in all their versatility on every page.

Cavvanbah, the Arakwal name of Byron Bay, literally means ‘meeting place’, which in large part stems from the region’s status as a vast food bowl for both local and surrounding mobs. “It’s the biggest native food bowl in the country, brother,” says Woods. “I’m spoiled as a chef, being from there.”  It’s also the inspiration behind Woods’ current project, Karkalla on Country, which sees Woods take guests into an immersive culinary and cultural experience on Bundjalung Country. “We want to bring these ancient ingredients into a modern world and show that they’ve got context, that they’ve got relevance and significance to all of us.”

 

Read the full article in the November/December 2024 edition via Selector, PressReader and Magzter.