Chef Raylene Brown takes kids out bush to teach them about Country

There were plenty of experiments but the strong flavours of mountain pepper and bush tomato overpowered our predominantly European dishes.

One of Australia's most successful First Nations food pioneers, Raylene Brown, is a veteran of bush food flavours from Central Australia and said this just didn't make sense in a country which embraced food from other cultures, such as Chinese food in the 1970s, but shunned the food that was growing in their own back yard.

For 24 years, Raylene has run her successful catering business Kungkas Can Cook, sourcing wild harvested spices and foods from Aboriginal people in the Red Centre.

Raylene is currently chair of the national peak Body First Nations Bushfood and Botanicals Alliance Australia and with NAIDOC Week celebrations being held from July 2-9, she is keen to promote bush tucker even more.

"In the beginning when I first started talking with scientists and we first started working with the women who were doing the wild harvesting, when they first saw the bush tomato farm, they were shocked - it's growing in rows," she said.

"There still will be some wild harvesting but as the market grows you need more sustainable crops.

"In the last three or four years interest picked up nationally and even more internationally."

She said producers are based from Ti Tree and Utopia in the Northern Territory, stretching down to the APY Lands of South Australia, with bush tomatoes the main developed crop and wattle seed starting to take off commercially.

Bush tomatoes picked in Rainbow Valley and sent to Melbourne-based company Outback Spirit feature in sausages, sauces and chutneys sold nationally.

"There's a great interest at the moment for central wattles, the different varieties, and they're doing some testing," Raylene said.

"I think there is the potential to say 'This wattle has more oil and would be good for this' - there's a lot of work that needs to be done by food scientists.

"Then it can be ready to go into mainstream industry ... and chefs need to be educated about native foods."

She said the next step would be to carry out more processing on Country, such as drying the produce.

"There are still people doing what they used to do for thousands of years of harvesting," she said.

"It's all done by very proud women on Country.

"Hopefully a lot more indigenous businesses will pop up now and use the research and information."

Raylene and Kungkas are known throughout Australia and many parts of the world where Central Australian bush foods are increasingly receiving due recognition as a unique gourmet specialty cuisine offering delicious flavours.

Her business has diversified into tourism and bush food products so visitors can experience the wonderful bush food flavours.

Raylene has contributed and shared her unique recipes in publications such as the Great Australian Cookbook (now a TV program on Foxtel) and an ABC publication Australia Cooks, and she just recently finished filming with the BBC Great Rail Journeys of the World highlighting the journey of the Ghan Adelaide to Alice Springs.

She was also recently a guest judge on a Masterchef episode challenging contestants to cook with the local bush foods, which was filmed on location in Central Australia.

But her story began a long way from TV sets in very humble beginnings.

A Ngangiwumirr and Eastern Arrernte woman, she spent her childhood travelling up and down the Northern Territory as her parents followed work, but they made sure she learned about culture every step of the way.

She was inspired by the Putupi walk-in to champion land rights.

Her passion to preserve knowledge and connection to country only grew across the years.

Her passion for cooking and food came from both her parents who were wonderful cooks and growing up she was always helping her mother prepare family meals.

Her father's marinades were heavenly and he hand-wrote all his recipes to be passed on to his kin.

After catering for a community event in which she cooked 300 meals in a domestic kitchen without breaking a sweat, she and a friend decided to try their hand at starting a catering business.

Kungkas Can Cook was born: their first professional event saw them cooking for 1000 people in spite of not owning a knife, fork or plates to serve on.

It didn't stop them cooking up a storm.

Kungkas extended to include a bush food products range and the iconic Kungkas Shop and Cafe in Alice Springs: a one stop shop for bush food flavours from the desert, including saltbush and wattle seed dukkah, bush tomato chutney and quandong relish.

Her 10 grandkids, or "grannies", and three daughters and two sons have all worked in the Kungkas Can Cook kitchen.

Raylene often takes the grannies out on Country to get connected with the bush more than the screen.

"This is to help the grandkids centre on what's real, and for me that's family.

"I hope I leave a legacy for the younger generation, my own family and my extended family, to be proud of who we are and our culture, to have respect for it, passed down from generation to generation, living through our grandmothers' story."