Breakfast this morning – homemade Greek yoghurt with the first of the season’s mangoes, the first of the season’s peaches, and the thing I am excited about at the moment, Gudgin, or Ooray, or Davidson’s plum powder sprinkles.
First batch of Ooray jam for the season. I’ve written about Ooray before, but I’ve called it Davidson’s plum. Ooray is the name in some aboriginal languages of Davidsonia pruriens, but the name in Bundjalung language of northern NSW for Davidsonia johnsonii is Gudjin. But so much indigenous knowledge has been lost that if I call it Gudjin jam, almost nobody will know what I mean.
One of our Coffs Harbour Davidson’s Plum trees has bourne its first harvest. Davidson’s Plums are full of good stuff but the big claim to medicinal fame is a compound called ‘anthocyanin’. Anthocyanins do a number of generally healthy things but the one that really interested me was the way they improve gut microbiota.
There’s quite a lot of edible plants native to my part of the world but not so many of them that are abundant and really delicious. But macadamias (Macadamia tetraphylla) and Davidson plums ( Davidsonia jerseyana) are endemic to right here, real bush foods.
Davidson plums make very easy and very superb jam – enough pectin to set reliably without anything added, just two largish easy to remove seeds, a full complex flavour that would be overelaborated by adding spices, and a gorgeous deep clear claret colour.