A serving of home

Spearheading the return to native produce

Featured in

  • Published 20221101
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-74-0
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

Having worked as a professional chef for more than two decades, Nornie Bero knows her way around a kitchen. But it was growing up on Mer Island in the Torres Strait that taught her the most enduring lessons about food: the value of living in harmony with the land, the versatility of native produce and the creativity inherent in cooking. Now the owner of the Mabu Mabu company and its renowned Melbourne restaurant Big Esso, Nornie continues to spread the word about the bounty of Indigenous ingredients that Australia has to offer – and how they benefit our palates, our pantries and our understanding of who we are.

CARODY CULVER: Your upbringing was central to your relationship with food. Can you tell me what it was like growing up in the Torres Strait with your dad and the role that you played as a kid in nurturing and preparing produce?

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Nornie Bero

Nornie Bero is from the Komet tribe of the Meriam people of Mer Island and was raised in the Torres Strait. A professional chef for...

More from this edition

A recipe for Rote Grütze

PoetryI imagine you as a young woman here in this foreign place trying to learn a language your children brought home from school.

Tastemakers

IntroductionI’m still pleasantly mystified by our obsession with food – our need to talk about it, remember it, photograph it and analyse it, to eat our feelings and compare our lives to buffets and boxes of chocolates. 

Easter cakes

MemoirI find I cannot cry on the day of the funeral or for many nights after the news of Ellen’s death and it is as if I am stunned by this loss, as if I am too close to this absence for it to mean anything yet, until two weeks later when I take the handle of the mould in my hands and lay the flat back of it against my cheek, and I cry and I cry.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.