Big Eggplant Energy Relish

This release honours Don Dunstan, who didn’t just change what was on the plate, he changed who got to sit at the table. As Premier of South Australia across the 1960s and ’70s, Dunstan championed progressive reform at every level: decriminalising homosexuality, expanding anti-discrimination protections, and supporting Indigenous land rights.

Dunstan also believed that food is political. In 1976, he published Don Dunstan’s Cookbook — a vibrant, theatrical celebration of global cuisine, written by a sitting Premier who wore pink shorts to parliament and served garlic prawns at state dinners. His writing treated food as a form of sensual pleasure, cultural connection, and everyday resistance. It blurred the lines between domesticity and politics, between private joy and public change. Today, the cookbook is widely referenced in the Queer Food academic space and is often seen as one of the earlier examples of food being used in Australia to express identity, politics, and pleasure in explicitly cultural ways.

While never publicly out during his political career, Dunstan’s queerness was known, and later in life, he lived openly with his partner, theatre director Stephen Cheng. This was in a time when being out in political life could have been career-ending. Don’s quiet but unapologetic defiance helped carve out space for future generations. His legacy sits at the foundation of what we now understand as a distinctly Australian queer food culture.

This spiced eggplant relish was created after reading Don’s original recipes — rich with roasted eggplant, mustard seeds, ginger, tamarind and chilli. It’s bold, generous, and a little bit flamboyant. Just like Don.