{"id":2761,"date":"2015-08-28T08:23:05","date_gmt":"2015-08-28T08:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/?p=2761"},"modified":"2015-08-28T08:23:05","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T08:23:05","slug":"prostanthera-incisa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/prostanthera-incisa\/","title":{"rendered":"Prostanthera incisa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Prostanthera incisa is a traditional native Australian bush food which is\u00a0sometimes called the &#8216;cut leaf mint bush&#8217; due to it&#8217;s incised leaf edges. It has an almost severe intensity of flavour with a fairly strong camphor like overtone and salty mouth feel.\u00a0However the favour is really (really) nice and very memorable when it is used in small amounts and in the right context.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"2763\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/prostanthera-incisa\/prostanthera_incisa_01\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"1000,669\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"prostanthera_incisa_01\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01-600x401.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-2763\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01-600x401.jpg\" alt=\"prostanthera_incisa_01\" width=\"600\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01-600x401.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01-728x487.jpg 728w, https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01-363x243.jpg 363w, https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01-462x309.jpg 462w, https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_01.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One\u00a0of the best uses I have experienced or found through experimentation is on a simple wholemeal pizza bread with sliced garlic and some other leafy greens like rocket with some fresh sliced tomato &#8211; best cooked super fast in a wood fired oven with smoky ash flavours added. It adds a\u00a0salty contrast to tighten the other flavours together.<\/p>\n<p>I could imagine this would have been a huge hit at gatherings with traditional indigenous fire cooking family events when added to a wattle seed damper or similar bread dough.<\/p>\n<p>It is also really nice if sprinkled on a BBQ meat dish but you need to be careful what other flavours you add as it is\u00a0fairly distinct and you do not want to have a clash.<\/p>\n<p>Like many of the mint bush family It needs to be tasted before application to work out the best uses.<\/p>\n<p>It is not that hard to grow as long as you don&#8217;t over water it in the cool periods of the\u00a0year and make sure to place it in full sun with either radiated heat from a wall or a good solid sandy sunny mulch.\u00a0It\u00a0grows well in pots. I usually grow a bunch of them in 30cm pots with other local prostantheras for food use and they thrive.<\/p>\n<p>Usually it will grow to about a metre high and you need to keep it pruned back and tip cut to keep it growing new leaves and flowering stems each season.<\/p>\n<p>The leaves and flowers cam be pulled off to uses as needed.<\/p>\n<p>They last for about 5-6 years or more &#8211; or much longer if grown in the ground in an ideal location.<\/p>\n<p>They propagate easily from cuttings in autumn and spring. Just cut a fresh tip piece off and shove it down the side of a pot with soil so that it is contact with the side of the pot and gets heated up. They root fairly fast.<\/p>\n<p>They seed profusely and germinate fairly fast.<\/p>\n<p>It grows wild along the east coast mountain top areas and seems to handle the cold winters and the high dry heat of Australian summers.<\/p>\n<p>It is sometimes also called\u00a0&#8216;native thyme&#8217; for\u00a0no fully understandable reason as it tastes nothing like thyme.<\/p>\n<p>There are also reports of making a tea with it in the early years of Australian white settlement &#8211;\u00a0it is fairly astringent and &#8216;medicinal&#8217;. I have tried if=t a few times and I could imagine it also being used as an effective mouth and throat antiseptic wash as it is a fairly &#8216;bracing&#8217; experience.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Prostanthera_incisa\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Prostanthera_incisa<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prostanthera incisa is a traditional native Australian bush food which is\u00a0sometimes called the &#8216;cut leaf mint bush&#8217; due to it&#8217;s incised leaf edges. It has an almost severe intensity of flavour with a fairly strong [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-notes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-content\/media\/prostanthera_incisa_02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ccXI-Ix","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2764,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions\/2764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chickenfish.cc\/bio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}