Pheasant with onion cream, wild fennel and pollen by David Moyle. Credit:RÃ©mi Chauvin "The true promise of the cane toad is its leather," says Kaechele, who plans to sell Jarosz's products at MONA. "It's a gorgeous leather, look at the texture," she says, handing me the bag. "It's strong, it's better than an alligator, it's a finer pattern." We're sitting on the balcony at MONA's The Source restaurant, at a table of living green, undulating with soothing mounds of dichondra, baby's tears, Corsican mint and scleranthus. The tables were designed by Kaechele, whose practice includes a lifelong exploration of the nexus between food and art. She curates lavish, performative feasts, as anyone with the good fortune of attending MONA's more exclusive opening parties would know. Perched between us is Eat the Problem – at 544 pages the book is so big it needs a chair of its own. Its tactile cloth cover is white, and from there the book stretches through a rainbow palette of pages until it reaches the back cover of black. (Recipes are colour-coded according to species.) It's sumptuously illustrated, with artworks by living and late artists, from Sidney Nolan, Pablo Picasso and Hieronymous Bosch all the way down to a very emerging Sunday Kaechele Walsh (three-year-old daughter of David and Kirsha). Why did it take that many pages to say what she wanted to say?

Roasted myna with sweet pickled blackberry jus and parfait tarte tatin. Credit:RÃ©mi Chauvin "Each chapter is dedicated to a particular invasive species, so I really wanted to include anything interesting about those species, and I didn't want to miss any of the good species ... and you can't miss humans [yes, there is an anthropologically sourced recipe for cooking humans], you can't miss cats, you can't miss the brown tree snake, so it just kept going!" she says, in a lulling Californian accent that makes the most outrageous things seem perfectly acceptable. Kaechele began working on the book five years ago, inviting artists, thinkers, chefs, musicians and writers she knew and admired to contribute not just recipes, but also artworks, poems, limericks, essays and general ruminations about the invasive species of their choice. The book's credit list reads like a who's who of the arts and food worlds: Marina Abramovic, Laurie Anderson, Shannon Bennett, Heston Blumenthal, Tim Minchin, James Turrell and the late A. A. Gill among them. Some are there by accident. Germaine Greer was not intended, and yet she proposes her recipe for rabbit. 'Could it be more indulgent?' says Kirsha Kaechele of her 544-page Eat the Problem cookbook. Credit:RÃ©mi Chauvin "Oh my god, this is so outrageous and I don't know if you should publish it," Kaechele says, uttering words of supreme temptation.

"I meant to invite Geraldine Brooks, and I accidentally got confused in the moment and asked [MONA curator] Elizabeth [Pearce] to invite Germaine Greer because she had been here, and somehow her name was in my head. So Elizabeth invited Germaine Greer and she submitted this incredible text as an email, as her response to the invitation. Eat the Problem by Kirsha Kaechele includes a rabbit recipe by Germaine Greer. Credit:Remi Chauvin I'm like, wait, Germaine Greer? I didn't mean to invite her, but this is amazing! Kirsha Kaechele "And I'm like, wait, Germaine Greer? I didn't mean to invite her, but this is amazing! So then it ended up being the first text of the book. I didn't know she was an expert on invasive species – and cook – so it was a very lucky accident." Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks remains in the mix, with a recipe that, in her words "knocks off three lesser invasives" – European carp, fennel and wild garlic.

Sea urchin spaghetti by Christine Manfield features in Eat the Problem. Credit:RÃ©mi Chauvin Although its underlying message is about sustainability, Eat the Problem is foremost an art book. It was inspired in part by Salvador Dali's extravagant Les Diners de Gala, published in 1973 and featuring the opulent recipes that the surrealist artist and his partner Gala would serve up at their extraordinary feasts, including "Snails a la Chablisienne", which calls among other things for 100 snails and a bottle of Chablis. The recipe is reproduced in Kaechele's book, alongside a rather more palatable one by The Source's own talented chef Vince Trim, where snails are used merely as garnish, and, Kaechele assures, need not be eaten. Trim's riposte is a fashionably deconstructed rubble of champagne jelly, blackberry creme fraiche, blackcurrant tapioca and violet marshmallow. Flipping through the book's gorgeously shocking pages I make a mental note to ask Kaechele what she would say to those who might consider the book an indulgence. She beats me to it, declaring without prompt: "It's an aesthetic object, it's a total indulgence. I do not see this book as contributing to society. I mean, it has a moral message, presented in a fun way. It glamourises eating sustainably, so in that sense it is, but really it's an indulgence. Could it be more indulgent? Look at it! It's over the top!" (Proceeds from the book will be donated to Kaechele's healthy eating program, 24 Carrot Garden Project, which has set up kitchen gardens in primary schools around Hobart.) Eat the Problem is indeed "OTT", as well as mischievous, entrancing and implausible. I'm not sure I'd want to create all that many recipes – they're elaborate, horrifically beautiful, and risky – aren't cane toads toxic? Kaechele has included the perspective of a scientist who warns against eating them.

To coincide with the book's launch, a series of immersive feasts will be held at MONA in April and during the popular winter solstice celebration Dark Mofo. The feasts will range in price from $111.11 to $666.66 for nine-course affairs with each dish featuring a single colour. Will cane toad be on the menu? "There is probably some cane toad on the menu, I can't be certain. I won't say either way, but I will say with confidence there is some cat on the menu," Kaechele says. Seeing the horrified look on my face, she makes clear: "Just consomme, cat consomme. They're feral cats, they need to be eradicated." Eat the Problem, by Mona Publications, is available from March 25 at $277.77. mona.net.au/museum/kirsha-s-portal/eat-the-problem

Kirsha Kaechele speaks about the book at Riverbend Books, Brisbane, March 25, Sydney's Kinokuniya bookshop on March 27 and Books for Cooks, Melbourne on March 28.

