As Richard Cornish writes in The Age [26 June 2007], transporting food chews up fossil fuel so how about trying to eat only what’s grown within 160 kilometres of your house? That means no bread, no sugar and no coffee. Richard tried it and found his basket a good deal lighter.

WITH a pencil and my old school compass I draw an arc on a map of Victoria. A thick line sweeps through the countryside marking a 160?kilometre boundary. At the centre of the arc is my bayside suburban house. For one week, everything our family eats and drinks will come from within this arc. Everything. Every vegetable, every piece of fruit and every grain.

The challenge seems simple enough. We are to become “locavores”, people who eat food grown locally from within a 160-kilometre foodshed. Also known as the 100-Mile Diet (hence my metric boundary), like most food fads the idea comes from North America and is a grassroots movement that sprung up in reaction to globalised food production. The idea is inspired by traditional pre-Industrial Revolution methods of food transportation and has strong links with the hippie communes of the ’70s and “local and seasonal” restaurants such as Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.

The locavore experiment began two years ago with an online forum encouraging people to sign up for one month to consume food and drink grown only within their “foodshed”. Locavores are responding to the issue of “food miles” - the amount of fossil fuel used to transport food from where it’s produced to where it’s eaten.

Sage Van Wing, one of the original founders of the San Francisco-based locavore movement, says the idea of being a locavore means trying to reduce the amount of distance your food travels. It’s about ”finding food that comes from farmers who are looking after the land, finding food that is healthier to eat because you know the farmer who has grown it to proper organic standards, and eating food that comes from farmers where the workers are looked after”.

The movement has thousands of followers across the US who have signed up to eat within their foodshed again this September. Recently, a Canadian husband and wife went a step further, eating local food to the exclusion of everything else - no coffee, no bananas - and wrote a book called the 100 Mile Diet. Google’s San Francisco headquarters houses Cafe 150, a staff canteen where all produce comes from within 150 miles (240 kilometres). Melbourne restaurateur Paul Mathis will launch his version - 100 Mile Cafe in early July.

As the start of our challenge looms, my wife and I start planning. “Yes we can eat locally,” she says. “We’ve got some good shops around here.” And then: “But what about coffee?”

We go through the pantry and identify what we can and cannot eat and drink. Obvious ingredients like Italian tinned tomatoes, Japanese noodles, Russian vodka, Singapore soy sauce, Indonesian coffee and Sri Lankan tea are put aside. With them go a well-loved brand of Australian crackers, now made in China, all our anchovies, pepper and other spices. Disturbingly, they are soon joined by Queensland sugar, South Australian oats and flour milled from various regions across the country.

As my wife is breastfeeding a six-month-old baby and my other daughter is three-and-a-half, they both consume a substantial amount of cheese, yoghurt and milk. I call National Foods, owner of Pura Milk. Their spokesman says although their milk is produced at Chelsea, he cannot confirm where it comes from.

I call Parmalat, manufacturer of Paul’s Milk. They can’t confirm where their milking herds are but their Parmalat Organic lines are processed in Bendigo from farms nearby, while their biodynamic range originates from Nathalia in north-central Victoria - just beyond the 160-kilometre mark.

The next hurdle is local bread. Although some of Melbourne’s best bakeries are within a 15-minute bike ride of my front door, they all use flour grown and/or milled in NSW or South Australia. Victoria is not warm enough for wheat to develop the proteins needed in bread production. We make our first transgression and decide to buy bread from the local baker made with South Australian organic flour.

The next hurdle is to find local flour to bake cakes. I find a farmer near Geelong growing wheat for his biodynamic chicken farm, but he doesn’t mill the flour. We search the internet and find a grower of spelt at Powlett Hill, 50 kilometres north of Ballarat. Their distributor emails a short list of outlets including our local health food shop. So after several hours of research, I walk 400 metres and hand over nearly $9 for a bag of locally grown and milled spelt flour.

My wife knows how to bake a cake without sugar or butter. Sugar is a tropical plant so she sweetens the cake with honey from Dean’s Marsh near Lorne. There is no commercial butter made from cream produced within the 160-kilometre foodshed, so she uses yoghurt from Dumbalk in South Gippsland, goat fromage frais from Sutton Grange near Bendigo, eggs from a neighbour and apples from an organic orchard in Red Hill on the Mornington Peninsula.

Once again we make a small transgression and use a teaspoon of baking powder made from chemicals produced across the nation. So was the cake light and fluffy? No. It was heavy and solid, but nonetheless enjoyable and moist.

The sudden baking demands, however, see our honey reserves almost dry up. Although Australian beekeepers produce 30,000 tonnes of quality honey a year, most is taken to packing plants where it is blended with honeys from across the country. Several calls to the big honey companies prove fruitless. But a chance tip-off about the Windsor Bee Man sends me walking quiet leafy streets hunting for an old house with half-a-dozen beehives in the front yard. I push the buzzer by the gate and an old Greek man comes out. “Are you the honey man?” I ask. “Who sent you?” he replies. I explain and he looks me up and down and disappears inside, emerging shortly with a tub of dark viscous honey.

I lift the lid and stick my finger in. The honey is heady and complex, with so many different flavours it is almost confusing, finishing with a powerful surge of exotic flowers. Not brilliant, but it is local. I pay my $10 and head off to find some fish.

Country-of-origin labelling regulations make the job easy at the fish market - small signs indicate the prawns are from Thailand, the squid from Vietnam and the snapper from New Zealand. John, my local fishmonger, has some beautiful fresh flathead but these were caught off Lakes Entrance. The domestic fish business is still small enough for fishmongers such as John to go to the wholesale market several times a week and to speak with a wholesaler who knows the provenance of his fish.

Finding fish grown or caught within the 160-kilometre radius, with the exception of some farmed trout, yabbies, mussels and wild eels, is difficult. It wasn’t always this way. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, scores of fishermen made a living selling their catch off their boats from the piers and jetties of Port Phillip and Western Port.

Thankfully the Beazley family, fifth-generation fishers, still operate a little shop in Dow Street, Port Melbourne, behind their family home. I was lucky enough to go fishing with the Beazleys five years ago. We left before dawn, towing their boat to a landing near Geelong. We spent the chilly dark hours before dawn setting nets in the bay off Point Wilson. It was hard, grinding, tiresome work. When we returned mid-morning, Greek and Asian families were waiting for their fresh flathead and King George whiting.

I caught up again recently with the Beazleys but I was late and almost all the fish had gone except a big butterfish that I had to take whole. “We don’t clean fish here any more,” says Dugga Beazley. “People are happy to do that themselves.”

I pay $7 for the large butterfish and a kilo of fresh sardines. I clean the fish back home in the laundry and the smell of seagrass, the butterfish’s staple diet, fills the room. We cook it in a little central Victorian olive oil and finish it with one of two lemons left on our tree. The fish is moist and meaty and tastes very strongly of the sea.

When I visit vegetable growers at Werribee South - Melbourne’s largest local suppliers - it has been raining and mud coats the roads, driveways and even the floor of the local cafe. The rich red mud consists of thin alluvial soil that covers the 4000 hectares of market gardens a 30-minute drive from the CBD. There are just 120 farmers, mostly of Italian and Macedonian origin. At various times throughout the year they supply not only Melbourne but the rest of Australia with lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, fennel, artichokes and onions.

This is one of the shortest delivery chains in our foodshed. A cauliflower picked at dawn yesterday will be bagged, chilled, taken to the supermarket distribution centre and packed on the shelves tonight. A Queensland cauliflower picked at the same time, will tonight still be on the road somewhere in NSW. Although presently zoned a green wedge, the price of land in Werribee South has risen to about $100,000 a hectare.

“This is making it very difficult to keep on growing,” says Con Ballan, one of the area’s largest producers. “The input costs of fuel, labour, fertiliser and agrochemicals keeps rising. It’s an 80-hour week and you don’t get young kids wanting to live a life like that.”

Werribee South’s impact on Victoria’s supply of fresh vegetables hit home earlier this year when a drought-related problem saw the supermarket price shoot up to $6 a head for its cauliflower and $7 a kilo for its broccoli.

With water allocations next year possibly halved, John Menegazzo from vegetable supplier Fresh Select says: “People might have to start getting used to those prices.”

Ironically, I can’t buy Werribee South vegetables in Werribee South. They are sold to the wholesale market or direct to supermarkets. Later that day I see the same caulis in my local supermarket. Coles’ new integrated packing and distribution system has the farmer pack vegetables into plastic bags and then into black plastic crates used in retail display. Small paper labels bearing the name and address of the grower are visible on the sides of some crates.

It is also a joy to read that the apples are from Hoddle’s Creek in the Yarra Valley and the leeks from Clyde in Gippsland. Stacked on a shelf nearby, however, are bundles of out-of-season asparagus. There’s no indication of their country of origin on the shelf or on the front of the label and it’s quite difficult to bend the thick plastic label back to reveal it was grown in Thailand. It is obvious from the silhouette of a 747 on the sticker that the baby corn has been flown in but the country of origin, again Thailand, is obscured on a bend in the packaging.

My local organic grocer in Glenhuntly Road, Elsternwick, displays its produce in baskets with not only the country of origin but also the name of the farmer on display, but not their location. When I explain that I am trying to live locally, the manager disappears into the cool store and emerges with a hand-written list of the locations of all the farms that supply her. If I continue as a locavore she will ensure exact locations are displayed as well.

As I ride my bike along the Yarra River heading towards Studley Park Vineyard, I remember my grandmother telling me how she used to buy cabbages from a Chinese market gardener beside the Yarra. This was when her milk was delivered on the back of a Clydesdale-drawn cart from the dairy in East Kew and she bought her apples from an orchardist in Doncaster.

I cross the footbridge by the Melbourne Fire Brigade in Abbotsford and ride into a 0.4-hectare vineyard of cabernet sauvignon vines. They were planted in 1994 on what had been a market garden run by a Greek man and before him a Chinese market gardener who first planted produce in the 1870s. Perhaps it was the man who sold cabbages to my grandmother. For more than a century the site has been in constant food production.

Owner Geoff Pryor sells his wine locally at Fred Young of Kew and to Grossi Florentino, Koots and Bottega restaurants. His grapes are picked and trucked 78 kilometres to a Macedon Ranges winery, made into wine, cellared, then trucked back to Melbourne. Thankfully, a total of 156 kilometres of food miles leaves us with a four-kilometre margin.

Pryor pours a glass of his 2004 cabernet sauvignon. We sit and drink the wine under old elms looking out over the yellowing vineyard across to the domes and spires of Kew. A bell rings out from the Carmelite Convent. With little difficulty and another glass of wine I imagine we’re inside an Arthur Streeton cigar-box miniature.

Corey Watts, rural landscapes campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, says it’s best to eat locally and better to eat Australian food over imported food, but “very little research has been done here on the impact of food miles. Doing what you’re doing is not the be?all and end-all because we don’t fully understand the environmental impact of transporting food and fibre over great distances. Also you need to factor in the drive to and from the market and all the other places you buy food.”

He points to UK research suggesting that a single visit to the supermarket can add another 1.8 kilograms of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. “But it is a good way of triggering a change in thinking,” he says. “Look at the way we now look at plastic bags.”

Australia exports $23 billion worth of food a year and imports $7 billion. If I forgo a product from a Third World country, Fairtrade coffee for example, am I denying a family in East Timor the right to earn a livelihood? Ethicist Peter Singer, in his book The Ethics of What We Eat, suggests that buying food from developing countries gives them an income. However, Van Wing says that by buying locally you’re helping local farmers lead sustainable lives while leaving people in developing countries to grow crops to feed themselves and not be caught up in the commodities rat race.

On a cold and windy Saturday my map of Victoria is blowing inside out. Still, the stallholders at my farmers’ market gladly show me where they live and grow their produce. (”See that creek there? Our place backs onto that.”) They don’t think it is odd that I want to know where all my food comes from. They point to the map and their finger falls on one side or the other of my boundary.

Even here, if I shop within the 160-kilometre zone, my basket will be lighter than normal. The land within an hour’s drive of the city, in any direction, is expensive. It is bought up for hobby farms or intensive horticulture.

It’s not surprising that the best lamb comes from the north-east of the state or Echuca. Some of the best eggs in the state are near Ararat and my favourite olives are grown under the morning shadow of the Grampians. But I have mussels from Flinders, corn from Gippsland, apples from the Yarra Valley, carrots and potatoes from Bullarto and a beautiful bag of the last of the season’s capsicums from Murchison in the Goulburn Valley.

To cook from within the 160-kilometre foodshed tests our skills; the research is extensive. Explaining my challenge to incredulous retailers and manufacturers was exhausting. And although I admit drinking a beer from South Australia, and caught my wife buying a coffee, for once we truly understood cooking with the season. We ate the peaches and tomatoes we bottled in late summer and worked out solutions to problems. Our discussions about meals changed from “What are we going to eat tonight?” to “How are we going to cook what we already have?”

Every time I approached meal time, Van Wing’s words rang in my ears. “To be a locavore,” she said, “is like trying to figure out all over again how things work if we didn’t have the industrial complex. It’s like taking part in a revolution.”

THE LOCAVORE PHILOSOPHY

Reasons for eating locally produced food:

* Helps protect the environment - it doesn’t have to travel far, reducing carbon emissions and packing materials.

* Supports local producers.

* Allows you to track a food’s provenance and therefore production methods.

LINKS

www.acfonline.org

www.farmersmarkets.org.au

www.foe.org.au

www.ethiscore.org

WESTERN Australian producers and makers offer to the market biodynamic, organic and conventionally-farmed foods. This list of producers and makers is not exclusive. It ranges from those whose foods are produced to Slow Food’s good, clean and fair principles and those selected to participate in Terra Madre: World Meeting of Food Communities in Turin, Italy, in October 2006, to producers farming or harvesting conventionally but in a sustainable way. Slow Food Perth encourages members and consumers to seek out these foods from retailers.

If you know of producers and makers who should be listed here, please email info@slowfoodperth.org.au. To be considered for inclusion, farmers and makers’ foods must taste good; their production methods must be clean, respecting animals, the environment and people’s health; and all participants producing the food must enjoy fair reward for their work.

beef
Baramba Beef Sid & Edith De Burgh, Karakin
Paynham Vale Organics Ron & Susan Watkins, Albany
Random Valley Organics, Karridale [Terra Madre 2006 participant]
Wayne & Margaret Brock, Muchea
Williams River Produce, Williams [Terra Madre 2006 participant]
Mardofarm, Pemberton

berries
Edengate Blueberry Farm, Albany

bush foods
Earth Farm Aaron Edmonds, Calingiri

cheese
Cambray Sheep Cheese, Nannup [Terra Madre 2006 participant]
Geographe Cheese Company, Bunbury
Harvey Cheese, Harvey
Kervella Biodynamic Pure Goats’ Cheese, Gidgegannup [Terra Madre 2006 participant]
Denmark Farmouse
Over the Moon, Albany

chocolate
Carmel Valley Chocolates, Carmel

condiments, conserves and preserves
Food Symphony, Bullsbrook [Terra Madre 2006 participant]
Gingin Heritage Estate, Gingin
Hot Aussie Cold Turkey, Lesmurdie
Williams River Produce, Williams [Terra Madre 2006 participant]

eggs
Margaret River Organic Eggs, Margaret River
MerriBee Organic Farm, Nannup

flour
Eden Valley Biodynamic Flour, Dumbleyung

fresh produce
Gingin Heritage Estate, Gingin
MerriBee Organic Farm, Nannup
Mimsbrook Farm, Armadale
Organic Fruit & Veg, Donnybrook
Wayne & Margaret Brock, Muchea
Mardofarm, avocados, Pemberton
High Vale Organic/Biodynamic Orchard, Perth Hills
MacNuts, macadamias, Baldivis

honey
Elixir Raw Honey, Gidgegannup & Nedlands

lamb
Cashmore Biodynamic Lamb, Hyden
Dorper Lamb Co, Busselton, Lake Grace & Perth
Prospect Merino, Wyalkatchem
River Valley Sheep

milk & cream
Bannister Downs, Northcliffe
Billawara Dairy, Denmark
Margaret River Organic Creameries, Margaret River
Ravenhill Dairies, Narrikup
Caprino Farm, goats milk, Herne Hill

nougat
Rochelle Adonis, North Perth

coffee
Fiori Coffee, West Perth

nuts
Williams River Produce, Williams

octopus
Fremantle Octopus Company, O’Connor

olives / olive oil
Agonis Ridge, Margaret River
Crowea Olive Oil
Gingin Heritage Estate, Gingin
Gingin Olives, Gingin
Kailis Organic Olive Oil, Hopeland
Regans Ridge Organic, Regans Ford
York Olive Oil Company, York
Eagle Bay Olive Oil, Eagle Bay

pork
MerriBee Organic Farm, Nannup
Spencers Brook Farm Annie & Neil Kavanagh, Spencers Brook

vinegar
Mount Barker Wine Vinegar, Saint Werburgh’s

wine
Bunns Vineyard & Winery, Redmond
Cosham Wines, Carmel
Cullen Wines, Margaret River
Gilead Estate, Neerabup / Wanneroo
Montefalco Vineyards, Porongurup
Oranje Tractor, Albany
Random Valley Organic Wine, Karridale [Terra Madre 2006 participant]
Swan River Organic Vineyard, Swan Valley
Leda Swan Organic Vineyard, Swan Valley
Wildstone Organic Wines, Ferguson Valley

yabbies
Cambinata Yabbies, Kukerin

Farangeez Ahmadi / Slow Food Perth 16 June 2007

This recipe makes enough baklava to fill two baking dishes 43cm x 30cm x 2.5cm. You will need to make the syrup a few hours before so that it is cool before you assemble and later cook the baklava.

Syrup
3 cups of sugar
one and a half cups of water
half cup of rosewater
1 tablespoon lemon juice
extra tablespoon rosewater

Put the sugar in a saucepan with the water and rosewater. Bring this gently to the boil for up to 20 minutes, stirring from time to time, until the liquid lightly coats a spoon. Add lemon juice and the extra rosewater. Cool and have ready for assembling the baklava.

Baklava
1kg ground almonds, or buy almond meal, as the Persian variety of baklava uses very finely ground nuts. (The result is more compact and smaller than the Greek version.)
1kg pistachio nuts, for roasting
400g icing sugar, or if the baklava you tasted at the workshop was too sweet, reduce the amount
3 teaspoons ground cardamom (Farangeez used the ground white type)
500g unsalted butter
rosewater
two packets of filo pastry - according to the experts the Antoniou is the best one available. Do not use frozen pastry. (I have seen the Antoniou in Farmer Jacks’ markets.)
300ml oil, preferably scentless

Method
Place pistachios in a moderate oven for 15 minutes and, when cool to touch, rub off as much of the skins as possible. Grind the nuts finely. Combine well with the ground almonds or almond meal, icing sugar and ground cardamom and set aside.

Butter the base of tin well. Place six layers of filo, buttering each layer in turn, on base of tin. Fill with half of the nut mixture and, most importantly, spoon this down until it is compact. This takes a little care and time. Moisten the nut layer with rosewater and lay another six buttered sheets of filo on top of nut mixture. Place in a refrigerator overnight as this makes the baklava easier to cut.

The next day, remove from fridge and trim any edges before cutting through with a very very sharp pointed knife. Farangeez does not just score the top but cuts right through, maing either a square or diagonal shape. (Use a ruler or guide to help you cut.)

Heat the oil in saucepan until very hot and then spoon gently over the cut baklava. (Test if oil is hot enough on a corner; it should bubble as you spoon it over.) Then bake on the middle shelf in a moderate oven until golden brown.

Cool baklava to room temperature and spoon syrup over it, then leave for an hour and if necessary pour over some extra syrup. Covered baklava will keep in the fridge for a good week. If it has been in the fridge for a few days and you want to refresh it, pour a little more warmed syrup over it.

By Pauline Tresise

IT is believed that baklava was created by the Assyrians - around the eighth century BC - who used layered thin bread dough, chopped nuts and honey baked in their wood fired ovens for their table of sweet offerings.

For centuries baklava has crossed borders and been passed down in history from the renowned Persian patissiers to the Byzantium court of Justinian I at Constantinople. The Greeks, whose merchants and sailors travelled widely in Mesopotamia, were captivated by the taste of these delicacies and as a result invented the dough technique of phyllo. The Armenians who were situated on the spice route incorporated cinnamon and cloves. Over the centuries, as this sweet crossed borders, different ingredients and methods were used: the Greeks added cinnamon and honey and the people in the Middle East added rose water and cardamom. Originally baklava was considered food for the wealthy as many families did not have ovens of their own, but since the 19th century it has been traditionally used by families, especially at celebratory times.

Today it has arrived in the pastry shops in Australia and many of the migrant communities have brought their own family version. As we sit watching it being prepared by Farangeez, who came from Iran 10 years ago we are reminded of the importance of preserving these traditions. Baklava she tells us takes two days to make so all the flavours are incorporated, so the day before she had prepared the first tray which was passed around after the workshop - not once but twice and for some three times. Our warm thanks to Farangeez Ahmadi for giving us her time and sharing her recipes with us.

A special thankyou to Slow Food Perth Members and Fiori coffee merchants, Kamran Nowduschani and Louise Gordon for bringing their new coffee to highlight this taste sensation. For those interested Fiori coffee it can be purchased at quality grocers and used in good coffee lounges such as Tiger Tiger and Boucla. Contact Fiori Merchants on 9328 4988 for further information.

FOR five years now at Carloforte - the only town on the island of Saint Peter, an island lying on the south coast of Sardinia and closely connected by a 40-minute ferry ride - has been celebrating the Girotonno: four days of events that include cultural, artistic, oenological and gastronomic meetings, not to mention the live music, performances, conventions and debates. This event aims to highlight the ancient tradition and culture of the tuna, and how it is historically linked to the territory.

It is a small island with a population of 5000 mainly made up of fishermen and their families. It was originally settled by Tunisians with the result that its food, customs and costumes are unique. Four days in May are dedicated to the ancient tradition of tuna, tuna fishing and the tuna cuisine competition.

Saint Peter has been recorded as one of the earliest places in history for tuna fishing and for the last five years at the Girotonno chefs from all over the world compete in the tuna cuisine competition. It is the only opportunity to experience this cultural exchange of tuna traditions, the life and the economy of this community.

The migration of tuna had been noticed by Aristotle who described the migratory habits of tuna. In his History of Animals he tried in vain to find a logical answer to their seasonal regularity of their migration. Phoenicians and Carthaginians stamped their coins with an image of a blue fin tuna and in more recent history Arabs, Spaniards and Italians incorporated tuna into their diets and culture. The Venetians, Arabs, Romans and Spaniards took advantage of fishing the seas around the migratory habit of the blue fin tuna. Around the ninth century in Sicily, during the Arab occupation, the ritual of the mattanza was developed. For centuries the tuna have been seasonally trapped in May and early June along the southern coasts of Sicily and Sardinia on their way from the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern Mediterranean and into the Black Sea to spawn.

The Northern Atlantic blue fin tuna Thunnus thynnus inhabits the North Atlantic Ocean, and are migratory fish that spawn either in the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean Sea. They can live up to 40 years, weigh from 136 to 680 kilos and can reach 2-3 metres in length. They can attain swimming speeds of 60km per hour, and migrate from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean in as little as 60 days. The blue fin holds an almost mythic position among the world’s pelagic fish.

One of the world’s few truly warm-blooded fish, the blue fin is able to maintain its body temperature between 10° and 20° Fahrenheit higher than the surrounding water. The principal advantage of this ability is increased muscle power; muscles contract more rapidly when warm without loss of energy. As a result, the blue fin is able to swim very fast and travel very long distances.

Fascinating as this information is, the blue fin tuna is sadly on the critically endangered list. Traditionally the mattanza was a sustainable one but ever since the beginning of fishing as a global industry in the 1960s with the move to sonar and satellite technology, the blue fin tuna stocks are much depleted.

Links
Greenpeace: state of southern blue fin tuna
Environmental justice foundation
The Daily Telegraph London report
The Independent report: chef removes blue fin tuna from menu
Environmental news service Australia

Slow Food Perth committee members stuck their hands in dough on 2 June with sourdough baker Yoke Mardewi-Caddy in her Ardross kitchen. A week later more than 40 Slow Food Perth members and friends gathered at a converted private house known as The Church in Mount Lawley to to talk with Yoke about sourdough bread-making. Slow Food Perth member Tracy Barker reports.

NOT all bread is created equal, nor all sourdough! Perth artisan baker Yoke Mardewi-Caddy conducted a sourdough information session for Slow Food members and friends in Mt Lawley.

Yoke has been baking sourdough for over 15 years and her expertise was obvious in the amazing bread we sampled during the session.

As well as ‘plain’ bread (that was anything but), Yoke had made amazing chocolate sour cherry and pistachio cranberry sourdough loaves. Slathered with organic butter I could have eaten it all day long! All of the breads were moist, fragrant and chewy – by far some of the best bread I’ve eaten in years.

Yoke uses biodynamic flour in all her breads – rye, wheat, spelt and a naturally cultured sourdough starter that she has been feeding and using for ten years and allows the bread to rise for up to eight hours.

According to Yoke, bread made with a natural sourdough starter contains natural yeasts that aid the digestion of whole grains and the resulting bread had a naturally low glycemic index.

Yoke runs sourdough bread making classes from her home in Ardross, which include the opportunity to try your hand at making a variety of sourdough breads, and includes some of Yoke’s starter to take home and experiment with. As soon as I can find time, I’ll be lining up for a class.

More information
Email Yoke Mardewi-Caddy

Girotonno is a four-day celebration of the bluefin tuna that provides the San Pietrans with their livelihood. Australia was well represented at Girotonno, reports Meera Freeman of The Age.

5 June 2007: MELBOURNE’S Teague Ezard is just back from a whirlwind trip to Carloforte on the Sardinian of San Pietro, where he competed for Australia at the fifth Girotonno - a four-day celebration of the bluefin tuna that provides the islanders with their livelihood.

He hit the ground running, competing on the first day of the third World Tuna Cuisine Competition and won a special juror’s prize for his savoury panna cotta flavoured with wasabi and bonito flakes with tuna sashimi in a mirin and sesame broth. Enzo Vizzari, chairman of the jury and editor of the l’Espresso restaurant guides, praised the dish for its originality and technical excellence - “a fine example of fusion as opposed to confusion cuisine”.

“I was thrilled to receive this prize, which made the very long journey for a very short stay even more worthwhile,” Ezard says. “I really enjoyed the camaraderie between the competing chefs and was impressed by the sense of community and extraordinary hospitality of the locals that was equal to their wonderful cuisine.”

This year, eight countries competed in the competition. The outright winner was a Peruvian team of three young chefs who presented a trio of tuna dishes a la Creole, combining European and Japanese methods with ancestral Incan ingredients such as corn, different types of chilli and potato - a sweet ceviche, a causa anticuchera (yellow potato cylinder topped with a grilled skewer of tuna) and marinated fried pieces of the fish on a bed of corn and sun-dried pepper paste. The Danish entry was a sliced smoked and seared tuna stack with horseradish and rhubarb sauces, pearls of caraway eau de vie, sea grass and a crisp wheat-grain wafer.

The island of San Pietro was settled in 1736 by 300 families of Genoese coral gatherers and fishermen living on the Tunisian island of Tabarka and seeking refuge from the ravages of overpopulation, depletion of their local coral beds and attacks by the marauding Barbary pirates who roamed the Mediterranean coasts during that period. 

It lies on the migratory route of the bluefin tuna and the ritual mattanza, or tuna kill, is still practised using methods handed down from rais to rais (head fisherman) since the Middle Ages. It is home to one of the last fully operating tonnare, complex systems of fixed nets that trap the tuna. The nets are hoisted by hand and the tuna speared and loaded onto small boats, from where they are transported to the nearby tuna processing plant. Bloody and cruel as this method may seem, it is a selective process and far less wasteful and harmful to the environment than trawling.

The four-day festival, May 17-20, brought tens of thousands of visitors to the island. Local restaurants offered special menus featuring every imaginable part of the noble fish - tuna prosciutto and sausages, tuna sperm, salted and preserved heart, bottarga (dried roe), as well as the various cuts of the tuna flesh.

Four of the guest chefs, including Ezard, held masterclasses at the new Theatre of Taste presided over by Italy’s renowned world food and music expert, Vittorio Castellani. There were tastings of Sardinia’s excellent wines and stalls set up along the waterfront promenade provided samplings of local produce, smallgoods and cheeses.

Cookery teacher Meera Freeman was a member of the 14-person Girotonno jury headed by Enzo Vizzari.