Chanticleer’s compassionate chop

On May 31, 2008, in urban revolution, by pauline
0

Nothing beats a good, home-grown chook eaten with a good bottle of wine among friends. Mount Claremont verge-front-and-backyard-food gardener Sue Hartley describes a little bit of compassionate – but necessary – backyard butchery.

ON Saturday, ANZAC day, I had a wonderful ’slow food experience’ with my new neighbours who are renting the house next door for four years while the husband, Alistair, is working here in Perth in the oil industry. Birgit, his wife, is a young German woman who is very keen for her three young children to have as many “down to earth” experiences as they possible can while in Australia. She travels all over Perth to buy organic and has also began her vegie patch since she saw mine. I have helped her with tips and ideas on where to go to get materials and what our poor soil needs and now it is thriving.

As I am a back yard chook woman, this also interested Birgit. My light sussex hen went clucky last year and I suggested she may like to sit a clutch of eggs so the kids can see chickens hatch. We bought twelve barnvelder fertile eggs, an old Dutch breed, from an original breeds grower. The chickens are meant to be very calm and child friendly, multi purpose chooks so good for the back yarder to try on first.

The success rate wasn’t great: four eggs were sterile, two died (one by undermining the feed station with scratching until it fell on it) and of the rest, only two were hens. Not a very good ratio of hens to roosters. So we decided to have a rooster feast once they were big enough. At six months of age, the back yard now sounding like a Bali village early in the morning, we chose ANZAC day as the day for the dirty deed. I borrowed a huge pot in which we boiled the water down in the back yard. I bought over a range of killing implements and we discussed the many ways to dispatch them; breaking their necks, twisting them off, using an axe or knife, the list went on. Brigit had downloaded a few recipes and we chose coq au riesling, a delicious easy to prepare, one pot dish.

Another neighbour, Carl, bought his children up from down the street to observe the ‘killing fields’ and ‘do’ one rooster himself, a first for him. Alistair, the dad of Nicholas (8), Timothy (6) and Charlotte (20 months) was also keen to have a go and had been mentally practising how to do a clean cut while keeping all of his fingers. We chose the meat cleaver as the sharpest and easiest implement to use. I went first, as the experienced slaughter woman I am, and nearly removed the head with the first blow of the cleaver. Alistair was more successful and did a very neat trim, feathers included. Carl’s was more a case of chop, chop, chop. Each time the roosters went quietly and calmly to their deaths, as befits the breed. Not quiet enough for one child who left the scene sobbing and vowing to be a vegetarian for ever and ever.

The legs of these birds was bright saffron yellow, and so was the skin, as we revealed it when we plucked the feathers off. The plucking was really easy after they had had a good thirty seconds dunking in the hot water. I showed them how to gut the birds and we discussed all of the anatomy, including the small gonads. Hearts, livers and lungs were dissected but most interest was shown in the big muscle of the crop and a careful viewing of what the birds had recently eaten.

After a brief pause to catch our breath and have a wine, we all trooped inside to get down to dissection. Again, most of the women had never had experience of dissecting a bird so I showed them a few tricks. We ended up with two big pots of rooster, carrots, onion, mushrooms and wine. An hour and a half later, the now five families, including Birgit’s visiting German parents, and another oil industry family from down the road, all sat down to a great feast of superb coq au riesling. We praised the birds’ tastiness and their gift to us of their lives. We hoped we had given them a swift, fearless death and a good life before.

Being the only home grown West Aussie local, and in keeping with the event and day, I showed the visitors photos of my grandfather, Harry, and his two brothers, Stan and Colin Hope, who all returned from those bloody, bitter battles of the WW1, the former in Gallipoli and the latter two, the Somme and Ypres. My grandfather, a county boy, well used to raising and killing his own meat, would have liked the fact that we were breaking bread together with former enemies as he returned home to Australia a committed pacifist and socialist who thought war was not the way to settle disputes between people. Here’s to life and good food!

Coq au riesling
Time: 60-90 minutes, plus overnight refrigeration (optional)

Ingredients
8 ounces sliced bacon, sliced cross wise into 1 inch pieces.
3 medium onions, peeled and roughly chopped
10 chicken thighs, with skin and bone
8 ounces of button mushrooms, halved
2 large or 3 small cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley
3 tablespoons chopped tarragon
1 bottle dry or off-dry riesling wine

Method
1. Place large flame proof casserole or other heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Add bacon and stir until it releases its fat. Add onions and saute until softened, about ten minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer mixture to plate, leaving behind as much liquid fat as possible.
2. Place pan over medium-high heat. Working in batches (do not overcrowd the pan), brown chicken pieces on both sides, transferring them to a plate after they are browned.
3. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add mushrooms, garlic, 3 tablespoons of parsley and 2 tablespoons of tarragon. Saute until mushrooms are coated in fat, about 1 minute. Return chicken pieces, onions and bacon to pan. Add wine and raise heat to bring to boil. Partially cover, turn heat to low and simmer for 1 hour.
4 To serve immediately, sprinkle with remaining parsley and tarragon. For best results, cool and refrigerate overnight. The next day, remove any chilled fat on the surface with paper towels. reheat gently, sprinkle with parsley and tarragon and serve. Serves 4 – 6 persons. Best with a light green salad and a chilled white wine.

Susan Hartley
E shartley@starwon.com.au

May 2008

 

Restaurants move to fresh from the garden

On May 27, 2008, in the nose, by jamie
0

MELBOURNE chef Matt Wilkinson tells The Age about his move to a kitchen garden for his restaurant, Circa The Prince. Full report.

Tagged with:
 

Il giorno della madre: vineyard luncheon

On May 17, 2008, in event archive, by Jane
1

Dogs and vinesAUTUMNAL weather and golden vines greeted guests arriving at Maxinne, Rod and Anto Sclanders’ Cosham Wines in the Bickley Valley for Slow Food Perth’s mother’s day celebration.

A vineyard luncheon ll giorno della madre – linking mother’s day with Slow Food’s Terra Madre: world meeting of food communities, to be held in Torino, Italy, later in 2008 – brought fruits of the earth to the table.

Proceedings began in Cosham’s tasting room with a glass of 2004 methode champenoise pinot noir brut, accompanied by Pauline Tresise’s delicious homemade dukkah with organic pane di casa and local olive oil, pickled zucchini, marinated goat fetta and alpine clover bread. Guests then headed down the hill to a marquee surrounded by willows and agapathus where menu began with ever-so-slowly-cooked borlotti beans with pasta.

Porker cookingIt was followed by the piece de resistance: a whole roasted free range porker and two Wyalkatchem Prospect merino hoggets, accompanied with wood-fired ruby lou potatoes, jap pumpkin with Elixir honey and farmer’s market garden salad (which had a delicious dressing). Cosham’s 2004 chardonay, 2005 cabernet merlot and 2005 shiraz complemented the main course beautifully. Thanks go to Slow Food Perth committee member Vincenzo Velletri for his sterling efforts in cooking the meat to perfection, and to Barbara Steemson and Freddie Kronborg for preparing the potatoes and pumpkin.

Dessert – Marc Meneau’s gateau des pommes – was a team effort with Slow Food members and friends asked to contribute time to creating gateaux from the delicious granny smith apples graciously supplied by John Dellafranca and Emily Lyons of High Vale biodynamic orchard at Pickering Brook. The gateaux makers included Pauline Tresise, Gaynor Ashford, Jenny Fowler, Barbara Steemson, Trudy Parker, Trish Wood, Barb Holt, Margaret Roberts, Sarah McElwee and Philippa Baws for their contributions. Bannister Downs double cream was available for drizzling over portions of gateau. Cosham’s 2006 pinot noir – just released – offered a fine accompaniment. For those with room to spare there was Fiori coffee and deliciously decadent Carmel Valley chocolate truffles made by Maggie Neylan just up the road from Cosham.

An impromptu musical interlude was provided by Slow Food member Alex Millier, principal bass clarinettist with Western Australian Symphony Orchestra. Alex’s mixture of classical and contemporary tunes had us all tapping our feet and, in some cases, singing along.

The beautiful setting, gorgeous autumn afternoon and agreeable company all contributed to a very pleasant mother’s day vineyard lunch. The funds raised will be used to offset the travel costs of Western Australian participants selected to participate in Terra Madre 2008.

Slow Food Perth is grateful to Maxinne, Rod and Anto Sclanders for their wonderful hospitality.

Links
terramadre.info
Cosham Wines, Bickley

 

Taking back our food

On May 9, 2008, in the nose, by pauline
0

By Miguel Altieri
Professor of agrocecology at the University of California, Berkeley
Article reprinted with permission from the Center of Ecoliteracy www.ecoliteracy.org

WORLD agriculture appears to be approaching a crossroads. The globalized economy has placed a series of conflicting demands on existing croplands. Not only is this land required to produce food for a growing human population, but it also must meet the increased demands for biofuels; and it must do so in an environmentally sound way that preserves biodiversity and reduces greenhouse emissions, while still representing a profitable activity to millions of farmers.
These pressures are setting in motion a global food system crisis of unprecedented scope that is already signalled by food riots in many parts of the world. This crisis, which threatens the livelihoods of millions more than the current 800 million hungry people, is the direct result of the dominating industrial farming model, which is dangerously dependent on fossil fuels and has also become the largest source of human impact on the biosphere.
In fact, there are now so many pressures on dwindling arable ecosystems that farming is overwhelming nature’s capacity to meet humankind’s food, fiber, and energy needs. The tragedy is that agriculture depends on the very ecological services (water cycles, pollinators, fertile soil formation, benevolent local weather, etc.) that intensive farming continually degrades or pushes beyond their limits.
Before the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, humanity is quickly realizing that the fossil fuel-based, capital-intensive, industrial-agricultural western model is not working to meet the food demands of various countries. Soaring oil prices will inevitably increase production costs and food prices, which have already escalated to the point that today one dollar purchases 30 percent less food than one year ago.
This situation is rapidly being aggravated by farmland being turned from food production to biofuels; it is also being aggravated by climate change, which has reduced crop yields as a result of droughts, floods, and other unpredictable weather events. Expanding land areas devoted to biofuels and transgenic crops will further exacerbate the ecological impacts of vast monocultures. Moreover, industrial agriculture presently contributes at least one-quarter of current greenhouse gas emissions, mainly methane and nitrous oxide. Continuing this dominant degrading system, as promoted by the current economic paradigm, is no longer a viable option.
The immediate challenge for our generation is to transform industrial agriculture by transitioning the world’s food systems away from reliance on fossil fuels. We need an alternative agricultural development paradigm: one that encourages more ecological, biodiverse, sustainable, and socially just forms of agriculture. Reshaping the entire agricultural policy and food system in ways that are environmentally sound and economically viable to farmers and consumers will require major changes in the political and economic forces that determine what is being produced, by whom, and for whom.
Out-of-control trade liberalization, which forces developing countries to open their markets to subsidized crops coming from the North, is the key mechanism driving farmers off their land and the principal obstacle to local economic development and food security. Only by challenging the control that big multinational corporations exert over the food system and changing the export-led and free-trade based agriculture model can the downward spiral of poverty, low wages, rural-urban migration, hunger, and environmental degradation be halted.
The concept of food sovereignty, as promoted by the world’s movement of small farmers, Via Campesina, constitutes the only viable alternative to the current and collapsing global food system, which failed in its assumptions that international trade was the key to solving the world’s food problem. Instead, food sovereignty focuses on closed local circuits of production and consumption and community action for access to land, water, and agrobiodiversity, which are of central importance for communities to control in order to be able to produce food locally with agroecological methods.
There is no doubt that an alliance between farmers and consumers is of strategic importance. In addition to moving down the food chain – that is, eating less animal protein – consumers need to realize that their quality of life is intractably associated with the type of agriculture practiced in neighboring rural areas, not only because of the quality of the food produced, but also because agriculture is multifunctional, producing a series of environmental services such as water quality and biodiversity conservation.
But this multifunctional production can only emerge if agricultural landscapes are dotted by small, diversified farms, which, as studies show, can produce from two to ten times more per unit area than larger, corporate farms. In the United States, the top 25 percent of sustainable agriculture farms, which are mostly small-to-medium size, exhibit higher yields than conventional farms, and exert a much lower negative impact on the environment, reducing soil erosion and conserving biodiversity.
Communities surrounded by populous small farms experience less social problems and have healthier economies than do communities surrounded by depopulated large, monoculture, mechanized farms. Thus it should be obvious to city dwellers that eating is both an ecological and political act; that buying food at local farmers markets will support the type of beyond-peak oil agriculture that is urgently needed; and that buying food in supermarkets perpetuates an unsustainable agricultural path.
The scale and urgency of the challenge we face has no precedent, but what needs to be done is environmentally, economically, and politically feasible. The speed with which changes must be implemented is great, but it is doubtful that we can gather the political will to radically transform our food system before hunger and food insecurity reach planetary and irreversible levels.