AN interesting documentary about Slow Food, Biodiversity and Terra Madre 2008
NEIL and Jane Seymour of Mount Zero Biodynamic Olive Grove were interviewed on ABC Landline Sunday 19th July about the development of the pink salt from the pink lake in Victoria’s Wimmera area. One of their latest ventures has been working with the lake’s traditional owners, the Jardwadjali community, to hand harvest a small amount of salt from the lake each year.
In 1994 the Seymours bought their farm close to the Grampians National Park, it was already established with an olive grove. To make their farming more sustainable they ventured into growing chick peas and lentils and then Jane fell in love with the nearby pink salt lake, so she set about getting the approvals for a trial harvest of the salt in a venture with the lake’s traditional owners. Salt has been harvested here since 1860 but ceased twenty years ago.
In the ABC Landline interwiew, Sandy Hodge of the Barenji Gadjin Land Council talks about having a tradional owner branding attached to the marketing process so it is clearly seen as a partnership with the traditional owners.
The pink salt is harvested in summer. It has a beautiful flavour, rich in minerals and the pink colour is the beta carotene produced by live algae.
As Jane Seymour concludes in the interview, “we are members of Slow Food. The definition for slow food is food that is good, fair and clean. Now, the salt covers all those categories”
SLOW Food Perth’s Jul-Aug 2009 edition of its Helix aspersa newsletter features articles on kitchen and community gardens, with a recollection by Kojonup member Audrey Townshend about her efforts to develop a kitchen garden in Melbourne during World War II, and the story of the war-time government’s ‘Vegetables for Victory’ campaign. Skip to the present day, and read about an extraordinary school garden project in Onslow.
2009 Jul-Aug / PDF / index / word picture: joaquim da costa / kojonup on a plate: holistic farming yields retail partnership / air raid shelter inspires a gardening life / ‘vegetables for victory’ / leaping lizards in an onslow school garden / one harmonious snail / feasts, fasts, famines and fads – a peek at food history / shaking and making in japan / celebrate terra madre day / a slurp of real milk / slow food perth contacts / ‘feeding the snail’ – contributions welcome
HERODOTUS described butter as one of ‘the oddities of the Scythians’ who lived in the Black Sea littoral. The Greeks called it boutyron, apparently a literal translation of ‘cow+cheese’. In France today, distinctive regional butters are part of the defining food culture of the country. Slow Food Perth will host ‘Butter works’, a tasting of Australian and New Zealand, European and locally home-made butters, on Sat 25 July 2009. The workshop has been inspired by Trudy Parker’s trip to Japan earlier this year where she attended a butter-making course at a Hokkaido dairy. Venue: 36a Gardiner Street (rear house), East Perth. Time: 2:00-4:00pm. Fee: $15 members, $20 friends. Information: Pauline Tresise email or T 08 9381 4519. Booking form.
TASTE the orient / Sat 18 Jul 2009 / taste excursion / not quite a genuine bazaar experience, but as close as is possible in suburban Perth / a visit to a specialist Belmont grocer with Farangeez Ahmadi to learn about Iranian and other middle eastern foods. Free event, but please complete the booking form and email advice of your attendance. Note: this excursion was previously listed for Sat 20 Jun.
HAGEN Stehr, a tuna industry pioneer from Port Lincoln in South Australia, has achieved the holy grail of fish farming by breeding in captivity the highly prized southern blue fin tuna. Recently on ABC “Bush Telegraph” Hagen was interviewed about how this enterprise came to fruition.
SLOW Food Southern Forests – Western Australia’s newest, and fifth, Slow Food convivium – will be launched at a special long table lunch at Pemberton’s Lost Lake Winery on Sun 26 July 2009. Convivium leader and Terra Madre 2008 chef-delegate Sophie Zalokar has invited the Manjimup and Pemberton communities to join convivium members and enjoy local food and wine. ‘We’re celebrating the beginning of a local organisation that recognises and promotes the cultural importance of food in our community,’ Sophie says. The menu will include pasta e fagioli, a hearty soup of Manjimup white beans, local vegetables and pasta with parmesan, local olive oil and crusty bread, juniper-brined free-range chicken with braised cabbage and apple, and buckwheat cake with karri honey-poached local persimmons and Bannister Downs’ dairy’s double cream. This dessert is a unique Italian-style buckwheat and almond cake. Buckwheat was introduced to Italy and France via Russia and south-eastern Europe by Crusaders, who got it from the Saracens, and it was given an Arabic-derived name, ‘saracen corn’. Lunch booking fee: $55 Slow Food members, $60 friends. For bookings please contact Lost Lake Winery T 08 9776 1251. Information flyer
GREG Revell, director of sustainable food policy at Gene Ethics, reviews the BBC documentary that was shown on SBS Television on 07 Jul 2009.
HEARD on ABC Radio National’s Bush Telegraph, authors Rob Cross and Roger Spencer of the CSIRO talk about their new book on Sustainable Gardens. Some of the topics of the book include the importance of biodiversity and the role that gardening can play in alleviating the environmental impacts of food production.
LIZ Harfull recently received a Gourmand world cookbook award in Paris for her book The Blue Ribbon Cookbook, a collection of recipes from regional South Australia. See Richard Cornish in The Age Epicure. Visit the “Blue Ribbon Cookbook” blog site, where Liz writes about her stay in Paris and catches up with Slow Food members.
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