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