SLOW Food Perth will be at the forefront of the Mundaring truffle festival in the Perth hills this weekend – Saturday 31 July and Sunday 1 August. The convivium’s ‘food-finders’ marquee will host a range of children’s food discovery activities and tastings, from hunting for spuds and identifying apples to making pasta dough. Led by chef and double-Terra Madre delegate Vincenzo Velletri, Slow Food Perth will also be fundraising by selling five truffle-themed local food dishes in the festival’s licenced food piazza.
Participating chefs in the Slow Food piazza stall will include Taste of Balingup’s Katrina Lane, Meal-up Dunsborough’s Adam Lane and Perth’s Valerio Fantinelli, all of whom have been selected as West Australian delegates to Slow Food’s Terra Madre world meeting of food communities in Italy later this year. They will be assisted by Pemberton chef and Slow Food Southern Forests’ leader Sophie Zalokar.
On offer will be hand-made pizza, Blackwood Valley organic beef baguette, vialone nano risotto, Pinjarra lamb spezzatino with polenta, and delicious Perth mushrooms – all featuring truffle – ranging in price from $5 to $15.
More than 35 volunteers are supporting food-finders, together with enterprises ranging from Western Potatoes to Growing Free, from kids’ gardening tools business Twigz to organically-grown food seedlings nursery Heirloom Farm. Slow Food Melbourne convivium leader Alison Peake is attending to help us to co-ordinate ‘spudhunters’, an activity in which children dig for potatoes, identify them, taste them and get to take one home to grow or to eat.
Kids will also find out about the history of the apple and the heritage of wheat, hear and read stories, and participate in a range of learning and hands-on painting, food-making and tasting events.
The ‘food-finders’ marquee is number six, just inside the main festival entrance. Slow Food’s piazza stall is next to the wine-bar.
Slow Food Perth’s Vincenzo Velletri is also contributing to the world’s longest truffle lunch – now sold out – by cooking a pair of Linley Valley pigs in a wood-fired oven for the main course.
Event details
Dates: Sat 31 July and Sun 1 Aug 2010
Time: 10:00am – 5:00pm both days
Fee: $10 adults, children under 16 free
Tickets: book on-line by Fri 30 July
Public transport: Shuttle bus from Midland railway station on the hour every hour during the two days of the festival, but you must book a ticket through the link above
Bus return fare: $6 adult, $3 child, $16 family [2 adults, 3 children]
