French author Alexandre Dumas [1802-1870], of The Three Musketeers’ fame, wrote of them: ‘The most learned men have been questioned as to the nature of this tuber, and after two thousand years of argument and discussion their answer is the same as it was on the first day: we do not know. The truffles themselves have been interrogated, and have answered simply: eat us and praise the Lord.’

SLOW Food Perth enjoyed a highly rewarding collaboration with the Mundaring Truffle Festival, which was held in the Darling Range east of Perth, Western Australia, on Sat 02-Sun 03 Aug 2008.

Mundaring is a small hills’ community above and away from Perth’s suburban sprawl down on ‘the flat’, as the city is called. One of the Perth region’s better restaurants – The Loose Box, owned by French-born and trained chef Alain Fabreques – operates here. Alain was an inaugural investor in the Manjimup Wine & Truffle Company, based at Manjimup in Western Australia’s south west, and as a result of this investment and his use of truffles at The Loose Box, he proposed the idea of an annual festival to celebrate the black perigord truffle. The Mundaring shire council picked up this proposal and held an inaugural festival in 2007 which attracted about 2000 people to a series of masterclasses, a fine food market, and associated art events.

In May 2008 Slow Food Perth was approached by Jane Cornes, Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine correspondent in Western Australia – and a member of the truffle festival organising crew – to host a Slow Food ‘long table luncheon’ as part of the 2008 festival. As we talked, our participation evolved from a luncheon on the Saturday to a Slow Food information, education, promotion and Terra Madre fundraising event on the Sunday.

The luncheon was relatively easy! With the very generous assistance of stalwart Slow Food Perth member and Terra Madre 2006 chef-delegate Vincenzo Velletri, we developed a Terra Madre ‘down-the-road’ menu – Mundaring itself not being a farming area from which we could readily source local, seasonal produce to any extent in mid-winter. Slow Food Perth co-leader Pauline Tresise devised an appetiser of marinated zucchini, goat milk feta and sun-dried tomatoes; the latter being the ‘leftovers’ from a highly-successful passata workshop held by Slow Food Perth on ‘the flat’ in February 2008, when case-loads of beautiful roma tomatoes were in season.

For the entrée, Vincenzo created wood-fired bread from flour produced from wheat grown by Terra Madre 2006 producer-delegate Terri Lloyd. This was transformed into a bruschetta trio using fresh, local chicken livers from The Naked Butcher in Mundaring – a fantastic source of nitrate-free organic bacon, too – local field mushrooms, and roma tomatoes from a grocer-donor. From Hillside Meats, a specialist sheep butchery at Narrogin in the Upper Great Southern, which had previously supported the convivium at another event in March, we sourced Stirling Range lamb produced by a farmers’ co-operative in the lower Great Southern. This became a spezzatina finished in Vincenzo’s mobile wood-fired oven in front of the luncheon guests. While this was cooking, we prepared polenta in a an old galvanised copper. For dessert, Vincenzo created a vanilla pannacotta from cream produced by another Slow Food Perth supporter – Bannister Downs cow-milk dairy at Northcliffe. Each course was topped with fresh, shaved, black Manjimup truffle.

The food was wonderfully complemented by Hills’ wines from three selected vignerons – sparkling pinot noir, semillon, rose, cabernet merlot, shiraz and shiraz liqueur – with generous assistance given by Slow Food Perth members and Cosham Wines’ principals Maxinne and Rod Sclanders. With 15 Slow Food members and friends as volunteer ‘platers’ and waiters, we served lunch to 124 guests in a marquee - hung with Terra Madre banners – at the festival site. It was fantastic co-operative work by which people learned about Terra Madre, good, clean and fair food, truffles, the significance of small producers in rural communities and the wider world, and conviviality.

The following day – Sunday – we transformed the marquee into a Slow Food Perth information and food market and café. This coincided with the truffle festival’s fine food market involving 40 stallholders in Mundaring’s Sculpture Park. The Slow Food Perth marquee hosted blind-fold food tastings for children, with help from nutritionist Stephanie McFaull, the making and cooking of persian sweetmeats by an Iranian émigré cook Farengeez Ahmadi, a static promotion for the 2008 international year of the potato, and a ‘brain food’ tunnel of 60 metres of black fabric hung with 40 printed ‘food memories’ - from recollections of eating English boarding school blanc mange (!) to barbequed king brown snake.

We sought to highlight food traditions by inviting the Mount Helena and Mundaring-Parkerville branches of the Country Women’s Association to make and sell the classic sponge for which the CWA in Australia is famous, and to promote the CWA cookery book, a source of inspiration and knowledge in many Australian country kitchens. Irene Verteramo from the food distribution charity Foodbank demonstrated the preparation of good food with just a handful of fresh ingredients. Terra Madre 2006 delegates Bruce and Jane Wilde drove 300km to milk sheep and show children one source of real food – much to the consternation of the local environmental health inspector - and Jane made and sold fresh sheep milk cheese. Baristas Fiori Coffee – whose principals are Slow Food members - made and sold copious, fabulous specialist coffee, from which the proceeds are to be donated to Slow Food Perth’s participating Wembley Downs primary school kitchen garden project. Slow Food committee members made and sold biscuits and Vincenzo Velletri created fresh pizza to raise funds for Western Australia’s Terra Madre 2008 delegate airfares. And the spirit of making good food accessible was encapsulated by one small boy’s question - ‘Why are you trying to shave a stone onto my pizza?’ - when we used fresh Manjimup truffle left over from the Saturday Terra Madre luncheon on pizza for anyone who wanted to taste this extraordinary fungus.

Slow Food’s collaboration with this event was highly successful. It involved about 40 volunteers over two days and took three months of part-time planning. We raised $11,000, spent about $5000, and so contributed $6000 to the Terra Madre fundraising account. It was enormously rewarding, bringing together, voluntarily, people from disparate backgrounds to promote good, clean and fair food and to enable the community – we reckon nearly every one of the 10,000 people who attended the two-day event went through the Slow Food marquee; it certainly felt like it! – to celebrate and understand a little better those things which sustain us all - food, and the people to produce and prepare it.

We would also like to acknowledge the support of Slow Food Australia working group chairman Leonie Furber, and her husband James, at this event.

Links
Mundaring Truffle Festival 2008
Foodbank Western Australia
Country Women’s Association of Western Australia

AUTUMNAL 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.

It 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

Passata di pomodoro (aka tomato puree) is an indispensable item in any kitchen pantry. Many of us regularly use passata in pasta sauces and casserole recipes so, for approximately 30 Slow Food members, the opportunity to make our own was too good to pass up! Early on a Sunday morning in February we gathered, along with 15 or so crates of Roma tomatoes, at the home of Slow Food members Lyn de Reggie and Peter Miles.

The crowd, fueled on coffee supplied by Fiori Coffee, all pitched in to process the tomatoes and to get to know each other a little better. A fantastic lunch was served consisting of pasta and fresh tomato sauce followed by luscious poached figs served with greek-style yoghurt and roasted macadamia nuts, and rich chocolate cake.

Once the tomatoes had been washed they were then cored, scored and squeezed (to begin to remove the seeds) and put through the passata mill. After a few hours the optimum processing flow had been determined - part of which involved a person scraping the puree sieve which left them covered in tomato juice from head to toe. From time to time the mill seized up (once due to a ring slipping off a finger and into the mix!) but our trusty team of fixers managed to get us back on track in no time.

Towards the end of the day when all available containers had been filled there were still tomatoes waiting to be processed. Someone suggested sun drying the remainder and, ever resourceful, Lyn and Peter dragged out their tomato sundrying equipment. It was all hands to the task as the remaining tomatoes were spread out to dry. These morsels of tomatoey goodness have now been stored in oil for use at a future Slow Food Perth event.

UPDATE: View Landline’s story about Gabrielle, “Blessed are the Cheesemakers”

On a warm summers day a group of Slow Food members and Perth foodies headed to Gabrielle Kervalla’s biodynamic farm at Gidgegannup to celebrate, or more aptly commiserate over, the end of an era.    Gabrielle and her partner Alan Cockman have sold the herd, which are moving down to Albany to an organic farm, and the property.

The contribution of Gabrielle to developing the profile of artisan cheese in Australia cannot be under estimated.  Gabrielle began her business in 1984, with 15 goats on two 30-hectare blocks.  After 30 years of hard work and dedication, Kervella cheese was being transported to quality restaurants and suppliers throughout Australia and Gabrielle was, quite rightly, being referred to as “the doyenne of Australian biodynamic cheeses”.

This article from the Sydney Morning Herald provides us with an idea of the significance of Gabrielle’s achievements, and what Gabrielle and Alan’s future may hold.

On behalf of the Slow Food movement, and foodies throughout Australia, thank you and farewell, Gabrielle.

ON A WINTER’s day in July a group of Slow Food Perth members and friends gathered and, under the tutelage of our host and chef Vincenzo Velletri, we embarked on the process of transforming pig to sausage. Five days ago Annie and Neil Kavanagh’s 120 kilo organically raised pig from Spencers Brook Farm had been specially selected and slaughtered. Our aim was to reproduce the Slow Food Presidia Monte San Biagio sausage. Armed with knives, aprons and chopping boards we followed Vince’s instructions. No easy mincing in machines but cutting the pork by hand into very small pieces. What a production line, slabs of pork were cut from the bone, sliced by one group and diced by the next. Little did we know that we were not making plain Italian sausages but a special sausage whose recipe has a long traditional history and has been brought here by Vincenzo.

The main ingredients of the Monte San Biagio sausage are small pieces of hand cut pork containing no more than twenty five percent of fat to meat, chilli, coriander, salt and some Moscato wine, from Valle Marina.  Because of its microclimate this wine has a unique flavour and it helps to impart extra flavour to the sausage. Because of the crawl of urbanization where vineyards reach down to the sea, the Moscato from “Valle Marina” is under threat and very few remain. The sausages can be used fresh but they are usually hung to dry, often smoked and can last for the whole year. They can be preserved under olive oil, pork dripping and even under ash. It is said that during the occupation of the Saracens coriander seed was added to disguise the taste and smell of the pork which was a forbidden food to the Muslims.

Vincenzo Velletri was born in Fondi, in the Province of Latina, not only famous for its agriculture because of its abundant water supply but also because of its sausage whose fame is shared with the neighbouring town of Monte San Biagio. Last year Monte San Biagio had their sausage registered in the Slow Food Presidia. Fondi and Monte San Biagio are neighbouring towns, Fondi lies on the plain between the Ausoni and Auronci Mountains and Monte San Biagio is located nearby on the slope of Monti Ausoni. Fondi has a long and ancient history having been settled for thousands of years BC. The famous Roman road, the Appian Way passes through the centre of the town and was the chief highway that connected Rome to Greece.

The Presidia is the working arm of the “Ark of Taste” The Ark has listed hundreds of extraordinary products worldwide. This has made an important contribution to the cataloguing of diverse traditional foods. The Presidia can work in different ways to help save them from extinction. It may be enough just to help build a slaughterhouse or reconstruct an oven, but in the long run its aims are constant, to help bring the product to public attention, to promote the artisan, to stabilize production techniques and finally to guarantee a viable future for traditional foods

To be inducted into the Ark, a product must conform to the following five criteria; It must be linked to the memory and identity of a group; have outstanding taste quality; be linked environmentally, socio-economically and historically to a specific area; be produced in limited quantities by farms or small scale processing companies and its continuity be potentially threatened.

The origin of sausage making dates back to antiquity but probably began when man learned that salt was an effective preservative. The word sausage derives from the Latin ‘salsus’ meaning salted. There are hundreds of varieties, from recipes handed down in families to local and national ones. As soon as mankind was able to achieve a regular surplus of meat he began to look for ways to preserve it. Cutting up meat, salting and sealing it in casings made from the intestines was one of the first discoveries of early farmers. Pig was the main source of most sausages and most sausages were developed locally, depending on what food sources were available and the climatic conditions. Early sausage makers used herbs and drying and smoking as a source of preserving. Spices were later imported from the east.

From the communal library of Monte San Biagio it is documented that the breeding of pigs occurred in the 7000 hectare of oak forest that surrounds the two towns of Fondi and Monte San Biagio where pork was a main source of food and economy for the local inhabitants. There are still to be found hidden in the forest some old straw bundles and small round circular stone constructions with shrub roofs and a central fireplace which was used for drying the meat. It is said today that some people still prefer to dry their sausages this way.

After a morning’s work in the kitchen, lunch was our reward and, of course, pork was on the menu. During the morning tea break fresh pasta had been made by Vincenzo and some willing helpers. While this busy team worked to make the pasta, morning tea was served with Rosalba’s scrumptious crostata and spiced apple cake. The pasta was hung to dry while we completed the meat preparation and then finally Vincenzo added the spices and salt. No scales to measure just a small amount cooked over the fire to test for the correct seasoning. Our 3 course lunch was simply delicious – a ragout of pork to go with the fresh pasta, which had been slowly cooking for some hours. A huge pot of polenta was stirred by helpful kitchen hands all eager to partake of lunch after the hours of preparing, chopping, slicing and dicing. The polenta was served with some of the pork filling which had been tossed in oil and cooked over the fire. And to complete the lunch Vincenzo barbecued some of the pork steaks which we ate with green salad and a typical Fondi dish of wild  broccoli, stir fried with extra virgin olive oil and garlic, collected earlier that morning from Vincenzo’s uncle’s nearby farm.

The afternoon passed very quickly, while many of us helped to carefully wash the cow intestines destined for the casings of the sausages, by passing water through, from one end to the other, others prepared the strings for tying off the ends. Yet others cleaned the myriad of boards, knives and benches used in the making. Then we waited while Vincenzo added the white wine needed to blend the mixture at this stage to ensure the sausage would not dry out. Two rotating teams of 3 people worked to fill the skins, pushing the meat into the mincer, turning the handle and holding the skin firmly onto the nozzle. A 120 kilo pig made roughly 60 kilos of pork sausages.

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.

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

SLOW Food Perth supported nine Western Australian producers to participate in Feast Perth on the Swan River foreshore at East Perth on 18 March. Despite a very hot and humid day, an estimated 20,000 people attended what is now considered to be Western Australia’s artisan food fair.

North Perth nougat-maker Rochelle Adonis, away in London at the International Food & Wine Show, was represented by her husband Michael above left who shared Slow Food Perth’s marquee space with Romy Surtees above right from Elixir Raw Honey. Terra Madre 2006 participant and biodynamic farmer William Newton-Wordsworth, from Williams River Produce in the Great Southern, was helped by his daughter Tara and Slow Food Perth members Pauline Tresise and Freddie Kronborg. Other Terra Madre participants in Slow Food Perth’s marquee included Jane and Tom Wilde from Cambray Sheep’s Cheese at Nannup in the South West, Suzanne and Peter Little from Random Valley Organic Wines at Karridale, and Patricia Tew from Food Symphony at Bullsbrook. Merilyn Basell from Mount Barker Wine Vinegar offered tastings of her superb botrytis vinegar. Biodynamic wine from Gerry and Judy Gauntlett’s Gilead Estate at Neerabup, north of Perth, was also shown, together with Bunn Wine from Richard and Irene Bunn’s Redmond vineyard in the deep Great Southern. Maggie Edmonds from Gingin Heritage Estate offered fresh Gingin passionfruit for tasting, together with her sumptuous passionfruit membrillo.

The crowd at Feast Perth enjoyed tastings and heard panel discussions, hosted by journalist Verity James, ranging from regionalism in food to organic gardening.

More information
Slow Food Perth’s Feast Perth 2007 participating producers’ brochure

By Graham Baws

IF you asked me to list the ideal ingredients for a relaxing meal, things I’d exclude with a vengeance would be a 140-kilometre drive to and from the venue, just to sit down with 100 or more strangers.

Surely the epitome of enjoyment is to gather in intimacy to linger long over a meal in which we have had a hand preparing. Isn’t that the Slow Food way?

However, there is a need to fit these sentiments into today’s context. And who, if not Australians, are used to travelling great distances just to engage with the essentials of life? So when we learned that Slow Food had organised a lunch at the monastery in New Norcia some Sundays hence, we (or rather I) buried my prejudices, and we said yes.

I’ve made the drive many times to New Norcia, and beyond. The weather on Sunday of the lunch was just about as ordered as the food and wine turned out to be. We collected two passengers, Melissa and Mary, and set off quite early. There was little traffic through the city and even less on the road north. Until that is we passed Bindoon, and came nose to tail with the mining boom.

Obesity is clearly a problem in the mining industry. The vehicle husbanding the convoy at the rear had a large sign announcing it was ‘OVERWIDTH’. A speed of 120kph became 12kph with occasional full stops as the trucks ahead crept under power lines held aloft with the kind of long poles I remember the conductors on London’s trolley buses used to re-connect the trolley to its overhead power lines. One completely filled truck carried just four tyres and the one at the front, the body of a massive dump truck.

We phoned ahead to warn the organisers that some guests (ourselves included) were likely to be late and may miss the first organised event of the day. Or we would have done if there was a signal, but there wasn’t. It turned out not to be a problem, in the event the convoy took another route and we were on the road again.

The first glimpse of the hotel at New Norcia always brings a feeling of tranquility. Not because of the service it provides, but the style of a building built for a slower age. The cars, silently clustered around the perimeter of the building, had their noses pointing forward as if they too were quietly anticipating refreshment.

Clearly the Slow Food organisers had been at work. A welcome table drew in the guests and dispensed advice on what was happening and where. We walked through the grounds towards The Arcades to find three rows of long tables being dressed with all the tools a diner needs. Next door in a similar building, also with two solid walls and two open walls straddled with arches, drinks tables had been set up and were being stocked with wine and water and olives and nuts and beer. The guests were also to be served pizza straight from a transportable wood-fired oven that a couple of hours earlier had been anticipating a quiet Sunday at rest in the Swan Valley.

Standing around looking on at all the work taking place promptly got me assigned a job. There were cartons of shiraz requiring their corks to be removed and to ‘prove’ they’d been fully opened, their corks replaced up-side-down.

One of us removed the cap, the other the cork. In short order the warm quiet air in the tiled room was filled with a lovely yeasty smell, a bit like being in a pub just before opening time. People passing by were surprised to see that we’d taken the trouble to get glasses just to check, on a random basis, the quality and consistency of the wine.

Earlier in the morning both first-timers and some returning visitors toured the monastery town and a little before lunch just about everyone packed into the chapel to listen to the combined musical talents of Gabrielle Mercer and Joslyn Rechter, a beautifully balanced duo of (Moser) Organ and Voice. The music coursed through Salomé, Purcell, and Handel and finished tastefully with William Bolcom’s Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise which may or may not have had everyone thinking of lunch.

By the time drivers and walkers reached The Arcades, the tables had been set and pre-lunch drinks were being served. Vincenzo’s truffle-oiled pizzas were being consumed both as quickly as he produced them from the wood-fired oven, and as their temperature dropped sufficiently to make swallowing possible. Cooled drinks were in high demand.

Lunch on long tables turned into a long sociable affair, strangers ceased being strangers and became, at the least, temporary friends. I even saw some swapping business cards, though no one let anything distract them from the real business of the day which was enjoying everything. While taste is central to our enjoyment of food and wine, my modern mature mother, who has lost her taste in recent years, still insists on cooking her food the way she always has, though she claims she can’t distinguish between the flavour of the pasta, and the box it came in. Perhaps flavour memory plays its part.

The main course of Dorper lamb and the freshest of vegetables, cooked in New Norcia’s wood fired oven between batches of New Norcia bread and Nutcake, had an outdoor barbeque aroma, just right for eating almost outdoors. The musicians who made up the trio Musica del Mondo have a resolve I find difficult to comprehend: how they continue to play such lively and together music in spite of the proximity and aroma of the foods all around them. Another delight was to see Belinda in all her roles, from organising, to serving while dancing, back to organising, always with a ready smile, even when politely directing guests away from no-go areas of the monastery.

By the time we’d eaten Vincenzo’s unctuous Food Symphony port-soaked fig pizzas and cheeses from Cambray, Capel Vale and Harvey that could have been a meal on their own, we’d come full circle. Fortunately for me the cheeseboard stayed on the table until the end, so I kept returning to it sporting a challenging look that says, of course this is my first piece!

As a welcome and precursor to the monastery and the afternoon, Dom Christopher Power, the boss of New Norcia, spoke to his Slow Food guests about New Norcia and about the Robbed and Restored exhibition which had opened at the Museum and Art Gallery in August. He brought to life the story of the robbery 20 years ago, and the road to repair and redemption for 26 stolen paintings, joining up the dots for those of us who remembered the media reports at that time. And for those of you touched by the magic of New Norcia, there’s still a chance to help with the final restoration costs and, with it, an opportunity for (financial) immortality.

Throughout the day we met and re-met Melissa and Mary, in short we mingled. Most seemed to enjoy slowed-down time used up to talk and compare. Then at day’s end we met up on the hotel verandah, our departure point. Or was it? One couple was debating the prospect of delaying their departure with another glass of wine and seeking a room at the hotel for the night.

TAKE fifteen kilograms of nougat, $70 worth of freshly-baked bread, jars and bottles of olives, biodynamic marmalade, pistachio nuts, Swan Valley preserved fruits, the country’s finest goat’s cheese, raw wandoo and jarrah honey, wheatbelt flour, four producers, one chef and two helpers and you have the ingredients of the Western Australian stand at A taste of Slow in Melbourne on 9-10 September 2006.

The weekend Slow Food exposition at St Helier’s Convent in suburban Abbotsford was the culmination of two weeks of myriad Slow Food events throughout regional and metropolitan Victoria, combined with the Mebourne Food & Wine festival.

More than 16,000 growers, food lovers, their kids and dogs visited the convent to taste foods produced by communities and growers throughout Australia.

Producers represented on the Western Australian stand included William and Kelly Newton-Wordsworth and their biodynamic Williams River pistachios, marmalade and olives from the Great Southern, Catherine Lee and her family’s Regan’s Ridge organic olives and oils, Terri and Dayle Lloyd and their Eden Valley biodynamic Dumbleyung flours, and Gabrielle Kervella and Alan Cockman with their renowned Gidegannup goats’ cheese.

Swan Valley chef Vincenzo Velletri – selected by Slow Food Perth convivium to demonstrate the use of Western Australian produce – used Eden Valley flour, Kervella cheese and Food Symphony port-soaked figs to create a dessert pizza in the convent’s wood-fired ovens.

Other Western Australian foods made available for tasting at A taste of Slow included Patricia Tew’s preserved fruits and dessert sauces from Bullsbrook, Rochelle Adonis’s superb white, dark and rose petal nougat, hand-made in North Perth, and Romy Surtees’ and Glenn Pattinson’s Elixir raw wandoo and jarrah honey.

The Western Australian stand also displayed Sue and Mike Daubney’s unique eco-friendly dairy packaging from their Northcliffe dairy.

Gabrielle Kervella and William Newton-Wordsworth participated in ‘spoken word’ forums, the Bunn family’s Redmond wines were entered in A Taste of Slow’s Australian wine library, and good, clean and fair food abounded.

We enjoyed an enormous response to the Western Australian stand and have attracted the interest of six Melbourne-based retailers in stocking Western Australian artisan food ranges.

In exchange for a much sought-after second taste of Patricia Tew’s Food Symphony chocolate, port & fig terrine, two Melbourne women of Italian descent have sent us their old Calabrese family’s much-prized recipe combining chocolate, boiled hog’s blood, red wine and cinnamon. We must try it!

Thanks to all producers who participated and to chef Vincenzo Velletri and budding new Riverina (NSW) convivium leader Helen Robb for their wonderful hard work.

Jamie Kronborg
Slow Food Perth events co-ordinator