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

SOME have criticised Slow Food for being elitist and catering to an older group, but with the Slow Food Youth Movement growing steadily in the USA and Slow Food USA presenting Slow Food Nation at the end of August 2008, it shows that Slow Food is appealing more and more to all age groups and sections of the community.

Slow Food Nation is a subsidiary of the not-for-profit Slow Food USA and part of the international Slow Food movement. It was created to organise the first-ever American collaborative gathering to unite the growing sustainable food movements and introduce thousands of people to food that is good, clean and fair, through enjoyable, accessible and educational activities.

Some of the leading partners include Wholefoods Markets, Rodale - a global publishing company - anolon, and Saveur, a leading international magazine that puts food into a cultural context. Many USA convivia have been involved with fundraising for this event.

Some of the activities include Taste Workshops, Marketplace, Food for thought, and the Slow Food National Victory Garden, this edible garden in the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Centre is planted on the same site as the World War 11 gardens 60 years ago. The Victory Gardens demonstrates the potential of truly local agriculture practice that unites and promotes urban gardening organizations while producing high quality food for those in need. It is a garden of communities; all food grown in the garden will be harvested and donated to those with limited access to healthy organic produce through their partnerships with local food banks and meals programs

GLOBALISATION introduces us to great new foods from around the world but at the same time it threatens culinary biodiversity, full article here while local food maybe more than just an elite fashion

At Macquarie University a group of students have formed MACEnviro, funded by the University students with the support of other university students through the Australian Student Enviro Network. The university also has their community garden club which supports sustainability in the growing of fruits and vegetables

George Monbiot writes in the Guardian, 10th June 2008, an interesting article about farming on a small scale and why do we treat small/peasant farmers with contempt

Taras Grescoe author of “Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood is interviewed by Nicole Pasuka of Salon magazine on eating seafood ethically

Raj Patel writes about giving up meat in his blog, this article was also published in The Observer on the 22 June 2008 and George Monbiot gives more food for thought on the pleasures of the flesh published in The Guardian on the 15 April 2008.

Kangaroo: designed for our times
By John Kelly 13th June 2008
Executive Officer of the Kangaroo Industry Association

I’m fond of claiming that kangaroo has been the red meat of choice among Australian consumers for some 40,000 years. It’s only in the last 100 years or so that’s there’s been a bit of a hiccup in its marketing program and the kangaroo industry is attempting to turn this around.

I’m also fond of claiming that nothing makes greater environmental wisdom than us, in this land, producing our food from the animals which belong here. It is now widely recognised that doing so delivers considerable direct environmental benefits in our fragile arid rangelands where kangaroos are harvested. These are extremely fragile areas which can support a limited number of grazing animals. Allowing the grazing pressure from all animals to increase is one of the most serious environmental hazards in these rangelands.

Commercial kangaroo harvesting is the only tool currently available to exercise effective control over the kangaroo contribution to total grazing pressure. In its absence, as in Victoria and the Northern Territory, the only two states which don’t have commercial harvesting, kangaroos still get culled to protect agricultural enterprises, but the animals get left on the ground to rot. In this age of increasing world wide food shortages this surely must be something approaching a criminal waste.

Over the past 30 years a significant industry has developed utilising the kangaroo. Initially it focused on pest control for the pastoral industries. However, over the last decade there has been a growing realisation that the kangaroo industry has other significant economic and environmental benefits.

The kangaroo industry currently generates in excess of $200 million a year in income and employs more than 4,000 people. The vast bulk of these jobs are in remote rural communities, many of which would not exist without the industry.

It is a tightly regulated industry. Kangaroo harvesters for example have to complete a TAFE course and pass assessment by two different government authorities before they can get a licence. No other meat industry in the country requires its “slaughtermen” to be that well trained. This delivers an extremely high level of professionalism, with many commentators claiming that kangaroo is probably the most animal welfare-friendly meat available. As the RSPCA has said, “An animal killed instantly within its own environment is under less stress than domestic stock that have been herded, penned, transported etc.”

Thirty years of continual refinement has also lead to the development of extremely sophisticated monitoring mechanisms to ensure the harvest is sustainable. Each state with a commercial harvest is required to maintain and regularly update management plans for their kangaroo populations. Among other things these plans require them to do an annual population survey across the commercial harvest zones, which makes kangaroos one of the few animals on earth, inclusive of humans, subject to such regular and extensive population monitoring. Extensive scrutiny continues to conclude that the harvest delivers no threat to the species itself.

The kangaroo industry delivers one of the most amazing foods in the world. Kangaroo meat is extremely low in fat and half of this fat is poly-unsaturated. But better still it’s also very high in a compound called conjugated linoleic acid which, among other things, actively reduces blood pressure! Kangaroo meat also has a pleasant and slightly addictive flavour: however, it’s a unique feature of kangaroos - which makes their meat probably the most appropriate food for our times - is that they don’t emit methane when they burp. Sheep and cattle do by the tonne and methane is 23 times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse warming gas.

So not only can kangaroo meat help reduce blood pressure, but a reliance on it above beef or lamb could also help reduce global warming: apparently it was designed for our times!

So the kangaroo industry turns a shameful waste into a valuable food, which can help reduce blood pressure, which is possibly the most animal welfare friendly protein available, which is also possibly the closest thing we can get to a carbon neutral meat … and which tastes great. Whoever designed this product deserves a pat on the back!

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

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