For a true gastronome, it is impossible to ignore the strong connections between the plate and the planet. With food so central to our daily lives, we understand that what we eat has a profound effect on our surroundings, on the landscape of our countryside, on the preservation of our traditions and the biodiversity of our beautiful planet.
It’s easy to get excited about the taste of food if we’ve grown up being shown how to best prepare what we eat with care and understanding. How can we preserve food traditions and pass them down to the next generation? How can we ensure that the water that feeds our crops is not contaminated? How can we ensure that various fruit and vegetable and domesticated animal breeds do not become extinct?
There is such a way. Thanks to the foresight of Italian Carlo Petrini, a movement was born and he called it Slow Food.
Back then in 1989 Petrini discovered a McDonalds outlet next to the famous Spanish Steps in Rome. The Slow Food movement was Petrini’s initiative to counteract fast food and fast life. Today, the Slow Food Association is a network of 100 000 members in more than 150 countries. See the website for additional information, www.slowfood.com
Slow Food seeks to rediscover the flavour and savours of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food. What Slow Food demonstrates is the commitment to local cultures, local economies and local memories. Just like the Millennium Development Goals seek to make our world a better place, so Slow Food believes that everyone must have access to good, clean and fair food. This important philosophy is evidently becoming more important as our planet finds itself hurtling towards climate change, greenhouse gases and urban sprawl.
Slow Food can be as easy as growing your herbs at your kitchen window and quickly snipping a few leaves to flavour your favourite lunch or dinner dish. You can do your bit for the environment by composting all your vegetable peels, used tea bags and coffee grains. By doing so, you will then be feeding the soil to feed the plants that feed you.
My introduction to Slow Food began as part of my big food adventure in Ireland this year at the Ballymaloe Cookery School and organic farm.
Growing up on a farm and helping my mother tie bags of vegetables for delivery to our local Farmer’s Co-operative was just the start of my food journey.
Ballymaloe’s organically certified farm spreads across 100 acres of pristine Irish countryside in East Cork and educates hundreds of Irish and international participants. Mornings saw us on milking or salad duty. The farm’s Jersey cows produce a very rich milk which we would then churn into butter, cheddar-like cheeses, ricotta and mascarpone.
All kitchen waste, peelings, teabags, eggshells and coffee grains would end up feeding the hens who lived at the Palais des Poulets. Nothing was wasted at Ballymaloe.
As students we were taught how to not be wasteful with water, food ingredients and central heating. The farm ran its own Photovoltaic alternative energy system as the southern part of Ireland receives up to 1 800 hours of sunlight a year.
The Photovoltaic system at the farm was linked to a software program that kept track of the farm and the school’s electricity consumption. Running such a system meant a lower carbon footprint and environmentally sound practice.
Here in KwaZulu-Natal the Slow Food convivium or local chapter of Slow Food is run by Richard Haigh, a farmer based in Thornville in Richmond Road, off the N3. Members and visitors are encouraged to bring and share their homegrown produce.
Preserves, breads and seedlings are all discussed and tasted. Organic or free-range maize can be harvested and then ground by hand to produce delicious rotis.
Indigenous melons called “ibhece” in Zulu and grown in KZN produce delicious konfyt or preserve, which is a perfect pairing for goat’s cheese.
Farmers’ markets by their very existence nurture Slow Food practices. We’ve seen a burgeoning of markets, some dedicated to food and food production, spring up all over greater Durban and KZN.
Farmers’ markets, like elsewhere in the world, generate income for stall holders. Another important reason to support Farmers’ markets is that the consumer can speak to the farmer or producer and find out exactly how they produce the food, where they source their ingredients and how you can best use the food you are purchasing. Was the flour used in the sourdough bread sourced from an organic flour mill? Were the vegetables used in the home-made quiche grown without pesticides? Was the chicken reared without antibiotics? By securing answers to all these crucial questions you will be armed with vital information about your food source.
Spreading the knowledge of food preparation and understanding how to live better by eating better will empower you and ensure greater preservation of our food traditions.
If you would like to know more about the Slow Food movement in KZN, give Richard Haigh a call at 082 872 2049 or Renee Gordge at 083 651 5556.
Two recipes I would like to share with you are both from Ballymaloe. The bread recipe is made with locally produced ingredients making the loaf very Slow Food in nature!
The onion marmalade is a delicious topping for the bread and if you are growing your own onions you are a green warrior determined to ensure that the food revolution continues!
Onion Marmalade
This recipe is taken from Ballymaloe Cookery School (www.cookingisfun.ie). It is wonderful served on brown yeast bread as well as with lamb chops or pan-grilled fish
Makes 450ml
675g onions
75g butter
1tsp salt
½ tsp pepper, freshly ground
150g castor sugar
7T sherry vinegar
250ml full-bodied red wine
2T Crème de Cassis liqueur (optional)
Peel and slice the onions very thinly. Melt the butter in the saucepan and hold your nerve until it becomes a deep nut brown colour – this will give the onions a delicious rich flavour, but be careful not to let it burn. Toss the onions and sugar, add the salt and freshly ground pepper and stir well.
Cover the saucepan and cook for 30 minutes over a gentle heat, keeping an eye on the onions and stirring from time to time with a wooden spatula.
Add the sherry vinegar, red wine and Crème de Cassis. Cook for a further 30 minutes uncovered, stirring regularly. This onion jam must cook very gently but don’t let it reduce too much. When it is cold, skim off any butter which rises to the top and discard.
* Onion marmalade will keep for months and is especially delicious with homemade bread, pâtés and terrines of meat, game and poultry.
Ballymaloe Brown Yeast Bread
This bread has been made by hand at Ballymaloe House (www.ballymaloe.ie) for more than 60 years – originally for the family, and later for guests. The recipe is based on a nutritious loaf that Doris Grant developed at the request of the British government in the 1940s.
Darina says: “I can’t really stress enough what a favour you’ll be doing to your family by baking this bread. The main ingredients – wholemeal flour, molasses and yeast – are all highly nutritious. The ingredients and equipment should be at room temperature.”
Makes 1 loaf – Loaf tin 12.5 x 20cm
450g stone ground wholemeal flour (from Food Lover’s Market)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp molasses
450ml water, at blood heat
20g fresh yeast
sesame and/or poppy seeds
sunflower oil
Preheat the oven to 230ºC. Mix the flour with the salt in a large mixing bowl. In a small bowl or Pyrex jug, mix the molasses with 150ml blood-heat water and crumble in the yeast. Leave to sit for a few minutes in a warm place to allow the yeast to start to work.
Meanwhile, grease the bread tin with sunflower oil. Check to see if the yeast is rising. After 4-5 minutes, it will have a creamy and slightly frothy appearance on top.
When ready, stir and pour it, with the remaining 300ml water, into the flour to make a loose, wet dough. Don’t mix it until all the water is in; otherwise it tends to go lumpy. The mixture should be too wet to knead. Put the mixture directly into the greased tin. Sprinkle the top of the loaf with sesame or poppy seeds if you like.
Cover the tin with a dishcloth to prevent a skin forming and leave the bread to rise. This will take anything from 10-20 minutes, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
When the dough has almost come to the top of the tin, remove the dishcloth and pop the loaf into the oven; this is called “oven spring”. If the bread rises to the top of the tin before you pop it into the oven, it will continue to rise and will flow over the edges.
Cook for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200ºC and cook for a further 40-50 minutes, until your bread looks nicely browned and sounds hollow when tapped underneath. We usually remove the loaf from the tin about 10 minutes before the end of the cooking and put them back into the oven to crisp all round, but if you like a softer crust there is no need for this. – Taken from Darina Allen’s Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The time-honoured ways are the best. - Independent on Saturday