Category: Slow Food

Pleasing people through food

Last week, my friend Steve came over for dinner. Steve and I go back a long way. He's one of my dearest friends. It doesn't matter how long it is since I last saw him, it always seems like it was just yesterday. He's what I'd call a "kindred spirit".

I made Steve lamb shanks — wonderful winter comfort food. (I'll post a recipe when I make it again and get a decent chance to photograph it. Sometimes photographing food just interrupts the flow. :-) ) When Steve arrived, almost everything was ready and there were just a few finishing touches to be made. He watched me bustle about, finishing things off, for maybe a minute — then he cracked up laughing.

I looked askance at him and he said, between bursts of laughter, "Do you remember when I used to visit you in Bullsbrook, and [your ex] was making dinner and would describe to me what he was cooking, and your eyes would just glaze over…?"

Hrmph. :-)

But it's true. It's only since my marriage break-up 3½ years ago that I've showed any real interest in food and cooking myself, and it was a while after that before I became aware of the Slow Food movement and all it stands for. I am still very much learning as I go along, so it's kinda sweet that Steve noticed the difference between then and now. (And is still alive to tell the tale!)

It's about people

Over the weekend I installed the free Australian Gourmet Traveller iPad app and purchased the (thus far) three available magazine issues. I had subscribed to the print mag for a while but had let the subscription lapse in the last few months. Getting the iPad app seemed like a worthwhile experiment, to see if the magazine worked better for me on the iPad than in print…

It definitely does. I now want all my foodie magazines like that. I really do! It's so well done. I'm so impressed! But that's another story and I digress. More to the point, I was reading a comment in the June 2010 issue by Eamon Sullivan, Olympic swimmer and Celebrity MasterChef. He said:

If people respond well to your food, it makes you feel good. That's the sort of thing you get addicted to: pleasing people through food.

That so aptly describes where I'm coming from. Living alone, I find there is little pleasure in cooking just for myself. The food may taste good but the experience is somewhat lacking.

So I've become aware of just how much, when I cook, it's for other people. Enjoyment of food is inseparable from the enjoyment that others get from the food, and the pleasure of spending time with them. The terms "cooking from the heart" and "cooking with love" sound so corny and almost ridiculous in this cynical day and age, but that really is what it's about for me and for many people. When that's the case, I believe it shows — not just in the food, but in the total experience of eating with the folks you cooked for, and perhaps also with.

This is why, of course, in the absence of a live-in guinea pig, I like to invite others over for meals. And that doesn't seem like a bad thing, as addictions go. :-)

Posted by Vicki on Monday, August 02, 2010 at 10:58 AM in General and Slow Food.

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Pasta di casa al fuscello

Hrm. It's been a long time since I posted to Ozfoodie and it's not because there hasn't been anything happening or that I haven't been cooking or eating, either. Though, I do confess, we went through a period where we ate out for lunch a lot, and both our waistlines and our wallets confirm what a mistake that proved to be! So it's time to catch up on things and get back on track, in more ways than one.

A highlight of the last few weeks was a Slow Food Perth pasta-making workshop: "Pasta di casa al fuscello" last Sunday. One of the Slow Food Perth members, Natalina, has had family members visiting her from Calabria in Italy, and they were generous enough to spend a morning sharing their generations-old family recipes and techniques with a houseful of other Slow Food members. Maintaining the traditions of families and regions is integral to the Slow Food philosophy and I felt very privileged to be able to share this particular family's traditions.

It was very interesting and also a lot of fun. We were first shown some traditional Easter bread. Natalina told us that when she was a child, this is what they had for Easter — no Easter Eggs as we know them!

Then they demonstrated how they make the pasta. Natalina said that in her family, things were done the way they were simply because that's how they'd done it for generations — they weren't always sure why, but it worked for them. She explained that different families all had different ways of doing things, and there was no right or wrong way. The pasta we made that morning contained no egg, but Natalina herself uses egg when she makes this pasta for its properties as a binding agent.

The pasta dough is mixed, kneaded, rolled out into thickish rolls, then one end of the roll is rolled out more thinly while still remaining attached. This thinner sausage of pasta is broken up into pieces that make the individual pieces of pasta. Each small piece was hand-rolled till much longer and thinner, wrapped around thin sticks in barber's pole fashion, then further rolled to spread the pasta up and down the stick, eliminating any gaps. Then with a quick but careful sliding motion, it was removed from the stick and laid out on the table.

This continued till the whole batch of pasta (or two, in this case) was used up. Even with a head start of a batch made in advance earlier that morning, and with several helpers from amongst the guests, it took quite a while to make enough for a houseful of people! (Yes, I had a go too!)

The fuscello was much thicker than other types of pasta I've seen and tried, and the texture was really different. With thin pasta, the "feel" of biting through it is vastly different, so this was quite a surprise as I'd never experienced it before.

It was served in a ragü with veal and pork meatballs and I quickly got over the initial surprise and savoured and enjoyed it!

We followed on from there with a traditional salad that included salad greens, figs, bresaola and parmesan, with a lovely simple dressing whose ingredients I unfortunately can't remember.

The good news is that the recipes are apparently coming to the Slow Food Perth website soon.

In all, it was a fabulous day with some of the loveliest people you could ever hope to meet.

If you're not sure what Slow Food is about and would like to know, this ABC documentary about Slow Food explains it particularly well — sadly only available online for another 25 days or so at the time of writing, but it is well worth tuning in while it's there — it's inspiring and motivating as well as informative. (Hat tip to Matt for the link.)

Posted by Vicki on Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 05:42 PM in Foodie Events and Slow Food.

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Slow Food Perth “Vineyard Bounty” Picnic at Cosham Wines

Yesterday, we took ourselves up to Carmel to Cosham Wines for a Slow Food Perth event I'd been looking forward to for weeks.

Neither of us had any idea what to expect and we were utterly delighted.

Carmel is a beautiful locality in the Perth Hills, just east of Lesmurdie. The situation of Cosham Wines is sublime. The 2.5 acre boutique winery is nestled in a little valley that sports sloping hillsides covered in trees, pasture and vines. The outlook from the picnic spot, just by a dam on the property, was rustic, serene and very, very pretty.

We bought a bottle of Cosham Wines 1999 Cabernet Merlot and, although there were big umbrellas and tables and chairs set up near the food tent, we took our chairs and sat under a big, shady tree a little distance away. We sipped our wine (which, I might add, went down very smoothly!) and relaxed and marvelled at our surroundings — at the guinea fowls bustling and clucking noisily about, at two beautiful white ponies on an adjoining property, and at the lovely countryside. I'm a country gal at heart with three horses of my own, so it was really quite blissful and had me yearning to live in the country again.

More people arrived and we were surprised when Slow Food Perth committee members brought platters of mini quiches, bread, olive oil and dukkah up to the "tree people". What a treat. We would have expected to go to the food, not have the food come to us.

The suckling pig, provided by Spencers Brook Farm for the main part of the meal, was the star of the show. This is a sensational way of catering for a large number of people — there were about 80 at the picnic. Unique in presentation, I feel it gets to the heart of the Slow Food philosophy, which includes connecting people with the food they eat. (There is no doubt, after seeing that suckling pig, that you'd be eating "pig", as opposed to "pork". Somehow it seems to me that giving the meat a different name to the animal from which it comes causes a kind of disconnect with the origins of the meat.)

I'm a bit funny when it comes to eating food with eyes (such as whole fish) but for some reason the suckling pig with head intact was just right, and not offensive to my sensibilities at all. :-)

Accompanying the suckling pig and the three legs of spring lamb, all of which were cooked to perfection, were a variety of salads. We found some of these very unusual and all had superb flavours, and the stuffed pumpkin was simply divine. Pauline Tresise (Co-Leader of Slow Food Perth) mentioned she is going to try to get some of the recipes onto the Slow Food Perth website, which would be lovely.

We had heaps to eat and it all tasted wonderful.

There was dessert but we couldn't find the room for it in our very full tummies, but that all looked amazing too.

All the food at the event was provided via Slow Food Perth members and producers, from the bread to the olive oil to the suckling pig to the desserts. The team obviously worked incredibly hard to cook and prepare and pull everything together as professionally and beautifully as they did, and we were greatly impressed.

Posted by Vicki on Monday, October 19, 2009 at 02:33 PM in Places and Foodie Events and Slow Food.

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