Food festival to pleasure the palate and preserve the planet

AAP General News (Australia)
08-26-2005
Food festival to pleasure the palate and preserve the planet

By Tania Cammarano

SYDNEY, Aug 26 AAP - Food festivals bring out the glutton in all of us. A chance to
eat and drink the finest a region has to offer without thought for anything but tempting
the taste buds and blowing out the stomach, right? Not necessarily.

A Taste of Slow, a food festival to be held in Melbourne and regional Victoria from
August 29 to September 11, promises to be different.

The festival is being run by Slow Food in conjunction with Melbourne Food and Wine
and the Victorian government.

Slow Food, founded in 1986 when fast food giant McDonald's erected its golden arches
at the foot of Rome's Spanish Steps, is an international movement dedicated to what author
and festival guest Carl Honore calls eating well and saving the planet at the same time.

But Daniela Mollica, who heads the Melbourne chapter of Slow Food, believes people
should primarily come along to "have some fun". She hopes the message about how important
it is to preserve traditional and sustainable ways of producing, cooking and eating food
will sink in by default.

"Slow Food is about enjoying yourself with food and wine and people as a central focus.

I think the first thing is just to allow people to come along and experience the fun aspect,
and then secondarily, I hope they would walk away having had an amazing taste and wanting
to learn more about small artisan producers."

The wide range of activities on offer during the two-week event will give participants
plenty to both taste and learn. From a debate on how best to sustain Australia's river
systems and a discussion on organic food to hands-on classes with top local and international
chefs, there are hundreds of ways to experience the Slow way of eating and drinking.

And the highlights?

Mollica believes it will be a Bull-boar sausage demonstration. This half-pork, half-beef
sausage has been made by Swiss-Italians and their descendants on the Victorian goldfields
since the 1850s but is in danger of becoming extinct. She says saving the Bull-boar, and
other products like it, is part of what Slow Food is all about.

According to food writer Richard Cornish, who will run the event, the sausage is well
worth preserving not just because of its unique flavour, but because of the traditions
which surround it.

"What excites me about the sausage is that every year families get together ... to
reproduce this traditional recipe that they've done for generations. The sausage itself
is not so important, but the process of making it holds people together, holds families
together, year after year."

It's this process that Cornish will invite people to engage in on September 11 where
they can "look, ask questions, wash their hands and join in, if they want to, and taste
the sausage of course".

Slow Food Victoria President Melissa Burge, on the other hand, nominates the events
being held in regional Victoria and those at the Abbotsford Convent, the new home of Slow
Food in Australia, as being of particular note.

"The Convent weekend will allow visitors to meet producers, vignerons and brewers who
embrace Slow principles... you can come along and join in the Artisan Producers' Picnic,
learn traditional food techniques, indulge in delicious foods and have a really great
day with family or friends."

Burge believes the festival will stimulate more interest in Slow Food, which already
has around 83,000 members in more than 100 countries.

She calls A Taste of Slow a food festival "with soul" because it is all about pleasuring
the palate at the same time as preserving the planet.

--

*A Taste of Slow runs in Melbourne and regional Victoria from August 29 to September
11. For more information see http://www.atasteofslow.com.au/.



AAP tc/sco/de

KEYWORD: SLOW FOOD (NEWS FEATURE WITH PIX) RPT

2005 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.