Slow knowledge

Slow food at the edge of the world

SLOW food at the edge of the world is a Western Australian information collection and publishing project.

Australia’s food heritage is as diverse as its people: the world’s most culturally diverse population. Western Australians, for example, have emigrated from 200 countries. They speak more than 170 languages. More than 27 per cent were born overseas, compared with 22 per cent of Australians. Both parents of 646,000 Western Australians – 35 per cent – responding to the 2001 census were born in countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

The food knowledge held by these immigrants and their descended families represents an extraordinary information source for Slow Food in Australia. The conservation of this cultural heritage includes seeking out original recipes, country-of-origin ingredients, the need to substitute ingredients – where the originals did not exist in ‘new’ Australia – and changes to recipes through generations.

Slow Food Perth developed the project in 2007 to collect and collate from West Australians of diverse cultural backgrounds recipes at risk of loss so that these foods can be enjoyed by future generations of cooks and families.

Slow food at the edge of the world is the idea of Italian ex-patriate, Slow Food Perth committee member and Terra Madre 2006 and 2008 participating chef Vincenzo Velletri.

‘Hundreds of recipes and food preparation methods brought to Australia by generations of immigrants and the ways in which they adapted them using local ingredients are at risk of being lost to us,’ says Vincenzo.

‘The food knowledge held by our parents, grandparents and their parents and by our Aboriginal people is part of Western Australia’s rich food heritage, but as we become a more homogeneous society those ideas and methods which our mothers and grandmothers used in their kitchens and in the bush to feed their families tend to become diluted or vanish altogether. I hope that Slow food at the edge of the world will ensure that we preserve this knowledge for the future and enjoy its benefits.’

Slow Food Perth leader Pauline Tresise says that while versions of many original recipes are still used, others lie unnoticed in cookbooks put away in boxes or cupboards, or kept as part of an oral tradition.

‘West Australians have come from 200 countries across the globe, from Russia, China, Japan, Greece, Italy, Sudan, Denmark, South Africa, Kenya, Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Iran, Lebanon, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and many other places,’ says Pauline.

‘When they arrived here they had to adapt time-honoured family recipes by using often quite different ingredients in what was to them a new country at the edge of the world. We hope the project might deliver information, for example, about whether the Italian families who settled at Kojonup in the early 1900s learned from the local Noongar people about trapping kangaroo and curing the meat for use in traditional Italian-style sausages. We are also specifically seeking information about Aboriginal foods the ways in which these changed following interaction with immigrants. The project seeks to capture this sort of knowledge, whether it has been written or is part of an oral tradition, so that as one generation raises another and we become more or less a seamless community, the cultural distinction of food knowledge from different countries and places is not weakened and potentially lost.’

Slow Food Perth has appealed to cultural groups to help in the search through the Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia. Individuals are being asked to copy out or write recipes used by their forebears. Information about the source of a recipe or food preparation method is also being sought, and the ways in which original recipes have been adapted by later generations born and brought up in Western Australia.

‘We would like to gather as much information as possible about whose recipe it was, how it was used in their country or place of origin and how it has been used here, and whether it is still used by that family,’ Pauline says.’‘We plan to publish a book about the project and place the stories of the recipes’ origins and the recipes themselves on the web. The idea could also become a filmed documentary.’

Slow Food Perth’s Jamie Kronborg says Slow food at the edge of the world goes to the heart of Slow Food’s philosophy.

‘The project will preserve food knowledge for future generations, enhance awareness of food as the glue of community, and acknowledge and celebrate Western Australia’s cultural diversity,’ Jamie says.

‘West Australians speak 170 different languages and both of the parents of almost 650,000 of us – 35 per cent – were born overseas. This is one of the most culturally-diverse places on earth and Slow Food at the edge of the world will enhance recognition of food in this distinctive part of Australia and the way in which diverse food traditions have been shared and adapted across generations.’

More information

E Slow Food Perth
T Pauline Tresise 08 9381 4519
T Jamie Kronborg 0409 912 967