Terra Madre 2010 > chef stories

Will there be any surf?
12 Oct 2010 – ‘COUNTDOWN is now on… This time next week we will be in the air preparing ourselves, having a gin and tonic, and thinking about all the colours, smells and tastes of the world that will be gathered in one place, where good karma will be collected into one huge melting pot of like-minded people. May the cheese be with you!’

– Nicolette & Adam Lane
chef delegates
Dunsborough, Western Australia

‘A couple of days’
18 Oct 2010 – ‘IT’s a couple of days away and I was thinking about my contribution. It occurred to me that I had plenty to offer as I was up in the boss’s garden picking veg and flowers for service that started in 30 minutes.  Ninety-five per cent of our fruit and veg comes from his garden where he employs a full time gardener to maintain his plot and provide us with year round fruit and veg. We also get fresh eggs from the 200 odd chickens he has that roam around his orchard and hillside. On another note I am getting pretty excited for some good food, meeting some new people and painting Turin red!’

– Dave Pynt
chef and youth delegate
working at Extebarri, Axpe, Spain

Diversity
12 Oct 2010 – ‘THE five-day meeting will bring together food communities, cooks, academics, youth and musicians from all over the world, who are united in a desire to promote sustainable local food, in harmony with the environment, while respecting knowledge handed down over the generations. We Australians have been asked to document our daily experiences and send them to the ABC’s Pool website via video, facebook, twitter, photographs or email. They can be viewed instantly on the site and then at a later date compiled and made into a documentary. A new feature in 2010 will be a focus on cultural and linguistic diversities – in recognition of the need to defend minority ethnic groups and indigenous languages, and with an appreciation of the value of oral traditions and memory.’

– Terri Taylor
chef delegate
Tamborine Mountain, Queensland

The love of a grandmother
23 Oct 2011 – TODAY I had booked myself to take part in the Youth Food Movement Eat in our territory lunch, not quite what I expected but still a wonderful idea and well executed and once again lots of motivated, enthusiastic people. I sat with (fellow Western Australian delegate) Dave Pynt with his home-made chorizo (excellent), the chocolate artisan from Il capitano rosso and two guys from M**BUN, an agrihamburgheria, or slow fast food eatery, where they produce and sell their own meat. The conversation went all the way from Piemonte traditional cows, to the hills of northern Spain, to a South American cacao plantation, across the history of chocolate and to the Australian culture of food; the sorts of things that you can just keep talking about for hours, and that is another part of ‘slow food’ that I love…diversity, acceptance, participation and cooperation. Today I also participated in a workshop with a maestro del gusto. It took place in the old part of Torino in a  fresh pasta shop called SAPORI (‘flavours’), specialising in traditional regional recipes of filled pasta. It has been operated by the Tassinari family for more than 40 years, and with the same principles, using only local and seasonal produce worked by hand. The old lady in charge showed us different recipes and techniques. I was amazed and in love. I didn’t want to leave. To see such dedication and passion for your own job is just divine, something I still strive for. Everything I tried had a fantastic taste and texture, it carried with itself the history of that recipe, the hard work and the love of grandmother.

Valerio Fantinelli
chef and youth delegate
Perth, Western Australia

Sound bites from a mini-disk
22 Nov 2010 – JUST talking with a man from Senegal. He’s got a really nice, funny-looking grain that looks like it grows on some sort of a reed, and they make a cous cous out of it. I just tried the raw grain, and it was really nice: a crunchy, delicate flavour. It’s about this time that I wished I had studied my schoolboy French a bit more instead of wagging class! …Ladies from Senegal have just given me little crisp biscuits made with the flour from the grain and small doughnuts dusted with icing sugar… I’m just trying dried cow meat from Cameroon now, a beef jerky, lots of spice, lots of chilli, very, very tasty… I just bought a couple of stubbies from Argentina, and a couple of ceviche… Standing here talking to a Japanese man who’s tasting honey. They’ve got a giant hornet, which is a natutral predator of their bees, and what they do is catch the hornets live and drown them in the honey and it improves the nutritional value of the honey. Makes the honey very, very good. It’s a bizarre thing.

– Peter Wolfe
Chef, Belli Park, Queensland
Slow Food Sunshine Coast Hinterland member and Terra Madre chef delegate

Real food to our tables
01 Feb 2011 – IT was the most amazing, inspiring food event I have ever attended and restores my faith that for every atrocity committed in the name of food production there are people out there more committed to restoring real food to our tables, so those of you wanting to join the fight, Slow Food is a good place to start.

– Rodney Dunn
Chef, The Agrarian Kitchen, Lachlan, Tasmania
Slow Food Hobart member and Terra Madre chef delegate

Smoked, salted, braised…pig
10 Nov 2010 – WE had the most off-the-hook five days at Terra Madre and Salone da Gusto. We eat so much dried, cured, smoked, salted, pickled, roasted, pressed and braised pig. So much fresh, soft, vine, tobacco, and dirt-crusted, semi-soft, washed-rind, surface-ripened and really, really old cheese: 16 years old to be exact. So many olives, olive oils, chillies, coffee, chocolate, oysters, bread and foie gras.

– Nicolette & Adam Lane
Slow Food Perth members and Terra Madre chef delegates
Dunsborough, Western Australia