Slow Food: Worth the wait

Published on Monday 3 November 2008 19:19

When her chef partner was invited to attend the Terra Madre festival in Turin, Lucy Gillmore went along too to find out what aspects of the Slow Food movement they might bring back to their hotel in the Trossachs

FROM London to Turin via the Highlands, my Slow Food journey began last summer, in a white van heading north. I left London to move in with a chef who owns a small hotel in the Trossachs and not just taste the food, but live the life of a dedicated producer of great food full time.

Monachyle Mhor is one of those "gourmet retreats" that, as a travel writer, I used to write about with a dollop of romanticism and very little idea about what it really means to live four miles down a single-track lane snaking along the side of a loch.

The village has no shop, let alone a supermarket, but then who needs Waitrose when there's salmon, trout and arctic char in the loch and red deer in the hills just itching to demonstrate the field-to-plate concept?

The hotel is sited on a 2,000-acre hill farm that stocks sheep, cattle, pigs and chickens: the meat for the restaurant comes from the farm, the eggs at breakfast are plucked from under a disgruntled hen each morning, and as for vegetables – what is a garden for? Slow Food, some muddy raised beds, a temperamental Aga and a giant hotel fridge came as part of the Tom Lewis package. As did some strong opinions on food provenance and my city-based attachment to the term "organic".

Tom, who was a farmer before he was a chef, believes "all food should be safe and you shouldn't have to pay more for it". The ethos of the Slow Food Movement, which supports sustainable producers and champions seasonal, local food, is something else he believes in: "Good, clean and fair."

The opening of McDonald's in Rome was the spark that ignited the Slow Food Movement in 1989. Activist Carlo Petrini (see panel) launched the backlash against a growing fast food/junk food culture. Today it is a global network – Scotland alone has nine regional groups (known as "convivia") working to promote the offerings of local producers, crofters, farmers and fishermen.

As well as taking part in Slow Food events, such as the chefs' market held in Edinburgh last year, Tom was invited to be one of the chef-delegates representing the UK at the third Terra Madre ("Mother Earth") event in Turin last week. This global meeting of food communities ran alongside the Salone del Gusto ("Hall of Taste"), a gastronomic marketplace open to the public. I tagged along to see if slow could be the new organic…

Day 1

Sore feet and sensory overload: a constant stream of people flowed between the Palaisozaki (for registration and the opening ceremony) and the Lingotto (home of the Salone del Gusto and Terra Madre), all chatting and sharing ideas. Mark and Judy are growers from Pennsylvania who went organic 30 years ago: people back then would ask them what they put in the food to make it organic. We strolled with a group of Canadian maple syrup producers – who were, confusingly, at Terra Madre with their organic garlic producer hats on, as there had apparently been a rush for places from the maple syrup industry.

In the Salone, we grazed. Tom spotted a German salami maker who used beef, not pork and invited him to come to Scotland. Maria from the Netherlands was manning one of the UK stands with a huge red cabbage. She collects seeds for the seed library in Edinburgh, to preserve native vegetables. We would like to grow old Scottish varieties in our kitchen garden, so we asked if she could put us in touch with a source. An Austrian baker took us into the car park to show us his oven – he'd brought it on a trailer so that he could bake bread fresh every day.

The opening ceremony was a fanfare of flags and alarming statistics with 9,000 participants from around the world filling the hall. This was the serious side of things: the world food crisis; the homogenisation of our food; the intensification of agriculture. The giant seed and fertiliser producers and GM crops were all held to account. Finally Carlo Petrini took the stage. His message was uncompromising: as we worry about the current financial crisis, we should remember that the real economy is the land and the only entirely renewable energy source is plant photosynthesis.

Day 2

The meeting of UK Slow Food conveners and members highlighted how in Scotland people have closer links to the land and it's easier to get things done because of our smaller population. Under the banner Scottish Crofting Produce, smallholders from the Highlands and Islands are marketing meat from indigenous species, plus vegetables, eggs, honey and bread. Through the Slow Food network, crofters have started to feel less marginalised.

One of the most interesting discussions centred on the new Slow Bread campaign, which aims to preserve the craft of baking. At Mhor Bread, the Callender bakery Tom and his family bought 18 months ago, they have been taking out the chemical improvers and baking good, wholesome loaves. However, they have not gone organic because by working with the mills and buying better quality flour which has not been over-milled, it's more affordable. That night we joined a group of UK bakers and millers to break bread in a trattoria in town.

Day 3

The Alba Truffle Festival is the Holy Grail for chefs and so, as Alba is only an hour from Turin, we play truant for the day, hire a car and set off south with Andrew Radford, who owns the restaurants, Blue, Atrium and Le Caf St Honore in Edinburgh, and his son Ben, a chef. The festival is in a large marquee on the edge of the town. Inside, stalls are piled high with dried ceps, salamis, cheeses, truffle-filled pasta – and chocolate truffles.

Washing the salami and cheese down with local wines – rich red Barolo and sparkling Asti – we edge towards the centre of the main marquee and the truffles, both the rougher black and finer white, which are guarded in glass cabinets. Precious and pungent, the truffles are handed to the buyers to examine. Tom sniffs and fondles, then hands over 75 (about 60) for a thumbnail-sized piece.

Alba itself is all cobbled streets, wonky houses, chestnuts roasting in the square – and stalls selling truffles for considerably less than we had just paid… Heading back to Turin, the car stinks. "That's the smell of chef's pheromones," says Tom.

Day 4

Tom had a cook's lunch – porcini and shaved white truffle – at Eataly at the back of the old Fiat factory in Lingotto, a huge Slow Food deli-cum-restaurant complex. In the UK it would be chi-chi, but here, although the surroundings and the packaging are stylish, it's all about the product.

Giant slabs of Parma ham hang from the ceiling; the fish section sells species you would never get in the UK, such as tiny John Dory that would be fed to the seagulls or used for bait back home. At the checkout, there are no racks of chewing gum or magazines, just boxes of pasta.

Back at Terra Madre, Tom invites a few hundred salami makers to Scotland, as well as an Italian dried goat producer, who shows him the "viola" – the leg echoes the shape of the instrument; you hold it in the same way to slice it. Tom wants to learn how to do the same with Black-Faced lamb, and venison.

Lasting impressions? Tom left with a notebook full of contacts and ideas and a suitcase full of food. I left with a niggling worry about where we were going to house everyone – and the realisation that Slow Food is not a middle-class dining club, but a movement to feed the world.

BACKGROUND

IF YOU think Jamie Oliver makes a lot of noise about modern-day eating habits and the drive to improve food standards, meet Carlo Petrini: as founder of the global Slow Food movement, the 59-year-old Italian campaigner has been pushing this message for a lot longer than our Naked Chef, and he's no fan of television as a medium for cookery.

"These (television] chefs should get out of their golden cages, let loose their media chains," Petrini told a reporter when he arrived in England to launch the UK's own Slow Food headquarters in Shropshire. "They have to become more a part of society. They should cook for a village, teach children, feed old people in (care] homes, prepare food in hospitals. The cook is a social being, this television bombardment is pornographic."

Back in 1986 the campaign group Agricola formed, protesting against intensive food production, which in 1989 became Slow Food under founding president Petrini.

At this year's biennial gathering in Turin, Petrini again urged the world to "slow down" and focus on local economies in response to the burgeoning financial crisis.

"We are tired of the policy of growth at any price, that has destroyed real values," he said. "This consumer society creates waste, people have been reduced to the role of consumers."