Cities are remarkably good at distancing consumers from the food they are eating. What is the impact of this? Our health suffers, the environment suffers and animals suffer. We need to reconnect with our food. We need to be aware of where it comes from and how it was produced so that we can change this system.

As consumers we have the power to change the way things are done. The slow food movement is 20 years old and convivia around the world dedicate themselves to reconnecting people with their food and those that produce it.

Dax Villanueva only became aware of the moral deficiencies and unsustainability of first world living recently. In this time he has slowly been making the transition from slacktivist to activist. He is passionate about educating others and he does this through is blog, Relax with Dax, and his involvement in the Slow Food Mother City convivium.

A delicious and affordable (from R35) brown bag lunch will be on sale at the venue.

Date: Thursday 22 July

Time: 12:45 for 13:00pm

Venue: Lobby Books, Cape Town Democracy Center, 6 Spin Street

Contact: Andreas Spath at aspath@idasa.org.za or 021 467 7606

Parking options:
Street parking in the area is safe and will cost you R3.50 per hour.
Parking garages open to the public in the area include:

Plein Park (Plein Street; to get to the entrance, turn off Plein Street into Barrack Street and then into Corporation Street).
Mandela Rhodes Place (entrance in Burg Street, off Wale Street)

Via IDASA

Executive Chef Garth Almazan explains the concept, which is about more than simply using free-range meat: “The creation of the ‘Free Range Fridays’ menu was inspired by the concept of ‘Nose to Tail Eating’ trend, which celebrates the tradition of making a delicious virtue of using every part of the animal. Although many people who have savoured organ meat, advocate its intense flavours and tastes, it is also very much in line with the trend for healthier eating, with organ meats boasting an impressive range of health benefits.”

Pan-fried calves liver, on the Catherina's menue for Free-range Fridays

This a chance to try delicacies ranging from pan-fried bone marrow with bulgar wheat stuffing, and poached lamb’s tongue with parsley puree and truffle dressing; to confit of miso sake pork belly and riz de veau (pan-fried sweetbreads) with oxtail rillette. Local producers providing the humanely raised meat include Steve Jeffery, who has long been supplying Catharina’s with fine charcuterie.

Slow Food Mother City loves the idea of nose-to-tail eating. No part of an animal should be wasted. This, along with the nutritional benefits of eating vitamin and mineral-rich organ meat, is why offal is a part of most traditional cuisines. It’s not a “trend”, it’s just something we’ve forgotten how to do!

Bookings essential. Contact 021 713 2222 or visit www.steenberghotel.com.

Dr Nicky Allsopp tells us that pretty much all of these mushrooms are inedible...

Exciting finds for kids of all ages!

Look sharp - it can be easy to miss perfect specimens

White gills - be afraid...

Rainbow fungi nation!

Yum! Yes, you can eat pine rings.

Mushroom soup - hot from the boot!

Mushrooming meets high fashion

If you’d like Dr Nicky Allsopp to help you identify a mushroom you’ve found, e-mail a photo of it to her.

Mushroom soup recipe

Serves 4

25g butter
1 large leek, white part only, sliced
400g brown and/or Portobello mushrooms, chopped
2 tbls flour (or brown lentils)
100ml red wine, sherry or brandy
Squeeze of lemon juice (about ¼ of a lemon)
½ tsp dried thyme and/or rosemary
10g dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in 250ml warm water
750ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
50ml sour cream (optional)

1. Soak the dried porcini mushrooms in 250ml warm water for about half an hour.
2. Fry the leek gently in the butter until soft, then add the mushrooms and allow to cook down for a few minutes.
3. Add the flour. You can also use brown lentils to thicken the soup, and they’ll enhance the mushrooms’ nutty flavor.
4. Add the booze and cook for a few minutes to evaporate the alcohol.
5. Add a large squeeze of lemon and the herbs, and stir for a minute or two, then add the porcini mushrooms with their liquid.
6. Add the stock, bring soup to the boil, turn the heat down, and then simmer for 20 minutes.
7. Take the soup off the heat, puree until smooth and season with salt and pepper.
8. Stir in the cream, if using (you can also substitute milk for some of the stock if you want a creamier soup). Gently reheat the soup. Serve with buttered seed bread.

A ruffled mushroom (not poisonous!) popping up from the leaf litter

By the time we drove into the estate, the rain had abated, but the clouds were swirling and lurking in the mountain peaks overlooking the farm. We made our way to the unusual-looking Earth Centre building, with a living ‘green roof’ covered in grasses, where we were greeted by Simon and Pia. Inside we found chilled jugs of water filled with berries from the farm, which delighted the Danish and English friends we had brought with us.

A group of 20 Slow Fooders assembled and started the day sitting comfortably in the Earth Centre, while the rain resumed outside, and Simon gave us an introduction to Backsberg and its environmental initiatives. Just as we needed to set out on our walk, the rain stopped, and we enjoyed a half hour of strolling about the farm, with Simon showing us the interventions that have been made to help Backsberg achieve its status as the first carbon-neutral winery in South Africa.

We saw simple things like smaller, more fuel-efficient tractors (which Dax did a fine job of posing next to like a tractor calendar model) and experiments with various types of bamboo which could be used to offset carbon. Everyone loved the wedding venue on the farm, which we all agreed will probably grow in popularity as more brides begin to demand ‘greener’ weddings, as well as the glass workshop which had beautiful pieces for sale from recycled glass.

We had a brief squizz into the cellar, dodging the bats who live there, before Simon left us in the capable hands of the Cellar Door Manager, Danwin James. Danwin was the highlight of the tour for many of us – aside from being very knowledgeable about the wines, he kept us throroughly entertained and laughing all the way through the tasting. We all know the correct method for tasting brandy now and the taste of the world champion ten year old left some of us gasping with delight!

After a frenzied spending spree after the tasting, and clutching boxes of the delicious wines, we staggered back to the Earth Centre where a delicious finger lunch buffet awaited us. The sun had made its way through the clouds and we lolled about on the lawn in front of the Earth Centre munching and chatting. There was a sense of gentle camaraderie among all the attendees by this stage, and we eventually left, full and happy, having learnt and tasted for ourselves how Backsberg is trying to lighten its footprint on our planet while still producing wines of the highest quality.

I always imagined mead as a rough kind of beer, something dark, brewed from hay and potatoes, that would go well with a haunch of wild boar. So the mead tasting at Touch of Madness on Friday 23 April was a revelation.

Mead is the most ancient alcoholic drink, easy for our ancestors to discover as made simply from honey, water and yeast. Types of mead can be found in pretty much every culture that’s in contact with bees. So in Ethiopia it’s tej, while in the Eastern Cape, the Xhosa call it iQhilika. Most of the meads we tasted were from a small brewery in Grahamstown called Makana Meadery, which is inspired by the local methods of mead-making (the yeast, for example, is indigenous, harvested from the roots of a drought resistant plant). The Makana bottles are sealed with a wax capsule, a nod to the bees.

Fig-infused mead, glowing golden in the sun.

Cape Winemaster Hanneke van de Linde led the tasting of five Makana meads, under the brand name Honey Sun, and a homebrew. It’s quite common for the brew to be infused with herbs or spices – this style is called metheglin. Makana also infuses its meads – the first flight was fig (infused with the fruit and leaves of the Cape Fig), coffee (scented with wild beans from the Koffie Bay area) and chili. The first thing that surprised me was how light and golden the drink was. Served chilled, or it becomes viscous, it has a strong floral, slightly vegetative nose and complex, not overly sweet, flavour. The fig flavour had natural affinity, with slight cinnamon overtones, the coffee was more minerally and the chili offered a wooded nose with a satisfying kick at the end of the palate.

Mead tasting notes and glasses at the ready...

Then we tasted the Honey Sun dry, a subtle mead of pure honey, and Makana’s award-winning herbal mead, infused with rooibos, honeybush tea, cinnamon and apple. This was the most complex and sophisticated of the meads – definitely one to add to the cellar. Finally, we tried ‘Trevor’s Home Brew’, and this was the cloudy, dark, nutty mead we had imagined – Christmas cake on the nose and a creamy mouthfeel. Made in a bucket in the cupboard and unfiltered, this was rough and ready, and pretty delicious, stuff!

Touch of Madness put on a mead-friendly meal, with a sweet and spicy chicken stir-fry followed by rooibos -infused crème brulee. Although it’s best served as a welcome drink on ice, or with biscuits after a meal, Makana’s light golden mead would also pair well with Morrocan food or a Cape-style fruity curry. It’s a beautiful drink with a fascinating history that’s sure to spark conversation around the dinner table.

Did you know?

In Europe, it was traditional to give newlyweds enough mead to last them a month, hence the term honeymoon. The idea was that the mead would inspire cheerfulness and abandon, and at the end of the moon-cycle the couple would have proved their fertility with a pregnancy. Having indulged, I can see how that might work, actually…

Yes, mead has been fused with more interesting herbs in the past...

Oded Schwartz and a selection of his preserves

Oded is an expert in just about every preserve you can think of, whipping up huge batches of everything from old-fashioned sweet-and-sour gherkins to strawberry and vodka jam. He’s always experimenting with new techniques and ingredients, as evidenced by his onion konfyt (prepared like South African figs traditionally are) and bayonnaise (a creamy condiment made from oil and flesh from the baobab fruit).

(PS. Note the Jack Black beer on the counter – thanks to our artisinal brewers for keeping us refreshed during the talk.)

Mixed vegetable pickle, pickled eggs and delicious preserves

Oded shared some of his own secret ingredients and methods with us. For example, he finds Khoi San salt the best for brining. A Slow Food favourite too, this flaky pure sea salt is hand-harvested up the West Coast. Since most of his preserves and dishes have a Mediterranean flavour, Oded imports some of his ingredients, like his tahini. But you’ll understand why when you taste his amazing baba ganoush!

Dozens of strong, fresh flavours - washed down with Jack Black

Saturday’s little taster left us wanting more, so Slow Food Mother City will be arranging a full four-hour course with Oded in a few months’ time. If you have ideas of what you’d like to learn, or want to be notified of when the course is running, please e-mail info@slowfoodmothercity.co.za.

Quite a few of these chefs used local ingredients and techniques. A highlight was Grande Provence’s warm ballontine of Elgin free range chicken with white onion risotto (see moody photo below). Another winner was from Signal (at Cape Grace) – cumin-crusted springbok loin with a smoked potato and goat’s cheese samoosa, elegantly combining the soft, smoky venison with a glammed-up local favourite. Their dessert – a pistachio pavlova served with rooibos and honey ice-cream – was also divine.

Elgin free range chicken on compostable plates

World-renowned Margot Janse of Le Quartier Français complemented her braised lamb breast with white bean and buchu puree and apricot blatjang (chutney). Neil Jewel impressed as usual with his homegrown charcuterie and once unpopular (but very French) cuts like pork knuckle, pig’s cheek and tongue were proudly served by various restaurants. GOLD restaurant went all out on the local with Cape Malay curry, morog (traditional greens) and smoked snoek (as sustainable as it gets) on the menu. Even Nobu avoided the Japanese-traditional tuna for yellowtail sashimi.

All of these were beautifully plated on compostable crockery made from sugar cane bagasse – really outstanding, guys.

This year the zjooshy restaurants were complimented by small producers including Blue Sky Organics, with their various olive products; Willow Creek, with top-notch local olive oil; ever popular Pesto Princess; La Petite France and their true’s-bob camembert; By Nature, which stocks the best pistachios in South Africa, from the Northern Cape; and Get Stuffed with all their locally sourced cheeses. Also there was Oded’s Kitchen, with a wide range of preserves. Oded Schwartz will be hosting a preserving course for Slow Food Mother City on 10 April – why not sign up?

Lewis manning Oded's preserves stand

Oh, and we didn’t even mention the wine! With about 30 local estates represented, we can only marvel that we live in Cape Town, with so many great wines, red and white, grown and produced within 200kms of our homes. After all that, it was impossible to go home without a cappucino made from African Fair Trade beans from the Bean There stand – the perfect ending to a tasty evening.

Slow Food Mother City will be hosting an introduction to the pleasures of preserving with Oded Schwartz on 10 April.

Oded is South Africa’s leading expert on preserving (seriously, he wrote the book: Preserving, published by Dorling Kindersley in 1996, and translated into thirteen languages). He’s friendly and knowledgeable, and he’ll give you enough confidence to finally attempt a jam, or at least a chutney!

Join us for two hours of preserving history, theory, skills and tips, shared in a convivial atmosphere in Oded’s own kitchen. We’ll be tasting Oded’s preserves and pickles, and washing them down with Jack Black beer.

At this event, Oded will explain pickling techniques and science, give some history of pickling, offer samples for tasting, and answer your questions. No pickling will be DEMONSTRATED; we hope to offer a hands-on course with Oded in the near future, guided by participant feedback from this workshop.

EVENT DETAILS:

Date and time:
Saturday 10 April 2010. 3pm-5pm

Venue:
Oded’s Kitchen, The Old Biscuit Mill, 375 Albert Road, Salt River (why not stop by the Neighbourgoods Market beforehand?)

Cost:
R70 for members, R90 for guests

Bookings:
Space is limited (20pax), so if you would like to come, please email us at: events@slowfoodmothercity.co.za and let us know how many people you are bringing (and whether you are members or guests). We will then send you banking information to make your deposit and confirm your place/s.

First come, first served. If you have not made the deposit within 2 days of booking, we will make your space/s available to the next person in line. Please book before Thursday 7 March 2010.

On 6 March 2010 a group of Slow Fooders visited Spier to learn more about their biodynamic farming methods. In particular, we wanted to know about their egg-laying and broiler chickens – we’d heard they lead happy lives, by chicken standards.

Spier farm manager, Christo, led us out into the pastures to meet the chickens and cows, who live in a fascinating symbiosis on the pastures.

Into the yonder... to the chicken coop! - Pia Taylor

This piece of land was almost destroyed by conventional farming methods, but is now being rehabilitated using biodynamic principles: the cows graze the grass, trampling some of it flat and churning the earth. They leave behind pats, where larvae grow. A few days’ later the chickens are moved onto the same piece of land, where they disperse the pats by scratching for grubs and further fertilise the soil with their own droppings. After a few rounds of this, the srubby pasture starts to look green and lush – it’s revitalised.

Cows doing their good work on the Spier pastures - Liz Metcalfe

Spier’s egg-laying chickens are completely free to run around at will (though Christo has specifically chosen ones that don’t like to range TOO far) and spend their evenings roosting a large coop (decorated by local kids), where they’re free to lay their eggs as and when they feel like it.

Egg-layers' mobile coop painted by local children - Liz Metcalfe

They’re also free to indulge in all sorts of poultry peccadillos, including chickens’ absolute favourite past-time: a feather-fluffing dust bath. These chickens will be good layers for up to five years (compared to less than two years for exhausted commercial hens).

Spier chickens taking a very enjoyable dust bath - Liz Metcalfe

The broiler chickens – the one omnivorous humans eat – are moved through the pastures in large cages, partly covered in shade-cloth. While they don’t run free – predators are too much of a danger – they’re still chirpy, as The Littlest Slow Fooder found out when she was introduced.

Toddler meeting her first real-life happy chicken - Pia Taylor

These broiler chicks come from the same place that commercial chickens are bred, and are ‘saved’ at one day old. “I see the crates of chicks being loaded onto the big trucks, and look at our couple of hundred chicks, and I think ‘this is your lucky day, guys’,” says Christo.

The chicks spend their first three weeks in this roomy shed, before going ‘out to pasture’ for another three weeks. During this time, they grow up to twice as big as conventional chickens – as much as 2.6kgs – eating bugs, seeds, some special feed, and getting strong scratching around in the dirt. Right now, the chickens are slaughtered at a site about 90 minutes away that has the requisite humane approach, but Spier has nearly finished their own slaughterhouse on the farm, which will mean chickens will be far less stressed at the end.

Reverent poem on the wall of the in-progress slaughter house - Liz Metcalfe

The poem on the wall, by Kahlil Gibran, reads in part:
By the same power that slays you, I to am slain; and I too shall be consumed.
For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven.

In the biodynamic tradition of ‘closing the circle’ on a farm, all inedible by-products of the slaughter will go into the Spier organic veggie garden compost heap. It will feed the soil that fed the chickens that fed us.

Strains of Mozart waft out over Spier's organic veggie garden... - Pia Taylor