The streets of Bra.
We woke up extremely early today in order to drive to Bra for our appointment with Slow Food. This meant waking up at the distressing hour of four AM - we survived, but only barely. Luigi picked us up at 5:00, and we were on our way. Although most of us slept for the majority of the trip, the route was extremely scenic - we passed by the coast of Genova, through the alpine areas between Florence and Northern Italy, and various castles, historical areas, and villages. Not a bad way to conduct a road-trip.
Poster outside some of Slow Food's offices.
We arrived in Bra a little early for our appointment. Bra is not exactly Italy's most exciting town - it's fairly work-a-day and plain. Its primary attraction is as the HQ of Slow Food, one of the world's most powerful and pervasive organizations for the promotion of "real" food, artisan food products, and local producers. An "eco-gastronomic" organization, Slow Food's efforts include publication on various aspects of food and gastronomy, the certification and recognition of worthy restaurants in Italy and elsewhere, the creation of "networks" of food producers and other actors in the food world, promoting "taste education," protecting and aiding traditional food producers, organizing celebrations of local cuisine, and many other services and capacities. Although Slow Food remains a grassroots movement, it is growing all the time and becoming increasingly visible.
. Founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986 to combat the opening of a McDonalds near Rome's Spanish steps, Slow Food began more as a culinary club and quickly expanded outwards to many other venues and considerations. The organization now has 83,000 members in with chapters in 122 countries, with 800 convivia chapters all over the world. Italy has the greatest number of convivia, which are semi-indepnedent and conduct various events, including taste workshops, wine tastings, farmers market gathering and other efforts at promoting local foods, producers,and techniques.
Their events include Terra Madre - a huge gathering of food producers from all over the world - and the Salone del Gusto, the world's largest food and wine fair, as well as the SlowFish event conducted in Genoa. Slow Food also carries out extensive publishing on the subject of food, combining excellent design with interesting (and artistic) writing on gastronomy.
Our hosts at Slow Food elaborated upon Slow Food's aims. Briefly, Slow Food exists to "defend our right to pleasure" and to promote Good, Clean,and Fair food. Good is defined as "good to taste" - Slow Food began as a gourmet organization and still is mindful of the overwhelming import of good taste in its activities. Clean is defined as sustainable practices in production and distribution - after all, we know now that worldwide meat production is in many respects more harmful for the enviroment then the production of oil! Finally, "fair" is defined as an effort to produce good treatment, work conditions, and pay for farmers and producers the world over. To help further these efforts, Slow Food has created a Foundation for Biodiversity, which travels the world to assist people in traditional production and the sale of their wares.
We also discussed the notion of Presidia - Slow Food's local efforts to protect and further the production of distinctive foods and prevent their extinction. 120 presidia exist the world over, with the aim of aiding producers - further, the preservation of these foods also helps enhance the overall welfare of the community and preserve related cultural traditions. (Slow Food nicely illustrates how central food is to everything when you get into it). Slow Food maintains the most presidia in Italy (200)- some of the cheeses and meats we sampled are part of these programs.
We then discussed education, one of Slow Food's paramount concerns. Slow Food considers the consumer to be a co-producer of food - on other words, the consumer's decision to buy something has an effect on production and what gets produced in the first place. Slow Food would like consumers to buy good, local food - and to achieve that goal, consumers need to be educated - if you've never had good, local food (an unfortunate reality for many people,) how will you know what to buy? To achieve these ends, Slow Food conducts Taste Workshops (which we experienced) through its associations located across the world. Slow Food also conducts the aforementioned large conferences and workshops, with the intent of bringing together world producers so that they may network and pass on information.
We briefly got into the details of Terra Madre, Slow Food's biannual world food conference and food community network. Check out the video of the 2008 conference here - it's interesting viewing. Last year's Terra Madre conference featured 7000 food producers from hundreds of countries, who convened for five days to swap ideas, stories, and information about world food production. The 2008 conference also featured 200 musicians - representatives of other cultural traditions that are swiftly disappearing. The 2010 conference is proving to be an even larger event.
After the discussion, we had our Slow Food Taste Workshop, which is described in detail below. We then briefly discussed Slow Food's University of Gastronomic Sciences, Slow Food's institution devoted to the study of gastronomy. The University approaches gastronomy through a number of disciplines - students encounter anthropology, religion, fine art, sensory analysis and other areas of study to further their understanding of gastronomical principles. The University intends to teach holistically - by combining various aspects of the incredible complexity of the study of food - to create the food experts and gastronomers of the future.
Slow Food further believes that video and film are the best ways to reach a wide range of consumers - after all, ignoring a video is a lot more difficult then ignoring a book! Along those lines, Slow Food has begun the Slow Food on Film Festival in Bologna. Awards are given out for documentaries, shorts, TV series, and Best Food Feature, and screenings are held of all manner of food-related film projects. We were finally treated to a sampling of Food Inc: a soon-to-be-released documentary on our culture of industrial food. Directed by Robert Kenner with input and interviews from such big-names as Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, it looks like it will be a compelling insight into the mysterious (and unpleasant) world of our supermarket economy.
Downtown Parma.
After our Slow Food tasting, it was time to head to Parma, where we would be spending the night. The drive was quite scenic - Northern Italy has a justifiable reputation for prettiness - and we made good time to Parma. Parma, as Sabrina informed us, was occupied by the French for a good long time - who attempted to make it into a "little Paris." It's a small and pleasant town, with an old and walkable downtown and a big population of students. The university is huge and ancient looking, and the church downtown (near where we stayed) is an excellent example of old-school Italian architecure.
We convened and headed out to find somewhere for dinner. As all the restaurants the Slow Food people reccomended to us were closed for unfathomable reasons, we stumbled upon a rather hip-looking place down a side street that appeared very popular with boozing high-schoolers.
The menu featured a wide variety of pastas specific to Parma, and not being shy about heavy food consumption, we pretty much ordered them all. Have a look:
Tagliatelle with mint, zucchini, and prosciutto. Fresh, creamy, and delicious: I will try this again. It's an ideal spring or summer dish.
Tortelli filled with some sort of cheese in a creamy sauce - these were rather like UFO-esque tortellini with a delightfully puffy texture.
Tomino cheese in puff pastry with balsamic onions. This was incredibly delicious - Sabrina turned me onto it. I will be looking for this in the future. Sort of like a brie with a more complex flavor and excellent meltiness.
Macaroni in a sort of carbonara sauce with strips of eggplant. Good, but not a show-stopper.
A regional gnocchi prepared with spinach and a slightly spicy tomato sauce. This was excellent and fresher in taste then regular gnocchi.
Simple cheese ravioli in an olive oil and garlic sauce. Fresh and rather simple.
Noodles with some dried mushrooms and a bit of a cream sauce. A good earthy flavor.
Baked eggplant with asparagus and cheese, and a bit of ham. A good vegetable-riffic appetizer and something I haven't encountered before.
The dessert menu was fairly extensive, and we were happy to partake. This was the zabaglione, an Italian custard prepared generally with egg yolk, sugar, sweet wine (usually Marsala), and often cream or mascarpone. This was a very light example of the classic, with a boozy and butterscotchy taste. Excellent when dipped into with warm, nutty biscotti-esque cookies.
A classic chocolate hazelnut mousse with a sort of nut-brittle on top. This was light as air and intensely chocolaty.
Fresh mascarpone with pineapple and cookies. This was not very sweet and had a light, fruity flavor. Definitely not a common dessert in the USA and quite fresh and good.
We also tried some excellent, slightly fizzy red wine. Although it was late, the restaurant had excellent energy and was full of people - we enjoyed it a lot and cleaned our plates completely. We headed back to the hotel and slept collectively like rocks (except perhaps for Anthony, who claimed his pillow was a rock...).
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