Is this the end for Slow Food in Tassie?
SLOW Food, the international food movement dedicated to good, clean, fair food for everyone, which has a snail as its emblem, may be crawling to a stop in Hobart.
The movement started in Italy in 1986 and spread throughout the world.
Local groups are known as convivia, and the Hobart convivium started 21 years ago, among the first in Australia.
Scott Minervini, of Lebrina in New Town, was the first leader.
When I interviewed him in October 1998 I asked how a barbecue could be considered slow food.
“It’s not all about braised food,” Scott chided.
“It’s about taking the time to prepare food and then taking time to enjoy eating it.”
I have been among those trying to spread the word ever since, both as a journalist and as a member of the Hobart committee for 10 years, but still the misapprehension persists that Slow Food is a preThermomix cult attached to a certain cooking appliance.
Slow Food never was just a dine-and-wine group.
Eating events were created to examine a product or process dear to this place at this time.
The first lunch in early summer was devoted to cherries – in soup, quail with cherries and ice cream followed by a tasting of 17 different fresh varieties.
There were tastings of plain boiled potatoes, followed by a brunch featuring them in pancakes, bread, salad and cake.
There were picnics at Nutpatch hazel orchard, in a heritage apple orchard, after helping to harvest olives or grapes.
Slow Food members were the first visitors Rodney Dunn entertained at The Agrarian Kitchen and, at Garagistes, Luke Burgess presented a bee banquet — apart from bread, cheese and a little crab, everything on the menu required pollination by bees.
At a mini seminar on a weekend in Bicheno, Jon Healy of Pyengana Dairy talked about raw-milk cheese and veteran beekeeper Hedley Hoskinson on how the felling of leatherwood trees was threatening the honey (and therefore, pollination) industries.
Leatherwood honey, exclusive to Tasmania, was placed on Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, a metaphorical rescue vessel for foods the world is in danger of losing.
Since 2006, Slow Food has raised funds at an end-of-year silent auction for school kitchen gardens.
One of the first schools to benefit was Herdsmans Cove at Gagebrook, where the kitchen benches were built to accommodate students who were aged four and under.
In 2014, the Hobart group began awarding a $6000 scholarship for a young chef to go to Italy at the time of Slow Food’s Salone del Gusto, a food festival of more than 1200 exhibitors, and Terra Madre, a gathering for 2000 small-scale food producers from throughout the world, both held every second year.
Daniel Garwood was the first recipient, then Will
Roberts and last year, Alex Morton-Brown.
In 2018 Shaun Eastwood also received a media scholarship to make a doco on the Italian experience.
More recently there has been an emphasis on the food of the traditional owners of Tasmania, including dinners, a forage and feast day, and an edible plant workshop run by
Eat Wild Tasmania author Rees Campbell. There have been only four leaders of Slow Food Hobart.
Food consultant Judith Sweet followed Scott
Minervini, then came teacher Jenny Dudgeon and, for the past three years, Jo Cook, curator of the Dark Mofo Winter Feast has led the convivium.
Jo wants to step down now, as does Pam Wilkinson, who has been secretary of the convivium under the last three leaders.
At an annual general meeting last Wednesday no one put their hand up to take over these roles, and if no one does in the next three months, the convivium will close.
Much has changed since Slow Food started in Tasmania.
Consciousness of the sustainability and ethics of food production is high.
We have weekly farmers markets, organisations such as Eat Well Tasmania, Huon Producers Network, Regenerative Agriculture Network Tasmania, Sprout and NITA Education.
FermenTasmania promotes the modern place for this ancient method of food preservation and events such as Dark Mofo Winter Feast make all of that available to all of us.