The Annual General Meeting of Slow Food Sydney will take place on Tuesday 10th November at 6.30 pm (sharp) upstairs in the NG Art Gallery, 3 Little Queen Street Chippendale.

The AGM is for financial members only and it’s free.

It is vital for all members to hear at first hand the new direction of Slow Food International and in particular, Slow Food Sydney.

This is going to a very exciting year for Slow Food Sydney and we want you to be part of it!!
We will be calling for nominations for all the positions on the committee. We particularly need people with IT experience, minute taking skills, membership services and database, book-keeping skills. We are also looking for helpers with our Edible Kitchen Garden Schools program and with our various events.
Please email your interest before the meeting to Syd Pemberton, Convivium Leader - sydpemberton@gmail.com, by November 8.

After the meeting, stay for dinner at Mission Restaurant and Bar, below the Art Gallery, Ground Level, 3 Little Queen Street, Chippendale (ph: 9318 0815)
There will be a two course dinner from their delicious seasonal menu.
Cost: $56.00 per head (limited numbers)
Complimentary glass of wine at the AGM meeting (additional wine to be paid for separately)

Payment through Slow Food Sydney AGM.eventbrite.com or with cheques made payable to Slow Food Sydney and posted to Slow Food Sydney, 8 Eden Ave, North Turramurra, 2074 NSW.

Here you can find more photos of the Bush Tucker Picnic.

Slow Food Sydney wants to thank all the volunteers, members, friends and families.
A special thanks to all the sponsors who made this event possible:

- Belinda Franks Catering for equipment and support;
- Australian Kangaroo Industry Association;
- Australian Macadamia Org;
- Brasserie Bread – for creating a special Indigenous bread and supporting us;
- Frou Frou Native Bush Cordials;
- Ecolifestyle bamboo plates;
-  Party Time Hire Company.

Rain didn’t stop slow foodies last Sunday. Regardless of weather, more than 200 people gathered in the Royal Botanic Gardens to take part in the Bush Tucker Picnic.

Sitting on colored rugs, under the shelter of a big tree, the crowd had the opportunity to enjoy a special menu designed for the event by multi-award-winning chef Jean-Paul Bruneteau, author of Tukka, Real Australian Food. With the help of Chef Samantha Joel, he cooked a three courses meal using Indigenous ingredients:

• Emu Prosciutto Antipasto Smoked Emu rubbed with lemon myrtle and pepper leaf served with Australian olives and coz lettuce drizzled with lemon myrtle mayonnaise dressing, and scattered with garlic croûtons roasted with a hint of Aniseed myrtle.
• Slow Roo Torpedo Roll with bush tomato onion relish and crisp salad leaves. The gourmet sausage and sour dough bread with wattle seed crust have been specially created for the picnic.
• Rocky Road trifle with native-flavoured marshmallow, macadamia nut brittle, quandongs, Davidson plum jelly and wattle seed liqueur

After the lunch, Clarence Slockee, Aboriginal Education Officer of the Sydney Botanic Gardens, spoke about Indigenous knowledge and use of bush foods focusing particularly on some of the ingredients used in the picnic.

Carlo Petrini himself, founder and international president of Slow Food, was present at the Picnic, to greet SF member and volunteers and taste the real Australian native flavours.
Holding hands with Aunty Beryl Van Oploo, an Aboriginal Elder who was one of the Australian delegates at Terra Madre 2008, he spoke passionately about the values of his movement. Terra Madre , he said, is a network made up of farmers, fishermen, breeders who really care about a new food culture and safeguarding the environment. “These humble people are the very ones who can save us in this moment of crisis. The word ‘humble’ (‘umile’ in Italian) derives from the Latin word ‘humus’ – ‘of the earth’ – and we want to support and be close to them”.

“We have to change the logic of consumerism” Petrini said.”We are strong and if we all work together we can really make this change. We can support farmers’ markets. We can defend food and build school gardens. We can create and support communities and work with them. Ask for more information so that we can learn where food comes from and how it is made. In this way, we’ll be able to give value back to food”.

Carlo Petrini, founder and international president of Slow Food, visited Sydney last week, as part of his first Australian tour.
Petrini had some busy days in our city, meeting convivia members and Terra Madre delegates, visiting the local Italian community in Haberfield where residents are battling plans for a Mc Donald’s on Parramatta Road and making an appearance at the Bush Tucker Picnic in the Royal Botanic Gardens. At the end of his visit, he delivered a lecture at the Opera House, where he spoke passionately about his revolutionary food vision.

Interviewed by Sydney International Food Festival director Joanna Savill, Petrini told the audience that “today we are experiencing an incredible and extraordinary paradox: the food is eating us. Nowadays massive food production is the principal responsible for the planet’s destruction”. We are losing soil fertility for the chemicals used in our land, he said. We are wasting water: more than 70% of it is used in agriculture and intensive-cattle rising. We are losing our bio-diversity: “because we must produce food in a more intense way, only the strongest breeds win and survive. In this way, in the past 100 years we have lost 80% of the world’s biodiversity”.

These were the reason which led to the creation of Terra Madre, Petrini said. “Terra Madre is a wonderful network made up of farmers, fishermen, nomads, chefs, young and old people, academics and filmmakers who really care about a new food culture and safeguarding the environment. It’s a meeting based on brotherhood, so that people can meet and exchange ideas. “
The revolutionary idea of Petrini is that producers and eaters should build a “fraternity (brotherhood) of food”, “because fraternity allows us to respect people who have different ideas from ours, people of a different culture, skin, or religion. With fraternity we can respect them. And fraternity helps us to listen to other people. Then with fraternity we also have equality and liberty. That is why Slow Food has called (its movement) Terra Madre, because if the earth is our mother, then we are all brothers and sisters. And even if we speak different languages we can still understand each other”. Full transcript.

Jean-Paul Bruneteau is a French-born Australian chef with a passion for Australian native foods.  He has made it his specialty to feature the unique flavours of bush foods in his cooking, often developing new methods of working with these unique ingredients.  In 1996 he published Tukka, Real Australian Food to share his passion with a wider audience.

Jean-Paul has owned and run restaurants in Sydney and Paris.  You can sample his extraordinary food at the Slow Food Botanic Bush Tucker Picnic at The Royal Botanic Gardens on Sunday October 18.

I became passionate about Australian native foods by… discovering how beautiful these flavours were.  I found it impossible to understand why modern day Australians could have passed up such ingredients in the quest to create a genuine Australian cuisine. By unlocking all the secrets these wonderful indigenous foods offered, I also gained a better understanding of Aboriginal Australia.

The food I prepare is different from that of other chefs because… back in the eighties when I started to experiment with a lot of these native foods, I soon learned that these were not ‘European vegetables’.  Their cooking and handling were startlingly different.  This is why I became so besotted with their preparation, to make them more acceptable to gastronomy.

Some of the flavours were so strong; I also understood straight away that people would mishandle a lot of these plants unless I set out to explain how to best handle these wonderful flavours.  That’s why I felt I needed to write my book, TUKKA, Real Australian Food.

I’d recommend anyone in Sydney to grow and eat… the Riberry - Syzygium luehmannii, or a Brown Pine Plum tree, also known as a Podocarpus - Podocarpus elatus, or a Lemon Myrtle - Bakhousia citrodora. These three trees are good ornamentals and will provide an abundance of fruits and flavours for a lifetime; they don’t even need to be watered, or very little.

There’s a whole lot of stuff that’s easy to grow, and that quite naturally doesn’t need much maintenance and especially no pesticide as a general rule.

Tetragon spinach is another one that is easily propagated - sometimes called Warrigal Greens, Botany Bay spinach or New Zealand Spinach, Kokihi in Maori language, its Botanical name is Tetragonia tetragonioides. The seeds are often available in seed shops.

The most satisfying thing about working with Australian native foods is… to have the ability to create whole menus around them and be able to match them with wine and other ingredients like cheese for example. The other as we were just saying is to grow them, even just in pots.  It’s worth it.

Native foods have been good to me as they have taken me around the planet a few times. Discovering, or should I say, having been introduced to their existence by the Aboriginal people, I guess I was fortunate to be able to popularize them to a wider audience.

My biggest frustration in working with Australian native foods is… the charlatans who have been getting on the band wagon for a fast buck, or the ones who have mishandled their culinary use, and as a result, put off quite a few Australians and others who, had they been properly instructed, would have fallen in love like I did.

Greed has been a factor in the emerging industry. Misunderstanding and misconception of Kangaroo and Emu is also an on-going frustration of mine.

The best meal I’ve eaten this year was… almost certainly at Bodega restaurant in Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills. I just love the Tapas Ben Milgate and Elvis Abrahanowicz put out.  Lots of brilliant flavours and lots of garlic! And wonderful Spanish reds which I love so much. I really can’t think of just one dish that has blown my mind - there are several I have liked.  I’m also a regular at Thai Nesia in Darlinghurst for Billy’s ‘Holy Basil Crispy Salmon’. It’s amazing, like the rest of his dishes.

In the top end of things, this year nothing! If I see another foam, spit, frog froth or call it what you like on my plate, I am going to scream!  And no… you do not turn crayfish or other expensive items into custard and charge a hundred bucks for it and call it Modern Australian Cuisine!  Or serve a square inch of pork belly for the price of a whole pig - that’s obscene.

Australian menus are all out of whack, trying too hard to be something they’re not.  Stick to basic wholesome food and there you will have it. It doesn’t take molecular energy to create a good meal.

My most treasured food memory is… a lemon sole I had in Zeebrudge in Belgium many moons ago.  It was by far the nicest piece of fish I have ever eaten.  It really did change my life.

Another was a Coquille St Jacques (Scallops) Feuilleté where when my fork hit the six centimeter stack of the best puff pastry I have ever eaten, the whole pile fell like a house of cards.  I have never worked out how they got it onto my plate, to me, out of the oven without the thing flying off, it was absolutely amazing!  This was in The French Basque country in the town of Saint Jean De Pied-de-Port at ‘Hotel des Pyrenees’.

Slow Foodies should check out… early issues of Slow Food, a prized treasure on my bookshelves, alongside another collection called “Convivium: The Journal of Good Eating”.  ‘A Continuous Picnic’ is another good read.

The most important thing about the sustainable food movement is… to educate Gen-Y on the importance of eating healthy, unadulterated foods and on how to prepare these foods so we at least can keep a tradition which otherwise will fast slip out of our fingers.

Slow Foodies can make food in Sydney better, cleaner and fairer by… identifying organic food as ‘clean food’ and move into certifying it as ‘Slow Food’ approved. It would be nice to see a tag or a label to identify products like native food products as ‘Slow Food’ family friendly, to make it easier for people to choose well.