Gastropolis explores NYC’s Food Voice

by Slow Food USA staffer Jerusha Klemperer

I sat down with Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch over pancakes at the NYC icon Tom’s Restaurant in Brooklyn to discuss their delicious new book, Gastropolis: Food and New York City. 

We may think of NYC’s iconic foods like knishes and egg creams (and diner pancakes) as fixed, but this collection of essays makes the case for the ability of each individual, each immigrant wave to leave its imprint on the ever-evolving foodscape of this city.  In fact, the archaeological remains of old New Amsterdam itself reveal how shifting ecology, shifting economy, and shifting populations can change the course of eating history and culture.

Hauck-Lawson and Deutsch have put together a collection that ranges in tone and approach, from Jessica Harris’ story of her personal food heritage to a history of the streets’ peddlers and markets to an examination of Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights and its array of Central and South American cuisine.  But it does not attempt to capture everything.  The authors acknowledge the impossibility of that, instead presenting what they call “noshes,” little bits that ultimately fill you up as richly as a big meal.

“I would say that this book would be great required reading, especially for new New Yorkers,” Hauck-Lawson said, “as an accessible source of New York City food history and foodways and out of a measure of respect for the privilege of being a New Yorker.”

More after the jump

Upcoming Youth Food Movement Conferences

Do you know about all the upcoming conferences for young people involved in the food movement?  Below you can find information about a few that caught our attention—some of them will have panels or workshops on Slow Food and the Youth Food Movement.  If you know of other events that we should be aware of, fill us in!

Real Food Summits - gatherings for the Real Food Challenge

2nd Annual Strengthening the Roots Food & Justice Convergence:
February 13 – 15, 2009
Santa Cruz, California
Click here for website
The Convergence hopes to develop and strengthen networks and encourage collaboration to grow and enhance the sustainable food and fair trade movements.  Join the Real Food community and the energized students involved with United Students for Fair Trade in Santa Cruz for an exciting and inspirational weekend of real work and planning for the future of the movement.

Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit
February 13 – 15, 2009
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Click here for website
The Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit is the first of its kind in the region, bringing together students and youth activists from throughout the Southeast to strategize and strengthen the youth network in the region for greater accessibility and use in growing movement.

More after the jump

What ever happened to the local butcher?

by Slow Food USA Intern Laura Kate Morris

Having recently moved to New York City from the Hudson Valley, I’m still in the process of getting my bearings and (more importantly) my groceries.  Prior to this I was living on a farm, so sourcing my food was easy; most of it was in the field or a neighbor’s meat freezer.  Now, as the wind sweeps me up and down the streets, I feel slightly daunted.

I’ve been dreaming of my next meal – a hot, brothy soup with chunks of potato, leeks, and fresh tortellini.  The first step should be simple – I want a hearty stock that will start with carrots and onions from the Union Square Greenmarket and some beef bones I have yet to acquire.  Armed with my trusty (if somewhat out-of-date) copy of The Slow Food Guide to New York City and my naive faith in the availability of anything, anywhere, in New York, I venture out into the cold.

Convinced I will find what I’m looking for in Little Italy, I venture out in search of Dom’s Fine Foods.  I find it squeezed between an upscale furniture retailer and a shiny bank.  Dom’s, however, isn’t keeping up with the Joneses.  Boarded up and chained shut, the name is just visible painted in green and red under layers of grime and graffiti.  My next option, Albanese’s, is several frigid blocks later.  So unobtrusive that I pass it the first time, Moe Albanese’s is a hole-in-the wall with a faded newspaper cutting in the window, proclaiming it “the last authentic Italian butcher in Little Italy.”  It is closed, with no hours posted.  After trudging home, a hot cup of coffee, and some Internet research, I give it one more try.  I find a nearby gourmet shop with a butcher’s counter.  However, I am told they don’t really carry things like that.  The butcher suggests I try Whole Foods.

More after the jump

Travel to Bologna for Slow Food on Film

Slow Food on Film
International Festival of Food and Film
Bologna: May 6-10, 2009

Slow Food on Film is an international festival that matches passion for film with that for food, while also promoting a new critical awareness of food culture.  The festival plays host to screenings of films, short films, documentaries and TV series that focus on food-related issues (drives, perversions, identity and emotional implications) in an original way, as well as on the agricultural and food industry’s repercussion on society and the environment, and on gastronomic memory as a common heritage to be safeguarded.

After the great success of the first edition in Bologna (2,000 daily spectators, 1,350 Slow snacks sold and 800 accredited journalists from 20 countries),  Slow Food on Film will be back May 6-10, 2009.

Start booking your stay in Bologna and your food and film schedule at Slow Food On Film! Read more about the event, including how to buy tickets at www.slowfoodonfilm.com

Slow Food Webcasts

by Slow Food USA staffer Patrick Keeler

On Friday, January 23rd, I spent the work day observing the taping of five soon-to-be-released webcasts at the Bon Appetit magazine Test Kitchen in Times Square.

Last summer, Slow Food USA teamed up with cookware giant Anolon to help get the word out about Slow Food to new audiences.  As part of this partnership—in addition to a sustainable chef and farmer calendar you may have seen in Gourmet magazine late last year—Slow Food USA helped to secure a couple of our favorite go-to talents for the filming of five webcasts about seasonal, sustainable cooking for the home chef.  Chef Bill Telepan of Telepan restaurant here in New York on the Upper West side and Chef Galen Zamarra of Mas (farmhouse) in the Village were invited to Bon Appetit magazine’s culinary studio and test kitchen, where they were joined by Jonathan Lindenauer – Bon Appetit’s chef de maison for the taping of these webcasts. 

It comes with the territory that NYC chefs get to chat with other celebrated local chefs on the rare occasions they are released from their own kitchen duties, so it was refreshing to watch Bill and Galen interact in an otherwise foreign kitchen.  The concept: a four-course meal featuring locally-sourced and seasonal ingredients, followed by a segment of the three chefs sitting down to enjoy their creations and talk shop about “Slow” home cooking.  In the videos which will soon be available for viewing, Bill Telepan prepared a lovely herb-stuffed leg of lamb with a confit of heirloom beans.  The was preceded by Jonathan’s butternut squash soup with pancetta and ginger snap crumbs and an appetizer of diver scallops on a bed of caramelized cauliflower puree.  Rounding out the meal was Galen Zamarra’s heirloom apple tarte fine with caramel sauce.

Working at the Slow Food USA national office comes with a few perks, but as a former urban farmer and current “development dude, ” visiting the set of tele-kitchen was a first for me.  I must say, there’s a lot more that goes into the taping of Paula, Rachel, Jamie and Martha than meets the eye – the viewer isn’t privileged to see the numerous retakes as the chefs stumble over their words, the make-up artist re-applies foundation to a sweating brow, the prep cooks (and me) in the side kitchen make too much background noise and ruin the take, and the “food artist” steps in to arrange the finished product so it looks appetizing (this could be a simple garnish or an inedible glaze of sorts).  I truly appreciated observing the film crew yelling “wait, wait, wait!” every time one of the chefs got ready to slice into or blend a near-finished product – you get one shot, or you wait another hour for another leg of lamb.  I even got to play “director” once or twice, guiding the chefs on which Slow Food USA talking points to emphasize here and there. 

We’re anxious to see the finished, polished product (and hopefully they edited out my talking in the background just that once!)  We’ll let you know when you can check out the webcasts; stay tuned….and…

Cut!

College Students: Become a (funded!) Social Entrepeneur

by Slow Food USA staffer Julia Middleton

Sparkseed (formerly Conscious Lifestyle) is offering an exciting opportunity to get your great idea turned into a real social venture with financial backing, guidance from a team of mentors and webspace to display your accomplishments and inspire others.  Sparkseed has partnered with Slow Food on Campus for the second year in a row and reserved one of their 10 new venture spots specifically for a project from one of our chapters.  And, even if you are not involved with Slow Food on Campus—and you really should be—but you have an awesome idea for a social venture, you are eligible to participate in Sparkseed’s program.

Sparkseed is currently accepting applications; the deadline is March 1, 2009.  Go to their website and check it out.  You must be a college student in your first or second year of school so that Sparkseed can work with you for two years, helping you to spread your project to other campuses across the country.  However, if you are a part of an organization—such as Slow Food on Campus—that collectively comes up with a really great idea for a venture, nominate a representative or two to take on the leadership of the project as a facet of your greater work as a group.

If you:

 
• have got an amazing, one of a kind, going-to-change-the-world idea
 
• need some money and/or guidance from someone who has been there and done that
   
• have the webspace to advertise your great idea

check out Sparkseed!

Help a Small Farmer Win $10,000!

NRDC just announced the first annual Growing Green awards to honor the work of a Food Producer, a Business Leader and a Thought Leader in the sustainable agriculture world. And check this out: the food producer would win 10,000 BUCKS.

The organization will highlight extraordinary contributions that include innovation within an ecologically-integrated food system, advancement of sustainable food production, climate stewardship, water stewardship, the preservation of farmland, and social responsibility.  We think this is a great opportunity to highlight and honor a changemaker in your community—perhaps even one who is doing unique work with endangered foods, garden-to-table projects, etc.

The following three categories are eligible to apply:

   
• Food Producer: Farmers or other food producers, including aquaculture, who employ innovative techniques to sustain agriculture, the natural environment, workers and community; (this category includes a $10,000 award)
   
• Business Leader: Entrepreneurs who effectively use the marketplace to promote sustainable food systems, develop infrastructure that enables producers to be more sustainable, or advance sustainable innovations anywhere along the supply chain from farm to fork
   
• Thought Leader: Visionaries who advance sustainability as it relates to food through creative research, public education, and outreach.

The deadline is quick: applications are due no later than February 6, 2009, so hop to it!  Visit NRDC’s website for information on the nomination process. 

The Pre-Industrial Pig

by Cecily Upton (and Jonny Hunter and the Underground Food Collective). 
Photos courtesy of Kevin Walsh

To those who think that the collective cinching of belts (and the accompanying groan) happening across America these days might usher more and more folks into the open arms of fast food value menus and away from the perceived expense of good, clean, and fair food, I offer up a series of dinners eaten last week as a counterpoint.

Alongside my good friends and Terra Madre delegates, the Underground Food Collective, I helped organize three Pre-Industrial Pig dinners - celebrations of food (particularly pork) raised with integrity and without shortcuts, and held both in Brooklyn at the homes of friends as well as in Manhattan in partnership with Slow Food NYC at Astor Center.

When we began advertising for the seven-course, family style meals in mid-December, we worried that the impending holidays and the “financial slowdown” would mean we’d be twisting friends’ arms to get anyone to come. Turns out we had nothing to worry about; tickets sold out fast. Now all we needed to do was give folks an experience, and a meal, worth their time and their money.

As the days approached, we borrowed chairs from friends, hung bikes from ceilings to make room, and cooked and cooked and cooked. The meals themselves were delicious, but the real show was the Madison, Wisconsin area cooks and producers who raised and processed the food. As they shared stories, introduced their families to diners, and served the courses themselves, it was clear that their hearts were in each dish. Their dedication to their craft, and more importantly, their lifestyle, impressed the guests even more than their perfectly velvet paté or their succulently sweet pork loin.

More after the jump

Sustainable Chefs go to Washington

Washington D.C. has been buzzing for the past three days, with balls, parties, press conferences, and dinners. 12 chefs from around the country—including sustainable favorites Alice Waters, Rick Bayless, and Dan Barber—headed to Washington and, on Monday night, created 12 fundraising dinners.  Proceeds (estimated at around $100,000) went to three local D.C. groups: D.C. Central Kitchen, Martha’s Table and FreshFarm Markets.

Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel attended one of these Monday night dinners, ate Dan Barber’s food, and talked food and ag with intellectual leaders, writers, and politicians alike.  Viertel asked several of the country’s top chefs what they would do if the Obamas came to their restaurants for dinner and they had the opportunity to speak to the first couple for a brief moment about food.  It seems these guys had their elevator pitches down pat, he said, “their capacity as chefs rivaled only by their lobbying abilities.” The real highlight? Watching a newly-minted administration housing guru proudly flash his Slow Food USA membership card.

You can read more about the event in The Washington Post, and more about the White House’s existing rooftop garden and how Tom Colicchio saved Joan Nathan’s life here.

More after the jump

Local Pastured Meats: Good for You, Good for the Planet

by Gabrielle Redner, Slow Food USA intern

Walking in to Slow Food New York City’s “Slow U” event last Wednesday evening (“Local Pastured Meats, Good for You, Good for the Planet”) was like entering a dream classroom. There were a couple rows of seats and tables facing a presentation area, but our “desks” were equipped with four glasses of Long-Island wine, and three pork and beef hors d’oeuvres. The food was prepared by chef Caroline Fidanza of Diner restaurant in Williamsburg. I wish all my classes were so yummy!

The lecture was about local, grassfed meat, and our teachers, Jennifer Small of Flying Pigs Farm and Dan Gibson of Grazin’ Angus Acres, gave us the run-down of a life in the day of a Black Angus Steer, and a rare-breed pig, respectively.

More after the jump