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Preserving tradition
By CHRIS SHERMAN © St. Petersburg Times,
You might think a country 225 years young, which gave birth to the drive-through, doesn't have any traditional food left. But we do have some -- heirloom apples, local honey, sharp aged Cheddar cheeses, butcher shop sausages, local barbecue and old-vines zinfandel. And in the past 20 years Americans have rapidly revived nearly lost arts of baking bread, brewing beer and making farmhouse cheeses, handmade mustards and relishes. Indeed, when Slow Food USA took America's new artisan cheesemakers and a half ton of their artisan cheeses to Italy for a cheese fair last week, they felt "triumphant."
The Americans were also thrilled to find themselves with other cheesemakers, not viewed as oddities. For years many experts and gourmets translated good food as "imported" or "from California." Only recently has it come to include specialty domestic foods and organic crops, often so pricy they are called boutique products rather than the work of cottage industries. American foodies are slowly making the international Slow Food movement their own, attracting thousands of members and starting more than 50 chapters, or convivia, here. While Slow Food echoes many new trends in American food -- California chef Alice Waters and cookbook author Deborah Madison are strong supporters -- it differs from traditional appetites for luxury or dour demands by health experts for strict, sterile diets.
Another distinction is an unashamed love of taste and enjoyment. "Is it a slow food? It's all about the pleasures of the table, pursuit of the pleasure. Pleasure is a very big part," Tooker said. Thus Slow Food goes well beyond green tea, brown rice and tofu. The movement celebrates not only artisan breads and the fruits and vegetables of a farmers' market but goes on to embrace good butters, cheeses and milks, full of fat and cholesterol, red meat and especially the great range of cured pork products, the taste of sea salt and, certainly, raising a glass of wine or beer. The growth of microbreweries handcrafting beer from fresh ingredients may be the best example of homegrown American slow food. Consequently, Carlo Petrini, the Italian journalist who founded the organization in outrage against the arrival of McDonald's in Rome 20 years ago, has difficulty communicating with many American food experts and nutritionists, Tooker said. "He told us they sometimes give him a stomachache. They don't seem to have ever had any pleasure." Slow Food's growth so far follows the spread of New American cooking, with the greatest interest in California, followed by university towns and big cities, where groups host tours of local farms, food tastings and banquets, and become active in social causes. A South Florida chapter has just been organized by an importer of Italian wines, but no others exist in the state. The group faces one problem: A suspicion that local foods here are a privilege of affluent consumers and fancy restaurants, as opposed to countries where pride in a region's food is widely shared. Yet there are exceptions -- such as barbecue -- and Slow Food brought pit cooks from around the country to Brooklyn to show off the differences in American barbecue. "Slow Food doesn't have to be expensive," says Martins. "You can buy a different kind of apple in a farmer's market or drink a beer from a microbrewery for a few dollars, and it's a full flavor, it tastes like something." "We don't ask people to live the slow life all the time," he says, but to take time to enjoy food or drink and to recognize the people who grew or made it and respect the land or waters from which it came. One place such a philosophy struck home is New Orleans, a city whose love of food and pride in its flavor started long before the rest of the country ate jambalaya. By the 1980s, Tooker realized New Orleans was losing some of its treasures. At a local food fair, she prepared two historic foods: calas, a rice doughnut older than a beignet, topped with Creole cream cheese. A man in his 70s took a bite, and it brought tears to his eyes. "His mama used to make that for his breakfast. I thought then, this was something valuable, worth saving." Since that day she has given out her recipe for the cream cheese -- once made by hanging spoiled milk in cheesecloth under oak trees -- at every cooking class. "I know dozens of dozens of people who make that at home now, and when you think about how Americans are about dairy and how afraid they are of germs, I'm really proud." Now a small family dairy is making the Creole cream cheese to sell at farmers' markets, along with butter cream and cream-on-the-top milk. The reason for the success is that the taste was familiar and beloved, for cream cheese had been a nursery food, a fast-breaking meal during Lent and a holiday dish in the days before homogenization. Now Creole cream cheese has been recognized by Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste, a recognition of endangerment that may keep it alive, and the calas, which are still made in Ghana and which some slaves peddled so successfully on the streets of New Orleans that they bought their freedom, will be part of a new Slow Food project, the Hearth of Taste, to recognize folkways of the American kitchen. Finding slow foods seems impossible in modern Florida, where farming is massive, personal roots are shallow and seasons almost nonexistent, but it is worth the search and not too late to begin. Slowly, Florida farms and fishing fleets are beginning to look for specialty crops. Small operations are beginning to brew beer, bake bread, grow organic crops and even make goat cheese. Butcher shops may be scarce, but they still make a world of sausages and cured meats. Waves of immigrants have introduced a bumper crop of new foods to our markets. We should also look to the past that does exist here. There are ambrosia melons in the fields, swamp cabbage and okra in the palmetto scrub and Duncan grapefruits in the groves and dooryards. Floridians before us knew how to cook up sugar cane syrup and smoke mullet. Our boats harvest mullet roe as well as stone crab, rock shrimp and pompano. These are foods worth keeping and enjoying. Slowly. For more informationSlow Food Editore publishes a variety of tasting manuals, travel itineraries, historic treatises on food and other works: Osterie d'Italia 2001, an annual guide to traditional Italian eating establishments that specialize in regional dishes and modest prices (in Italian only). $22. Italian Wines 2001, an annual review of Italian wines published in cooperation with Gambero Rosso, which bestows the respected one-, two- and three-glass rating on Italian wines and wineries. $30.59. Slow and Slowine, two handsome quarterly journals dedicated to all aspects of food and wine. Slow Food membership is $60 a year. For information on joining or on upcoming events or to obtain publications, write to P.O. Box 1737, New York, NY 10021, consult its Web site at www.slowfood.com or call (212) 988-5146.
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
