Pelham Slow Food Celebrates Terre Madre Day

Terra Madre Day, December 10, was observed in the most convivial and delicious style by the membership of Pelham Slow Food at Pan Cafe in St. Catharines. Proprietor (and Slow Food member) Alex presented a menu of locally sourced foods (menu below) and credited the producers in her introduction to each course. Guests were encouraged to bring their own wine, and a nice variety of local Niagara wines appeared, including Inniskillin, 13th Street, Organized Crime, Creekside, and Vineland Estates.

Alex also offered a toast to Mother Earth that eloquently summarized the need for consciousness-raising organizations such as Slow Food, and events such as Terra Madre Day. Twenty-seven glasses were raised to those sentiments.

The Pelham Convivium joined 108 other convivia around the globe in honouring Mother Earth on this designated day, and a picture of the group will join pictures from all the other convivia on the Slow Food Website to mark this first Terra Madre Day.

The Menu for Pelham Slow Food's Terra Madre Dinner at Pan Cafe

Appetizer: local goat’s cheese, bread (de la Terre bakery), figs (St. Lawrence Market)

Soup: butternut squash (St. Catharines market) with roasted garlic (Vivek)

Main Course: roasted duck legs (Lakeland Farms) with red cabbage and mashed potatoes with celeriac (Vivek)

Salad: Vivek’s Greens with a maple vinaigrette (White Meadows Farms)

Dessert: Cheesecake with apple compote (Beamer's Orchards)

espresso/cappucino

December 2009: A Tradition of Christmas Feasting

With Christmas just around the corner, many of us are already preparing for the feast which inevitably accompanies the celebration. Like Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner is an ideal Slow Food meal (not that we’d want to feast like that every day!) It is traditionally cooked at home, usually made up of ingredients that are mostly local, and consumed in a convivial atmosphere with family and friends.

Although our North American Christmas traditions are well established, they aren’t really that old…nor are they shared by much of the rest of the world. In fact, even in the Christian tradition, feasting at Christmas was not part of the celebration of Christ’s birth until about 800 years after the Nativity. Even the date of the Nativity was not set in the Christian calendar until more than 350 years after it happened, with January, March, April, and May at different times being recognized as the month of Jesus’ birth. It seems certain that the December 25th date was settled on for its association with the rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice. The date had been in use by many religions previously to recognize the sun’s victory over winter darkness.

However, once Christians settled on a date and decided it should be marked by feasting, they got to work with enthusiasm. Kings Charlemagne, Edmund, and William the Conqueror were crowned on Christmas amid huge celebrations and lavish meals, and Richard II marked Christmas in 1377 with a feast that featured 28 roast oxen and 300 sheep! In reaction to the excesses of Christmas feasting, the Puritans banned Christmas during their tenure in power in 17th Century England, and the Puritans who arrived on the Mayflower continued to outlaw the celebration of Christmas in the Boston area between 1659 and 1681. In fact, the United States has frequently been ambivalent about Christmas, and stopped celebrating it for years after the Revolutionary War, depicting it as an “English” celebration!

It really wasn’t until the 19th century that Christmas as we know it began to take shape in North America. And, largely through the influence of television, the North American Christmas has become the pervasive style in much of the world. I was startled to see Christmas displays in Athens shop windows that featured mounds of cotton-batten snow and icicle-dripping pine trees. Pictures from tropical Brazil show the same geographically impossible conformity to the North American ideal.

However, many nations have feasting celebrations that have very little in common with ours, except that Christmas is an opportunity for friends and family to sit down together, enjoy each other’s company, and take part in the tradition of the Christmas feast. In Australia, Christmas is right at mid summer, so the feast might be shrimp, steak, and chicken cooked on the barbecue at the beach. In Norway, as in many other countries, the feast is held on Christmas Eve, and Norwegians might enjoy cod, haddock, and lutefisk for their family meal. Similarly, the Portuguese traditional Christmas feast is salted dry codfish with boiled potatoes, eaten at midnight on Christmas Eve. In Jamaica, it’s rice, peas, chicken, ox tail and curried goat, while Czechs enjoy fish soup, eggs, and carp.

Whatever the tradition, whatever the ingredients, whenever it’s served, the Christmas meal is another opportunity to see the ideals of the Slow Food Movement in action. Enjoy yours at home with family and friends!

November 2009: “Terra Madre” (Mother Earth) Day

The Slow Food organization is dedicated to principles that include choosing locally grown food and honouring the producers of that food. It also embraces the idea of food consumption as an important part of life, not just a means of fueling up. To these ends, Slow Food has declared December 10th “Terra Madre” Day, a day to put those principles into action.

Across the world, the members of Slow Food, organized into local “convivia” will be marking the day, each in its own way. That means that some 100,000 members and their friends, in 132 countries will be finding ways to pay homage to the farmers and cheese makers, butchers and winemakers, canners and herders who often are taken for granted as we sit down to our meals. And while honouring the producers of their food, they will be preparing and eating it in the company of friends and family and treating their meal as the social, “convivial” event it should be.

Here’s a chance for all of us to pay particular attention to what and how we eat, by marking this one day down for a celebratory, home-cooked meal featuring local food. Here’s a menu suggestion for December 10th.

Start with garlic soup (recipe below), an astonishingly good soup that tastes not at all of garlic, but packs all its healthy cold-fighting benefits. This is a staple in our house all winter long. We stock up on Ontario garlic when it’s available and keep the bulbs in a cool, dark, dry place that will ensure that it lasts through until spring. With luck, we’ll be able to avoid having to buy that Chinese or South American supermarket garlic that is a pale imitation of the real stuff.

For a main course, choose an Ontario produced meat such as beef, pork, or lamb, roasted in the oven surrounded by unpeeled potatoes and local sweet potatoes that will cook in the juices of the meat. Alongside, serve Brussels sprouts (Ontario grown ones should still be available) sautéed after steaming in a little orange juice and sprinkled with orange zest. A cheese course of one of Upper Canada Cheese Company’s delicious cheeses (“Upper Canada Gold” or “Comfort Cream,” produced in Jordan) served with thin slices of baguette from one of our fine local bakeries makes a great transition to dessert. And dessert should be pie made from Ontario apples or those Niagara cherries you put in the freezer last July. If pastry-baking isn’t your thing, delicious pies made from local produce are available at Pelham’s bakeries.

Wine for this feast might include an oaked chardonnay with the soup, a hearty “Bordeaux” blend of merlot, cabernet franc, and cabernet sauvignon with the main course and the cheese, and an ice wine or late harvest with dessert… all, it goes without saying, from one of Niagara’s world-class wineries. Featherstone’s Canadian Oak Chardonnay (aged in barrels made of Canadian oak) would add a local touch, and nearby Henry of Pelham makes red wines that are consistently among the best in Niagara.

Whatever you decide for a meal on December 10th, raise a glass to our farmers and food producers, and spare a thought for our Terra Madre.

Winter Garlic Soup

1 litre chicken stock
1 head of Ontario garlic, cloves separated and peeled
3 slices of stale (2 or 3 day-old) country bread
½ tsp chili seeds (or to taste)
Salt and pepper to taste
Cut the garlic cloves in half and boil them gently along with the chili seeds in half the chicken stock. While they are boiling (about 20 minutes until soft) cut the crusts from the bread, tear it into small pieces, and soak it in a bowl of water. When the garlic is soft, pour it along with the hot chicken stock into a food processor or blender and process until the garlic is integrated into the stock. Squeeze the water out of the bread (it will be quite mushy, almost like a paste) and, with the processor running, add the bread to the soup. When the soup is thick and smooth, put it in a saucepan with the reserved chicken stock and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally and adjusting the seasoning.

October 2009: Family Meal Time

A recent conversation with a friend who is a teacher emphasized something that has been a recurring theme over the past year. In an attempt to get to know his students as they enter class in the new school year, he asks them to write the answers to a few questions about themselves. One of the questions is “How many times a week do you sit down with your family for a meal?” This teacher is fully aware of the research that clearly links family meals with student performance in the classroom, and even wellbeing outside of school.

This conversation prompted me to reprint a column from last year that several people have commented on. With the kids starting a new year at school, now is the ideal time to think about a new start around the dinner table at home.

What simple activity can increase a child’s grades, reduce the likelihood of drug, alcohol, and tobacco use, and decrease the incidence of teen obesity and depression? Eating together as a family.

Several studies have clearly shown these results; one from the University of Minnesota even statistically eliminated all possible variables like income, and even how cohesive the family was, and concluded that it’s actually sitting down as a family at mealtimes that was the primary cause of significant improvements in children’s health and wellbeing… especially among girls.

Not surprisingly, the studies found that adolescents eating regular family meals ate more fruit and vegetables, got more calcium, and drank significantly fewer soft drinks. However, the benefits of sitting down to a family meal extend far beyond these, and include reduction in substance, tobacco, and alcohol use and significantly better academic performance and mental health when compared to those eating fewer family meals. And the benefits increased with each additional family meal per week!

Television is the biggest challenge for family meal time. According to the Canadian Pediatric Association, children at age 15 have spent more time in front of a television than in classrooms. And kids aren’t the only offenders. Meals in front of the TV tend to be reheated frozen snacks that are, simply put, health hazards. Television programming is a very poor substitute for the kind of family communication and bonding that takes place around the dinner table.

Accepting the benefits of family mealtime is one thing, doing something about it is quite another. Adolescents have always been difficult to convince that doing things as a family are “cool” and even beneficial. Add the overwhelming distractions available, from part time jobs to sports to video games to computers to cell phones to television and it’s a really hard sell to convince kids that sitting down to a family meal is a useful or enjoyable activity.

Experts in child and adolescent psychology offer some guidelines, but each family will have to formulate its own set of principles (preferably in conference with the kids) that will guide family mealtimes.

o Turn off the television. Agree also to turn off cell phones and let the household phone pick up and take messages. Importantly, the parents have to take the lead here and set an example.
o This is not a time for discussing serious, controversial, or delicate subjects. The meal conversation should be light, fun, and upbeat and the mood supportive and comfortable.
o Get everyone involved in the meal. Where there’s the interest, involve the family in planning the week’s menus, helping with the shopping, and joining in the food preparation. Clean up should also be shared fairly. Eventually, maybe older kids can take a lead role in preparing dinner (and the parents get clean-up duty).
o To begin with, the family meal does not have to be complicated. Even sitting down together for a take-out pizza or (better) a take out meal from one of Pelham’s excellent caterers like Lorenzo’s Fine Foods, Wild Flower, or Whisk and Ladle, constitutes a family meal so long as everyone sits down and eats together.
o Set a goal. Maybe begin with the commitment to sit down together as a family twice a week and discuss increasing the frequency as you all get used to the idea.
o Use the crock pot or slow cooker. Coming home to the smell of a home-cooked meal is a pretty good way to build enthusiasm for a family dinner.


On a related note, Slow Food Pelham’s annual “family dinner” at Featherstone Winery was a huge success. Forty guests, seated on the winery’s wrap-around verandah, enjoyed slow-roasted Featherstone Vineyard lamb with Featherstone Cabernet Franc, roasted vegetables by Pan Restaurant, delicious salads by Victory Herbs and Farms, and finished off the meal with home-cooked Niagara Peach Delight. It was a gorgeous September evening, shared among friends both new and old.

September 2009: Slow Food and slow cooking

As September comes to a close, so does trout season. As an avid fly-fisher, I tend to think of the year revolving around the late April opening of trout season and the late September close. Now that the season is ending and the fly tying gear comes out to while away the non-fishing hours, it’s part of the annual cycle to reflect on the year’s fishing. One of the trips I make every year is to Lake Placid, New York with a couple of fly-fishing friends to spend a week fishing the famous Ausable River. And one of the friends who comes on that trip every year is an outstanding cook. Hence the connection to Slow Food.

Peter Sullivan loves to cook and worked for many years in the hospitality and culinary departments at Niagara College. Pete takes over all the cooking chores during the week on the Ausable, and for everyone who attends, the evening meals are always a highlight. Pete is the master of slow cooking. Not necessarily Slow Food as an organization (although I know that he would be in sync with most of the aims and ideals of the movement), but long-simmered, savoury meats that provide delicious comfort on cool autumn nights, or, for that matter, after standing in cold mountain water all day in May. And since we release all the fish we catch, Pete gets to indulge his passion for slow cooking.

Pete’s specialty is Oxtails, and I honestly don’t think I have ever tasted beef that is so rich and delicious. Oxtails have been part of human cuisine for as long as we have been eating meat and didn’t throw anything away when a beast was slaughtered (often after years of toiling in the fields). Originally they really were the tails of oxen, but these days they are cow tails. At one time the tails of beef cattle were almost throw-away items and could be had for next to nothing… not any more. With only one tail per cow, and with a growing number of ethnic cooks who are familiar with them, and cooks like Pete who know how good they are, Oxtails are difficult to come by and far from cheap. They make the best beef stock, wonderful soups, and thick, hearty stews, but all Oxtail recipes depend on taking lots of time to make the tough meat fully tender and to extract the thick gelatin that lies in the marrow and connective tissue of the bones.

Pete is such a confident cook that his recipe for superb Oxtails varies from year to year, depending on what is available and what interests him. But this is a recipe that combines Pete’s ingredients and techniques to produce comfort food par excellence. Serve it with garlic mashed potatoes and fresh bread to soak up the delicious juice.

Pete’s Oxtails

Thoroughly brown about 3 to 4 pounds of Oxtails in hot olive oil, then remove the Oxtails and add 2 or 3 chopped onions, 4 chopped cloves of garlic, and 3 carrots chopped into ½ inch pieces. When they are soft (about 5 minutes), add enough Bovril to cover (about 2 cups) and 2 Tbsp of Grace’s Jerk Sauce. (Alternately, instead of the Bovril and Jerk Sauce, add a large can of tomatoes and a cup of red wine, 1½ teaspoons of ground ginger, salt and pepper to taste, and some cayenne if you like.) Heat to boiling and add the Oxtails. Transfer the pot to a 275 degree oven and cook for 2 to 3 hours. When the meat is falling off the bone, use a slotted spoon to transfer the Oxtails to a dish and skim the fat from the liquid. Serve the Oxtails with the juice on the side to spoon over. Just as good (maybe better) when heated up the next day.

August 2009: Slow Food Pelham’s year of living well

With August, Slow Food Pelham’s membership is gearing up for our second annual Featherstone Winery Lamb Roast. Every year, Dave Johnson, the winemaker and vineyard manager (and tractor driver, delivery man, floor sweeper, plumber, electrician, construction engineer, maintenance man, and occasional salesman) at Featherstone brings in a flock of lambs to thin the grape leaves on his vines, allowing the sun to fully ripen the grapes. The result is excellent wines from this small Victoria Road winery… and delicious lamb. Slow Food Pelham roasts two of Dave’s lambs on a spit at the winery and serves up a complete meal of lamb and local vegetables, accompanied by the outstanding Cabernet Franc produced at the winery. This is just one of the events that Slow Food Pelham has presented over its short lifespan.

It was only in February of 2008 that Slow Food Pelham introduced itself to the community with an information night at de la Terre bakery in Fonthill, followed by a gourmet dinner with Henry of Pelham wines at Wildflower restaurant in March. In July of last year, the group had a sensory evaluation and tasting activity under the expert guidance of Brock University’s Isabelle Lesschaeve, and followed the late August lamb roast with a visit to Jacobs Apple Farm on the outskirts of Fonthill to understand the problems faced by local producers.

This year, the group had an introduction to the mystique of cassoulet with a tasting and virtual demonstration in March. That was followed in April with a special presentation for a Seeds of Destiny talk: Slow Food Pelham provided lunch for those in attendance, emphasizing locally grown produce.

June was especially busy, with the Slow Food members enjoying a potluck lunch and comparative tasting of Meritage wines at Alvento Winery in Vineland. Meritage is the name given to red wines blended with Cabernet and Merlot… the traditional wines of Bordeaux. This blind tasting of Niagara’s 2006 vintage was especially interesting because, unknown to the tasters, two of the wines were identical. This serves both as a benchmark of the taster’s skill, and a humbling reminder of the difficulty of definitively evaluating wines. June also saw a Slow Food display at Fonthill Library, featuring some of the food-related books that Slow Food Pelham has donated to the library, and a presentation at Pelham Market that featured a taste comparison between California and Niagara strawberries (guess which won unanimously!) Later in the month, the group had an exclusive guided tour of Clos Jordanne winery… a facility normally not open to the public. This tour was just a week after Clos Jordanne’s chardonnay had stunned the wine world by winning a blind tasting in Montreal against all the best chards from both the New World (California and Australia) and Europe.

June peaked with a meal to remember at Fonthill’s ZEST Restaurant. Chef David Watt presented a five course spectacular that highlighted specific local farms and producers, including Lake Erie perch, greens from Pelham Market, Cumbrae Farms beef, and local strawberries… among other delights. Each course was paired with a matching wine from Alvento Winery and introduced by winemaker, Bruno Moos. The forty guests declared the evening a triumph.

It’s been a busy year for Slow Food Pelham and for Renée Giraud who is the leader of the Pelham Convivium and inspiration behind many of the group’s activities. And these are only the public events over the past year. Monthly meetings in members’ homes always feature great food prepared by members according to a monthly theme (from Asian to Spanish to French Canadian), and excellent wine, along with lively conversation in an appropriately “convivial” atmosphere. It doesn’t say anywhere that promoting the virtues of local food, well prepared, and served at leisure in a relaxed setting can’t be fun! For more information or to join, check the Slow Food website or email prima_renee@hotmail.com

July 2009: Niagara Culinary Institute, a local gem

Take a group of top chefs from across Canada, including headliners Mark Picone and Michael Olson; add state of the art cooking facilities, including a 200 seat multi-media culinary theatre; combine with the more than 30 years of education excellence provided by Niagara College, and you’ve got the Niagara Culinary Institute. The NCI is an amazing resource for the Niagara Region’s food and tourism industries, and yet it’s barely on the map for most of the people who live here.

The NCI is based at the Niagara on the Lake campus of Niagara College, just off the QEW beside White Oaks Hotel and Spa. It features several food preparation labs where students, under the direction of superb chef professors learn everything culinary from bread making to béchamel, from Black Forest Torte to Bouillabaisse. The showpiece of the NCI is the circular dining room with a wall of windows that looks out over the college’s own vineyards to the Niagara Escarpment. It’s here that diners from across Niagara and around the world can discover the amazing quality and artistry of the food produced by senior students, guided by their professional chef instructors. The dining room is open to the public for lunch Tuesday to Sunday, and dinner Wednesday to Saturday, and features a menu that emphasizes local products and innovative preparation.

Combined with the NCI is Niagara College’s Teaching Winery, the only one of its kind in Canada. Here, the winemakers of the future are trained in a fully operational facility that annually turns out award-winning wines. Graduates of the Oenology and Viticulture program are the winemakers, assistant winemakers, and vineyard managers at many of Niagara’s wineries, and, in fact, of wineries around the world. Every aspect of the winemaking process can be covered on site, since the college has a 20 hectare vineyard where the students learn their art literally from the ground up. The college is currently building a new facility for the winery that will provide not only a modern wine making plant, but a wine education centre. A small brewery is in the plans to begin training students in the art of beer making.

The Niagara Culinary Institute and Niagara College Teaching Winery are two of the many resources we in Niagara can be proud of and use to our advantage. Even if we will never take a full program of study to become chefs or vineyard managers, restaurant administrators or winemakers, we can enjoy the Continuing Education courses offered by the college, using the same facilities and some of the same chef professors as the day programs; offerings this summer range from sushi to baking to Indian cuisine, most of them 3 or 4 hour courses that emphasize hands-on learning. Or we can dine in style at the NCI dining room, an outing that never fails to impress visitors from outside the region. Or, we can enjoy the first class wines produced by the Teaching Winery; there’s a wine boutique featuring all their products just inside the doors to the dining room.

With resources like these at our doorstep, we in Niagara can effortlessly embrace the Slow Food principles of high quality locally produced food enjoyed in a convivial atmosphere.

Here’s a recipe supplied by Niagara College Chef-Professor and Fonthill resident, Bob Demers. Bob says that most of the ingredients can be found at “our cool local market.”

Mediterranean Clubhouse

Yield: enough for 8
1 10 inch round of focaccia bread (we make our own at the College, but you can buy it from one of our local bakeries)
3 large ripe tomatoes, sliced
2 sweet red peppers, roasted, skinned and cut into strips (also can be bought)
2 yellow zucchini
2 green zucchini
2 large cooking onions, sliced thick
1 ½ pounds (680 grams) sliced Black Forest ham
8 ounce (225 grams) grated Swiss cheese
2 ounce (60 ml) olive or vegetable oil
1 jar black olive tapenade spread (store-bought)
Salt and pepper to taste
• Slice the zucchini lengthwise, ¼ inch (6 mm) and brush with the oil, Sprinkle on salt and pepper; grill them until soft, cool
• Pan fry the onions until golden and then cool
• Slice the bread horizontally into three rounds
• Assemble the sandwich by spreading olive paste on bottom piece of bread then layer with half of the ham and vegetables. Add a second round of bread, spread with olive paste and repeat layering. Top with the third round of bread.
• Press the sandwich for 20 minutes with a baking sheet or a platter topped with soup cans. Wrap up in tight in plastic wrap for travelling (picnic).
• Cut into 8 wedges and serve with salad or chips.
• Enjoy.