Salone del Gusto 2008: part 2

Slow Food’s Salone del Gusto takes place very two years in the Piedmont capital of Turin, and alternates with Cheese, which takes place in Bra, Slow Food’s home town (also in Piedmont). The Salone del Gusto runs concurrently with Terra Madre[2], the ‘academic’ part of the fair. As there seemed to be some confusion among colleagues of mine who were planning their trip to Turin, I’ll explain in simple terms the difference between the two—the food is at Salone del Gusto, the hot air is at Terra Madre. If you count calories or are on a diet, you’re safer at the latter.

The Salone del Gusto was packed to the gills. “Learning” in a context in which there are so many people all out to get a taste of the action, pun intended, is quite a big word. If you stopped and interacted with the smorgasbord of information available, you may have learned something here and there, and I admit I went away a bit enlightened, but not with anything particularly meaningful. But that’s because, to be painfully honest, I went to Turin to eat. No ifs ands or buts about it. If I couldn’t eat it, I wasn’t interested in seeing it. And for those of you who have never been but would like to, I highly recommend it. Start a year in advance making plans, and a month prior for dining reservations because the city fills up with people who are interested in the exact same things you are interested in and want to eat and drink the exact same stuff that appeals to you.  [above, Baby Alice's arm band for re-entry to the Fair.  Bread from a breadmaker's consortium]

The fair is organized by type of products, the aisles called “lanes”  “Cheese Lane” (Via dei formaggi), Chocolate Lane, and so forth…There were national producers and international present.  Beer, wine and spirits were also represented.  In a third pavillion, the Presidia were represented.  A Presidium in short is a product that is native (traditional) to a certain area.  Producers agree to a strict set of criteria designed to guarantee quality and excellence and protect traditional production techniques.  The criteria cover  not only in the final product but throughout the production or cultivation of the item, to the packaging.  You can read more about them at the Presidi website.

What is the Salone really about? I shall start at the very beginning…of my vision about Italian food and which is the best kind. It’s all good. At least the good stuff is.  In terms of regional foods, which is part of what Slow Food is all about, I think Piedmont is at the top of the list because by my criteria (the cheese, wine, cold cuts test) the Piedmont region produces the best cheeses (Castelmagno, Gorgonzola, Testun, Toma, Bra duro, Robiola, Reblochon), cured meats, wines (Barolo, Barbaresco, Nebbiolo, Barbera d’Asti), and its pretty competitive in the ravioli department (In Piedmont, these are called agnolotti or the smaller ones are called plin[3]). Sicily, I think is next, maybe even tied for first. Its swordfish and tuna laden cuisine, with almonds, pistachios, capers, and citrus flavors, ricotta cheese desserts (which, together with Neapolitan desserts are the best in Italy, hands down) are all the rage. And of course Sicilian cheeses and wines rock. [above:  Classes of children attended on the first day to learn about different products from different regions.]

After that, well, you can put the rest of them in any order, except maybe for the upper upper regions, like Valle d’Aosta, Trentino Alto-Adige, and maybe Friuli Venezia Giulia, which all seem to be more similar in many ways to their
European neighbors’ cuisines. Each region has redeeming qualities in any number of areas, and in fact it’s really really hard to not choose at least one or two products from each one as part of my “favorites”… [Above:  Spanish Jamon producer, Spicy Anchovies in oil]

But why is this relevant? Because Salone del Gusto is a food fair which presents products from all of these regions, and some non-Italian products. To single out any particular product from any one category (Cured meats, cheeses,
sweets/chocolate, beer, wine, etc.) would be a little unfair to all the others because they were all good, with few exceptions. This is thanks to the definite quality criteria for the products and producers present. The end result is that the products which appear in the fair are very high quality from small to medium sized producers who take great pride in their product, many of which are made according to traditional techniques with traditional equipment, or by hand. Many of these producers do not have the capacity to produce large quantities of their product, which also increases the value of the product in the eno-gastronomical panorama. In these cases, perhaps you found consortia representing a specific
product or type of producer, like the consortium for Gorgonzola cheese which represents certified producers of the cheese in Piedmont and Milan (the only regions where cheese with that name can be produced).  [Above:  a taste of cheese...don't ask what kind! Scyavuru mandarino tardivo marmalade, Tuscan salami from Macelleria Falorni.   Below, Gorgonzola; Chocolate and Hazelnut cheese]

Because each producer is at the top of his/her game, prioritizing the products based on taste was quite difficult. When I got to the end of each of the two days we spent at the fair and asked Baby Alice, “So which was your favorite?” her answer was the same as mine. “They all blended together.” But in a good way. It was good to taste the finest samples of our favorite foods, and to be introduced to new foods. And this is another reason the fair is so interesting
and worth making the trip at least once: the possibility to taste things you wouldn’t necessarily be able to taste elsewhere, or at least not easily. [Below:  Grappino cheese, Making Porchetta sandwiches, a typical preparation from Ariccia, a town north of Rome, Calabrian spicy sausage]

[Above:  Lardo di Colonnata - lard from the northern Tuscany, wooden hoops for forming cheese wheels, a tortilla machine at a Mexican exhibitor's stand, La Molina "Breakfast for Two" chocolate set]

A few producers we really liked

Pasta from Gragnano (Naples, Campania)

Canestrello by Pezzaro (Cossato Biella, Piedmont – traditional wafer cookie with chocolate center)

Formaggi Busti (Tuscany)

Scyavuru marmalades (Sicily)

Ursini Olive Oil (Marche)

Tea Together marmalades (France)

Slow Asti (Piedmont)

Beertown USA Brewers Association (Colorado)

Antica Macelleria Falorni

Amerigo 1934 (Emilia Romagna)

Giolito Cheese

Pasticceria Alba (Piedmont)

Maison della Nocciola (Piedmont hazelnut association)

Trinci coffee

Presidia

Stockfish Presidium from the Isle of S?r?ya

Il Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio represented by Azienda Agricola Casa Barone

Salsiccia Mirandesa from Portugal

Tsamarella from Cyprus Pitisilia Region (Dried goat with salt and oregano)

Terra di Porcina from Musciscka (Goat jerky)

Vildväxande Vanilj Från Chinantla, Mexico (Mexican Vanilla)

---

[1] From Salone del Gusto website. As if anything about Slow Food “assigns the right value to food”…It assigns a certain value to food, yes. And it did make sense for Slow Food to create the Terra Madre network in an attempt to capture the interest in SlowFood and divert it to some of the underlying issues and ‘values’. But the “right” value??  For the record, and context of this article, as a member of Slow Food Italy, however, and a reader of their magazine, I find it a bit hard to understand where exactly it is I am supposed to align myself. A few issues ago, the magazine wrote about the difficulties they face in growing their membership worldwide, and how to go about doing so. In the United States, Slow Food USA is floundering for the same reason, immobilized by the “white, privileged people’s club” label. Since I am neither white nor privileged (by USA standards), am living in Italy, and work in the field of food aid, I see the whole Slow Food movement more as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fall in love with a publicist kind of affair, or the “De Beers” wedding ring formula model, if you will, where the movement mutates to fit each market, or doesn’t as the case may be. Because I deal with real food issues daily, not about good tasting food but about food for survival, I see a few critical fundamental gaping holes in the Slow Food marketing machine. And until Slow Food actually acknowledges these issues as part of their movement, it will remain to me an ‘aesthetic movement’ rather than a substantive movement.

[3] Slow Food publishes a monothematic book about the raviolo and its various forms and flavors according to each Italian region.

[4] And this value  does nothing toward feeding the 923 million hungry people in the world.  Which is what many people might consider the “right” value of food…