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10 THE AGE Saturday, November 29, 2008 11

FAST FACTS

Getting there Etihad flies from Sydney toMilan for $1400 with an aircraft change inAbu Dhabi (non-stop flights fromMelbourne to Abu Dhabi start in March).The cheapest fare is with Air China for$1155, with an aircraft change in Beijing orShanghai (overnight accommodation atairline’s expense if flights don’t connect).Japan Airlines has a fare for $1430 with acompulsory overnight stop in Tokyo (atairline’s expense). Thai Airways has a farefor $1551, with an aircraft change inBangkok. (Fares are low-season returnfrom Melbourne and Sydney, excludingtax.) Turin is a two-hour drive from MilanMalpensa airport. Alba is a further one-hour drive from Turin.

Eating and staying there� L’Osteria del Paluch, Via Superga 44,Baldissero Torinese. Phone +39 0119408750 or see ristorantepaluch.it.� Osteria dell’Unione, Via Alba 1, 12050Treiso. Phone +39 0173 638303.� Casa Scaparone, Scaparone 8, 12051Alba. Doubles from ¤85 ($172). Phone+39 0173 33946 or see casascaparone.it.� The next Salone del Gusto will be heldin 2010; see slowfood.com.� The Alba White Truffle Festival is heldevery year in October-November; seefieradeltartufo.org.

DESTINATIONITALY

Pleasure ata snail’s paceKendall Hill finds the soul of the Slow Food movement in thefarmhouses and truffle markets of Piedmont.

Piedmont’s basket of unique produce includes Tallegio andCastelmagno cheeses, hazelnuts, frogs and Biella lamb.

Preserving traditions ... salamis and sausages presented at last month’s Salone del Gusto in Turin; (right) diners gather at Casa Scaparone, a farm near Alba. Photo left: AFP

Piedmont provisions ... (clockwise from top)truffle sellers in Alba; the Piedmonteselandscape at La Morra; dinnertime at CasaScaparone agriturismo; a white-truffle diggerand his hound.Photos: Getty Images, Photolibrary

Carlo Petrini cuts a tall, designer-stubbled figure in the glare of the tele-vision lights at Turin’s Lingotto con-vention centre. He’s shaking hands

with a Mapuche Indian in traditional dress, cre-ating an irresistible photo opportunity for thenetworks – and for the crowds of spectatorsthronging the security rope, digital cameras aloft.A grim bouncer stands guard against overexcite-ment in the presence of the founder and presi-dent of the global Slow Food movement.

And Petrini does arouse a lot of excitement.Each time I see him during the Salone del Gusto,Italy’s biennial celebration of Slow Food, he istailed by an entourage of assistants, media andadmirers. It seems odd that someone who urgedthe world to rediscover life’s simple pleasuresshould become the subject of such celebrity. Butthe man – like the Slow Food movement itself –has long outgrown his humble origins.

Petrini first made headlines in 1989 when hecampaigned successfully against McDonald’sopening in Rome beside the Spanish Steps. Thedispute sowed the seeds of Slow Food, the move-ment that promotes the pleasures of eating well.He has since morphed into a global guru andpolitician who can claim Prince Charles and AlGore as friends. In 2004, Time magazine anoin-ted him a European hero for creating what it cal-led ‘‘the ethical consumer’’.

Slow Food now has more than 80,000 mem-bers in 122 countries but its ultimate expressionoccurs once every two years in Turin, the capitalof the northern Italian region of Piedmont, at thefive-day Salone del Gusto, or Taste Fair. Thesalone debuted in 1996 in a small corner of theold Fiat factory; today it is a gastronomic jugger-naut that spans four vast convention halls andcombines produce tastings and street food stallswith treatises against globalisation. It promotessocial justice and sustainability, lobbies againstdisappearing traditions, hosts lectures and tast-ings and symposiums and brings together a stag-gering array of producers from around theplanet – more than 5000 farmers, fishermen,breeders and cooks attended last month’s event.

Inside the Lingotto you can find foods asdiverse as Amparafaravola pink rice from

Madagascar and blue eggs from free-rangeAraucana chickens in Chile’s Temuco region,and sample disappearing taste sensations such asHerzegovina’s cheese in a sack and the once-common white artichokes of Campania. To pro-mote and protect these fragile food traditionsthere are debates, workshops, seminars, a marketof world foods, the international ideas exchangeof the Terra Madre and specialty programs topublicise indigenous culture. This year the saloneinvited musicians from 32 countries to perform,to illustrate that musical diversity, like agricul-tural diversity, is under threat.

Attending the festival is a fascinating experi-ence but it bears little resemblance to the prin-ciples of pleasure and enjoyment that underlinethe Slow Food philosophy. This year 180,000people poured through the entrance gates andclambered for free samples, wine tastings and –the scarcest commodity of all – somewhere to sit.(‘‘I have never seen it so busy,’’ said Australia’sfine-food seller Simon Johnson, who meets hisproducers at the show. ‘‘Most of the activities wedid were outside the trading hours of the SlowFood salone because it’s such chaos now.’’)

To experience the soul of the Slow Foodmovement, you need to follow Johnson’s leadand head off site. It’s easy to see why the SlowFood philosophy had its genesis in Piedmont(besides the fact Petrini lives here in the city ofBra, just south of Turin). This region is the ricebowl of Italy and has more DOP (trademarkedorigin) products than any other region exceptSicily. Its basket of unique produce includesTallegio and Castelmagno cheeses, hazelnuts,frogs, low-fat Biella lamb and dozens of wines.Turin, the capital, is itself the birthplace ofgrissini, vermouth, the aperitivo and Gian-duiotto chocolate.

The first steps on my journey to discover thetrue roots of slow food take me across the PoRiver and up Superga hill to L’Osteria delPaluch, an old farmhouse that has served sim-ple meals to travellers since 1902. These daysit’s a more sophisticated affair – its beautifulgardens are a drawcard for the city’s elite – butMarina Ramasso’s food remains true to its Pied-montese origins.

On a chilly, foggy October night I dine on herfondue-like bagna cauda, literally a ‘‘warm bath’’of garlic slow-cooked in milk flavoured withanchovies, oil and a little cream. It is served withvegetables – potato, beetroot, onion, capsicumand the essential winter ingredient of cardoons –and is the ultimate cold-comfort dish. Ramasso’sbanquet continues with mal fatto (‘‘badlymade’’) gnocchi of pumpkin, walnuts and Castel-magno cheese, a fabulous slow-cooked veal stew,

and fagottini di pesca, pastry-wrapped peacheswith amaretto biscuits and chocolate.

Ramasso tries to use only local producesourced from nearby farms and to cook onlyauthentic recipes. To this end she has been scour-ing homes and bookshops for cookbooks con-taining Piedmont’s culinary heritage. She showsme four 19th-century manuscripts she unearthedcontaining hand-written recipes and a book,

Gastronomia, that was written by Vailardi, cookto Charles Albert, king of Piedmont-Sardinia, inthe mid-1800s.

Passionate cooks are typical in Piedmont andit’s hard not to credit their passion to the diver-sity and quality of the local produce. At the top oftheir ingredients list is the tuber magnatum pico,the famed white truffle of Alba. When I visit thecity, about an hour north of Turin, it’s payingtribute to its prized fungus at its annual truffle

festival, held here since the 1930s. Inside the PalaTartufo (a much more compact and altogetherbetter-smelling conference hall than theLingotto) visitors admire displays of tiny, pale,honeycomb-coloured nuggets and marvel at theirprice tags – the market rate this year was S400($794) per 100 grams.

New supplies of the precious fungus arriveeach day to be authenticated by on-site judges

and then offered for sale in glass-topped cases.The cheapest white truffle specimens are meredots for about S15 but there’s an endless rangeof pastas and polentas, honeys, creams andcheeses for sale, all of them infused with thatirresistible aroma.

There is no mistaking truffle season in Alba.The six-week festival runs from October to mid-November but white truffles are available forslightly longer – the last three months of theyear, generally. Their presence is marked by acarnival atmosphere; pedestrians wander alongthe main thoroughfare of Vittorio Emmanueleinhaling the heady scent from street stalls andrestaurants doing a roaring trade in fungus-accented fare.

In the surrounding countryside of the Langhe,food lovers embark on weekend pilgrimages tosavour leisurely lunches at classic trattorias dot-ted among the Nebbiolo vines. I follow their leadand spend a lazy Sunday at Osteria dell’Unionein the hamlet of Treiso.

The ‘‘union’’ in the restaurant’s name refers tothe alliance of Slow Food producers whose prod-ucts are served here. I eat carne cruda all’albese,a plate of carpaccioed Alba beef doused in aro-matic olive oil, then ribbon-like tajarin pasta witha moreish veal and pork ragu, then a maize flourcake flavoured with cinnamon and hazelnutsand dripping with honey. The food is simple andirresistible and I’m not the only one who thinksso; the place is packed with grateful gourmands.

A few minutes’ drive away, in the village ofBarbaresco, local winemakers have gathered in ahall and church to host tastings of distinctivewines made from the famed Nebbiolo grapes.

Pier, a winemaker from the village of Nieve,insists I try his 2004 vintage because it’s ‘‘moretypical’’ than the 2005. It tastes of liquorice andblackberry and when I tell Pier I like it, he looksas if this is the best news he’s heard all day.

‘‘In Piedmont, you may have noticed, for usfood and wine is a mission,’’ he beams.

If I have any doubts about this they’re ban-ished by a memorable stay at an agriturismo afew kilometres outside Alba. Casa Scaparone is arambling stone farmhouse with five guest-rooms, a barn-full of animals, a vineyard, vegiecrops and persimmon trees laden with fat ripefruit. The original building dates back 500 yearsto when a small band of Alba residents (the Sca-paroni) fled to this hill to escape the plague. It

has been renovated in the 17th, 18th and 19thcenturies and most recently in 2000. That’s whenowners Battista and Alessandra Cornagliareturned home after 10 years working in Coted’Ivoire and set about creating their own Pied-montese paradise.

‘‘The idea was to have a self-sufficient farm,’’explains Battista over a glass of San Pagn, hiswittily named sparkling rose. ‘‘We wanted to getaway from globalisation.’’

Eight years later the couple produce almosteverything they need on their nine-hectare prop-erty. Battista is something of a Renaissance man.After quitting the corporate world he taughthimself the arts of butchery, winemaking,biodynamic farming and animal husbandry. Heis also a talented musician and leader of a six-piece band that revives Piedmontese songs. Ales-sandra raises their three children and runs thebusy kitchen that feeds hundreds of visitors atweekends. She is also a charming host.

As we sit at a table under a vaulted brick ceil-ing for Friday dinner, nibbling on mushrooms,polenta and crepes containing the farm’s goat’scheese, Alessandra says she finds it difficult toexplain the philosophy that guides their lives.

‘‘I don’t think philosophy is words,’’ she says.‘‘I would prefer that you understand it throughmy work. You are here and everything youtouch, everything you feel, is real.’’

Both their grandparents ran simple osteriasbut their parents ‘‘cancelled their roots’’ by leav-ing the land and getting jobs in the city. Battistaand Alessandra say they are trying to re-establishthose roots because ‘‘if you forget the past thenthe future is unknown’’.

By 10pm the farmhouse is filled with dinersand a procession of plates – a flan of white car-doons with fondue, a superb oven-baked pasta,gnocchi with fresh cream and hazelnuts and atripe dish typical of the season – appears on ourtable. Battista is at the piano singing. Alessandrajoins him in the chorus. Guests gather under thearched entrance and sing along, swaying to therhythms of their ancestral songs.

This, rather than the madhouse of the Salonedel Gusto, is the essence of the Slow Food move-ment – preserving traditions, renouncing the ratrace, pursuing pleasure.

Kendall Hill travelled courtesy of the ItalianGovernment Tourist Board.