Neapolitan Ragù or Ragù Napolitano

Published by Wednesday, September 4, 2019 Permalink 0

Ragù (or Sugo) di Carne

by Marlena Spieler

Whether it’s Ragù Napolitano “Classico” or “Leggere,”  this richly flavored sauce is a perfect example of traditional, long, slow-cooked (slow, very slow) food, the sort of memory-filled dish that makes all Neapolitans, rich or poor, remember their childhood and nonnas or grandmothers with even just one bite; or even with just one sniff of the bubbling sauce.

Because it needs to be looked after, slowly cooked and attention paid that it doesn’t burn or scorch, it was given the name sugo della guardaporta, the doorkeeper’s sauce, as it needed someone to watch over it as it slowly, slowly, slowly bubbled its way to perfection.

Though now it has come to symbolize family food, it was no doubt created in the 19th-century kitchens by the chefs of aristocratic Naples — its abundance of meat and attention-demanding cooking method would have been beyond the means of the city’s poorer inhabitants, which meant most of the population. Its name came from the French ragout, or saucey stew. The Neapolitan ragù is exactly that: a large piece of meat simmered in either tomatoey or oniony (La Genovese) sauce unlike the ragù of other
regions, which include small pieces of chopped meats and vegetables.

San Marzano tomatoes

San Marzano tomatoes.

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Slow Life in Chartres, the Breadbasket of France

Published by Sunday, February 14, 2016 Permalink 0

Eating and Drinking in Chartres, the Breadbasket of France

by Jonell Galloway

Kentucky is far from Chartres, but not so far as one might think. Biscuits and cornbread were the bond that held us together in Kentucky; wheatfields and bread do the same in Chartres. We like white gravy; the Chartrains, as they’re called, like sauce. Isn’t white gravy a sauce, after all?

Growing up in Kentucky, I embraced the Slow Food concepts without ever knowing it. Wendell Berry was my breakfast, lunch and supper, after all. The French have never fully embraced the official Slow Food concept of Good, Clean and Fair, since they consider that French cuisine and agriculture already embrace these values and do not need an organization – especially an Italian association with an English name – to teach them about their own time-honored traditions. One might say that the French are arrogant and chauvinist, which I would never totally deny, but it is this very pride that has maintained a high level of quality in the world of artisanal food and agriculture.

I have lived in the Beauce region, the bread basket of France, for over 15 years. The hill of Chartres is surrounded by wheat and grain fields and when you go to the bakers, they actually mark the name of the millers who provided the grain for particular breads. It’s all rather magical for those who have a holistic view of the world. The Beauce is all about farming, in particular, wheat, grain and sugar beets, but also goat cheese, pork products, rabbits, beer, apples and apple cider products, pears, chickens, rapeseed, etc. My goal has been to find all the best producers and growers and support them in every way possible.

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Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

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— Wendell Berry

The Mindful Eating Series: Interview with Geneva Farmer David John Kong-Hug

Published by Friday, August 23, 2013 Permalink 0

The Mindful Eating Series: Interview with Geneva Farmer David John Kong-Hug

by Jonell Galloway

In the context of the concept of Mindful Eating, I plan on posting a series of articles that show people who are already practicing this in one way or another, without necessarily calling it by that name.

I’d like to start with an article about Geneva farmer, foodie and ecologist, David John Kong-Hug, whose family’s fruit and vegetables have given my family and me endless satisfaction and nourishment.

I see in the Hugs the same integrity and pride in what they do as I saw in the land of Wendell Berry. There is a mutual satisfaction when he puts an organic red pear into my hands and tells me exactly how to make my rissole. We form a mutual appreciation society; we have a mutual “affection” for the product and awareness of the hard work and care that went in to producing it.

David is a linguist and speaks so many languages I couldn’t possibly name them all. He has traveled extensively, and lived in South America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

He grew up on the family farm in Vandœuvres, right outside Geneva, and has never lost his love and respect for the land. He started working on the family farm from a young age, where he remained while studying agriculture and later doing a Ph.D. in environmental management.

Like the Swiss, like Wendell Berry, the love of land and soil is in his blood. With this personal history, need we ask what he thinks about Mindful Eating?

Interview with David John Kong-Hug

We are one of the last Genevan families who sell organic vegetables and fruits grown in our little one-hectare farm in Vandoeuvres (GE) along the Seymaz river. We have been working at the Rive and Carouge farmers market since 1946. For us, eating organic is a misnomer. Food is organic by its very nature! But since the green revolution in the seventies, food has become partly chemical. We have always refused to use chemicals on our land. How could we poison our land and water, add sulfites to the food we eat, feed our animals and serve to people?

Until the seventies, people took seasonal crops as a given. They knew that tomatoes with irregular shapes and apples with flaws were actually natural and tasty. They did not ask for strawberries in winter. Our tomatoes are not calibrated and cannot be kept for two months in the fridge. In winter, eating soups made of seasonal vegetables such as pumpkin, cabbage, leek, radish bring all the nutrients the body needs. Winter salads, such as bitter chicory or endive, are bitter in order to compensate for the extra fat people add by eating more meat when it’s cold.

Organic products are a bit more expensive than the industrial ones for two reasons. First of all, growing organic food is labor-intensive. Soils have to be weeded manually; manure spread evenly with the pitchfork; then fragile crops have to be covered with linen sheets to prevent birds from eating them. Greenhouses also protect from the cold and the predators, but field mice dig from underneath. As a result, a good deal of the production is lost, and only one third is actually brought to the market stall.

The second reason is that organic farming is not subsidized at all. Agro-industries that grow specific crops, sold to certain wholesalers, receive subsidies for mechanization, pesticides and fertilizers. The chemical and agro-industrial lobby in Switzerland is very strong. Pesticides and fertilizers are therefore indirectly sponsored by the government, that is to say the taxpayers.

These chemicals are necessary for intensive, calibrated and zero waste agriculture. Produce is harvested before it is ripe and sometimes kept a month in enormous refrigerators before being delivered to supermarkets. Local organic farmers still harvest at 4 A.M. the very day of the market. Their produce has to be sold within two or three days, or otherwise composted.

Unfortunately, selling bio or organic has become a business niche, not only for the large retail stores, but also for the government. Acquiring a green label is outrageously expensive for small independent farmers. Besides, their norms do not measure levels of pathogenic elements, but concern hedges and fallow, water conservation and soil erosion, which local farmers have been implementing for decades.

Therefore we created our own label “EKO”, for which we claim homegrown organic seasonal vegetables and fruits, aiming at eighty – ninety percent organic and chemical-free, which our customers recognize thanks to the taste and quality. Being an organic farmer is challenging. We just hope that our customers find their way to both the heart and stomach.

  • “Bringing It to the Table” by Wendell Berry
  • Wendell Berry: No technological fix to climate change
  • The Missouri Table: A Response to Ethical Foodies From a ‘Factory Farmer’
  • The Importance of Agriculture
  • Manifesto: The mad farmers liberation front
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Food Art: Polpo / Octopus, food photography by Alessandro Boscolo Agostoni

Published by Wednesday, June 5, 2013 Permalink 0

This photo appears in Alessandro’s ongoing exhibit, Italian Food Rambling, on this site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bio of Alessandro Boscolo Agostini

Bilingual English/Italiano

My first love for photography started with a little theft: as a little boy I stole my father’s Vöiglander and I started taking pictures on my own, just using my instinct. At that time my father’s camera seemed to me the best camera possible in the whole world, until I reached junior high school and I gave it up for a Bencini all my own. But my little theft came all back to me; my girlfriend to whom I had lent my camera never gave it back to me: that can be considered petty theft, no?

Growing up, I robbed again: in high school I stole time I might have devoted to photography and dedicated myself to my other passion, music. I studied drums and played jazz music. But it was just an infatuation, because I went back to my first love and never left it again. And as a pledge of love, I gave up my history studies in college, causing great distress to many people, but not to myself.

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Slow Food needs Slow Money to Grow, says Woody Tasch

Published by Thursday, May 2, 2013 Permalink 0

A New York Times article by Kathryn Shattuck says a key ingredient in keeping the Slow Food movement going is investment capital.

 

An attempt at this is just what is happening in the Boulder Theater this week, where some 650 business people and potential investors are meeting to exchange views. “As venture capitalists increasingly bet on food start-ups, Slow Money, a nonprofit that catalyzes the flow of capital to small and local food enterprises, supports what Mr. Tasch called the heroic grunts: the food producers and their fiduciary counterparts, or “food-ish-iaries,” committed to healing and investing in a broken system, either through manpower or money.”

Click here to read rest of this article.

 

 

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New on The Rambling Epicure: List Your Real Food or Photo Blog

Published by Friday, April 26, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

We’ve just created a widget in the right-hand sidebar that allows all real food sites, blogs and readers to enter their URL on our list of visitors, whether it be a recipe, photo, news, farming, or other real-food related site. All you need to do is enter your RSS feed URL. Sign up soon so we can form a community of like-minded people!

From artsy

Photo courtesy of Ilian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to philosophical and literary

The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture (Photo credit: elycefeliz)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Food Poetry: Ancient Mexican Wisdom on Land, Plants and Self Development

Published by Monday, April 1, 2013 Permalink 0

Poem in English and Spanish

by Adriana Pérez de Legaspi

Care for things of the earth; cut some firewood, cultivate the earth, plant prickly pears, plant yucas.
You will have to drink, eat, get dressed.
Thereafter you will be standing, you will be your true self, you will walk on your own two feet.
Thereafter you will be well spoken of, you will be praised.
Thereafter you will be known.

Ten cuidado de las cosas de la tierra; haz algo corta leña, labra la tierra, planta nopales, planta magueyes.
Tendrás que beber, que comer, que vestir.
Con eso estarás en pie, serás verdadero, con eso andarás.
Con eso se hablará de ti, se te alabará.
Con eso te darás a conocer.

 

 

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Documentary: Building a Slow Food Nation

Published by Friday, March 29, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Wendell Berry speaking in Frankfort, Indiana

Wendell Berry speaking in Frankfort, Indiana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Atlantic‘s Corby Kummer interviews Wendell Berry, food philosopher, poet and advocate as well as farmer; Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation; Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food; Vandana Shiva, philosopher, environmental activist, eco feminist, and advocate in the domain of agriculture and food; and Alice Waters, American chef, restaurateur, activist, and humanitarian.

Part 1 of this movie-interview lasts 1 hour 21 minutes, but is broken up into shorter segments, consisting of interviews with the people listed above. Part 2 lasts 53 minutes.

Click here to view documentaries Building a Slow Food Nation, Part 1 and Building a Slow Food Nation, Part 2.

 

 

 

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Wendell Berry: Daily Food Quote, June 28, 2011

Published by Tuesday, March 26, 2013 Permalink 0

Eating with the fullest pleasure — pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance — is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.Wendell Berry

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