Food and Words Sydney
Food and Words
Sydney 15 September 2018
It is an annual date I love to keep. Barbara Sweeney, the festival director, knows how to curate an event to engage and entice. The speakers are farmers, historians and cooks and stories on food are their common ground. Author Gabrielle Chan takes us to rural Australia and its many challenges, but she counterbalances with tales of food driving the gentrification of towns and of communities reinventing themselves as gourmet destinations. Not waiting for governments to change policy but creating new futures on their own terms.
Charles Massy likes dirt and a lot of it. His book Call of the Reed Warbler is ultimately a tale of hope and how regenerative agriculture can save the planet and our health. But is, of course, a cautionary tale too. For generations, we have treated nature as a substrate from which we extract profit. This mantra has exacted considerable costs to our environment and to our health. Landscape illiteracy is common to many of us, and Massy aims to re-educate us on our connection to the land. Regenerative agriculture can deliver healthy landscapes, healthy food and healthy people and profits. It is a compelling argument and one that we ignore at our peril and that of our children and grandchildren.
Lennox Hastie and Nikki To take us back to our caveman roots and the joy of fire. I suspect my skills of roasting a whole goat over an open flame may languish somewhat behind Hastie’s, but it is a seductive pull. Perhaps instead I should start with smoking berries? A thought, until this weekend I had not considered; I ponder this could be less risk and more reward.
At afternoon tea the Flour and Stone lamington makes a welcome appearance. A vanilla sponge soaked in pannacotta, berry compote, dark chocolate and flaked coconut. A masterclass in why reinvention can be a very good thing indeed. Nadine Ingram from Flour and Stone holds us spellbound with tales of her love of baking and the sometimes confronting challenges of working in a commercial kitchen. You could read her book, listen to her talk or just taste all that passion in her lamington. I managed all three which is indeed a fortuitous place to be.
Food and Words is a place where the language of food is celebrated and whether they are stories of passion, seduction or challenges you are reminded of the power food has to unite us all. It is definitely preferable to some of the alternatives.