Start with fresh spring hors d’oeuvres paired with Lou Preston’s wine, and move on to a sumptuous, three-course dinner inspired by Terra Madre and featuring the bounty of Sonoma County. Our meal will be prepared by Sonoma County North’s delegates to Terra Madre:

Donna del Rey (Relish Culinary Adventures)
Aletha Soule (Slow Harvest)
Emmett Hopkins (Foggy River Farm)

Please bring your own place setting.

A silent auction will benefit Sonoma County North’s projects and delegates to Terra Madre 2014.
Items include dinners at Spoonbar and Mateo’s Cucina Latina, wine/food pairings, a gift certificate to the new SHED, a private dinner for 10 at your home, books signed by Carlo Petrini and Alice Waters, facial/manicure/pedicure, and more!

Live music by accordionist Bart Beninco will accompany all the festivities!
Purchase tickets at Brown Paper Tickets or send a check to SFSCN, P.O. Box 1494, Healdsburg 95448. (Please note that the address on our prior invitation was incorrect.)

Slow Food members, $50 Non-members, $60 Sign up now! Ticket prices will increase to $60 and $70 after March 25!

more details to follow….

co-sponsored by Slow Food Sonoma County North

JUNE 26, 2012 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Front Porch Farm Healdsburg, CA

Climate models of future conditions that will affect crop growing in the North Coast.
Lisa Micheli, PhD. North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative (NBCAI) & Pepperwood Preserve; Alan Flint, PhD. NBCAI & US Geological Survey.

Strategies for Adaptation Agroecology and climate resilience in the vineyard.
Miguel Altieri, PhD. UC Berkeley

Moving towards a true, dry Mediterranean climate – adaptive viticulture, crop diversity, and water conservation methods.
Glenn McGourty, UC Cooperative Extension, Lake & Mendocino Counties

Soil building for resilience: an overview of new (and old) technologies.
Rex Dufour, National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT/ATTRA)

State and federal legislative efforts to support agricultural adaptation to climate change, including status of “cap and trade.”
Renata Brillinger, CalCAN

Grower Panel
Crop diversity as an adaptive strategy. Diversifying the farm landscape.
Preston Vineyards, Bernier Farms, Hopkins River Ranch, and Front Porch Farm

Tour
Tour of diverse crops and livestock at Front Porch Farm.
Cost is $40 and includes lunch and wine reception.Register at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/239584 or send a check by June 15, 2012 to CAFF, PO Box 4346, Santa Rosa, CA 95402. For more information, contact keith@quetzalfarm.com.

Congress is busy hashing out the details for the 2012 Farm Bill which will have important implications for food and agriculture for the next five years. This is an opportunity for those committed to good, clean and fair food for all to make changes in our food system—by participating in the Food Bill debate and by actively supporting local food. A panel of policy activists will tell us how.

Join us for a stimulating afternoon of conversation, good food, and a book signing!

Dan Imhoff: The Farm Bill: Why Federal Policy Matters to All of Us
Michael Dimock: The Farm Bill: Can We Get a Seat at the Table?
David Katz: Local Food Politics: From the Farm Bill to the Dinner Table

• Sunday, June 3, 4-6 pm

• Bishop’s Ranch, Swing Pavilion

• 5297 Westside Road, Healdsburg

  This event is free of charge but we would like to know who is attending.
  Please RSVP to Linda at lmcsweyn@aol.com

Michael Dimock is President of Roots of Change, a collaborative network of leaders and institutions in California working toward the development of a sustainable food system. He is also a founding member of Slow Food Russian River.
Dan Imhoff is a researcher, independent publisher, and author of Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill.
David Katz works as a consultant on management, strategic planning, and natural resources projects throughout California. He is past Board Chair of Slow Food Sonoma County North.

Slow Food Sonoma County North’s Events Committee participated in the 2011 Slow Food’s $5 Meal Deal Challenge.  Marisha Zeffer, Lynn Davis, Bill Hawn, Laura Mack, Lisa Huber, Linda Mcsweyn-Meyer, Andrew Casey, and hosts Marie and Dennis Giacalone set out to put together a dinner that that would cost an average of $5 per person.  Each person endeavored to prepare one dish which was healthy, local, and affordable. Instead of a potluck where everyone brought a $5 dish, the group worked together to make one coherent meal with each element costing $5 or less.

The dinner’s menu included two appetizers, green salad, scalloped potatoes, roast pork “porchetta”, bread, butter, cheese, Meyer lemon meringue pie and home brewed beer. No one felt that any corners had been cut; in fact, quite the opposite.  Since the members of the group like to cook, all the items were homemade.  We all felt that the meal was wonderful, and quite easy to put together.

Now for the results! The meal ended up costing $5.65 per person. We discussed what items might have put us over the limit and where we could cut to make our goal. For instance, Marie suggested taking fresh and simple vegetables (which are less expensive in season) and dressing them up for the occasion. Having it be a challenge ended up being fun … to see if we could do it.

Why not give it a try? Get a group together, set the $5 goal and have a fun and wonderful dinner. Then, let us know how it went.  We would love to hear your story.

The weather is shifting from the hot, come-hither days of summer to the chilly slant of autumn and it seems everyone is craving comfort. And maybe it’s not just because we’re heading indoors to flee the cold. Perhaps the “nostalgiancholy” that hits this time of year, where everything seems steeped in memories and somehow raw with emotion, is making us crave something richer, something more soulful.

I was getting a haircut recently when conversation turned to comfort foods (between Kathleen, Deirdre and me in that salon, conversation often turns to food). We started with what to cook in a big, old Le Creuset . . . which led us to braised pork shoulder and various types of stews . . . which led to Kathleen’s method of roasting chicken in her Dutch oven.

“Roast chicken saved my life once,” Deirdre chimed in. Her gaze was distant. She, someone who loves to cook, went on to tell of the early days after a rough divorce when just gathering groceries leveled her, sparse as they were for one. So for a time she turned to frozen meals and convenience foods while the sorrow swept through.

And then, she roasted a chicken.

“It warmed the house up and made it smell like somebody lived there again,” Deirdre said. “It made me feel like things were OK, like I was OK.” Amazing how food has the power to do that; to wrap itself around us like a giant, ephemeral hug.

For all our talk of mac ‘n’ cheese and braises and pizza and soup, in Deirdre’s words, I heard the true meaning of comfort food.

Simplest Roast Chicken

I’ll admit it: I’m a lazy chicken roaster. There are techniques that have you rotating the bird every few minutes so that it turns browns evenly, but I like to pop it in the oven and not think about it again (aside from swooning over the scent) until the timer goes off for good. And good—very good—is what we’ve found this bird to be. You don’t have to use an organic, free-range chicken, but we’ve found that it pays off in both flavor and juiciness.

1 (3-1/2 pound) good-quality chicken (take this to mean what you like: free-range, locally-raised, organic . . . just preferably not a brine-injected, mass-produced one)
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
8 thyme sprigs
1 lemon, halved lengthwise

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Gently work your fingertips under the breast, leg and thigh, and rub meat with salt and pepper (I like to fill a separate little ramekin with a mix of salt and pepper to do this so I don’t get my pepper grinder all chickeny). Sprinkle more salt and pepper on top of skin and in cavity. Stuff the thyme sprigs under the skin and the lemon halves into the cavity.

Roast on a v-rack in a roasting pan, breast side up, for 60-75 minutes, until the legs pull away easily and the juices run clear. Let chicken stand at room temperature for 15 minutes (tent it with foil to keep it warm) before carving.

Serves 4

Printed with permission from Lia Huber and Nourish Network: for original, click here

By Lia Huber

The pillows of pasta melted on my tongue, leaving a mound of fluffy ricotta flecked with spinach, wrapped in the tender sweetness of aged aceto balsamico. I closed my eyes and tilted back my head, all sounds around me blurring into a fog as I savored the heavenly morsel in my mouth. My husband, Christopher, and I were in Italy in pursuit of pasta like this. We had come to learn the trade secrets of creating one of the simplest pleasures in life, fresh pasta made by loving hands.

So it was that we found ourselves with Alberto Bettini, the third-generation owner of Da Amerigo, an enchanting restaurant in the tiny hamlet of Savigno in the Hills surrounding Bologna. Just hours earlier, we had witnessed the birth of those divine dumplings, watching the strong arms of the sfogliatrice (the term for women who make sheets of pasta) roll out a thin sheet of pasta dough using long, stretching motions with a matarello (rolling pin) longer than a baseball bat. The woman quickly cut the sheets, and she and Alberto’s mother dolloped the ricotta and spinach mixture onto each square, folding it in half like a miniature custard-colored handkerchief. So simple, yet so profound.

Saying goodbye to the gustatory pleasures of the Emilia-Romagna region, we turned our sights south and were engulfed in an equally warm welcome at Locanda al Gambero Rosso in the southern realm of Romagna. A joyful Michela, the youngest of this three-generation affair, ushered our famished bodies to a table and, with many smiles, told us plate-by-plate about the foods that her mother, Giuliana, was turning out in the kitchen.

“These are foods of the memory,” she said, elaborating on a flavorful pasta dish called basotti, saying that it was one of her mother’s favorites growing up. The basotti’s savory richness, made with broth but reminiscent of a baked macaroni and cheese, tapped to my own memory bank, warming my soul — true comfort food.

The next morning, the tables turned, and Christopher I donned our aprons and set to work in the kitchen. Paola rolled the sfoglie and cut the tagliatelle while I tried my hand at making tiny cappelletti. No matter how many times I watched Giuliana’s hands, my fingers kept tucking the wrong way, resulting in tortellini. Giuliana chided me for having a Bolognese touch with the dough, which, as a neophyte pasta maker, I took as a complement nonetheless.

On to Orvieto
bidding farewell to our new friends, we turned southwest, Tuscany’s dusty yellow folds exploding into Umbria’s forested mountains. Exiting the autostrada at the town of Orvieto, we ascended the tufa rock and were instantly swallowed up by medieval maze of ancient alleyways, the gilded cathedral playing hide-and-seek in between the old stone façades. After much guesswork and what must have been divine guidance, we found our way to the hills across the valley from the city, where we landed softly at a small inn named Locanda Rosati. Giampierro Rosati charmed us from the get-go, with a smile that extends like a force field around him, held in place by a succession of animated gestures and grumbling laughter. We felt like family from the first hello.

The pasta of choice in Umbria is umbrichelli, long, thick, chewy strands that are perfect for twirling in thick ragus. The pasta is made of a dough called aquafarina, meaning simply flour and water. We slurped these noodles at restaurants throughout Umbria and popped north across the Tuscan border to the ancient Etruscan city of Chiusi to learn the art of hand-rolling pici, Tuscany’s answer to umbrichelli, at Osteria La Solita Zuppa.

After a warm greeting, Roberto and Luana Pacchieri ushered us back to the pasta board, where we watched Roseanna the cook take a small hunk of dough, rub olive oil on it, and roll it out like a thick pancake. Cutting off a slice, her hands glided over the mound, pulling and stretching it like a seamstress spinning yarn from wool on a spindle.

But after our umpteenth umbrichelli and pici, we needed a change of pace. So we dropped ourselves into the hands of the matron behind the counter at Dai Fratelli, back in Orvieto, and nodded obediently as she sliced us mica-thin sheets of loin of boar, boar sausage, truffle sausage, two pecorinos (one sharp and one mild and creamy), and a generous hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano. We turned to the young man for a bottle of Tuscan red wine, selected a loaf of salted bread, and headed with our spoils to the little town of Civita di Bagnoreggio.

Sunflowers the color molten sunlight leapt out against the cerulean sky, with puffy, flawless clouds and golden grainfields adding to the scene. We came upon Civita as we always seem to come upon places and our travels. Biting our tounges, convinced we’re lost, on the verge of begging a turnaround when we spot the sublime — in this case, a tufa rock protruding from the ground and crowned with an ethereal village where only a dozen people live full-time nowadays, reached by a long, sloping footbridge leading up to its center. We ascended and walked the length of the town, then found a stone bench in the shade and savored our booty.

Returning to Orvieto, we went behind the scenes at two entirely different pasta shops — one dedicated to preserving the old ways, the other making the most of modern technology. Our first appointment was with Patrizia and Doriana Schiavo, sisters touting handmade pastas at Pasta Fresca. For Patrizia and Doriana, the choice to open Pasta Fresca was a very deliberate one. They are clearly in their element, enjoying each others’ company as much as the tactile nature of their work. When I asked if they made other types of pasta, Patrizia said, quite pointedly, that they only make those that they can accommodate by hand. When I pressed with a ‘why,’ she thoughtfully reply that it was what they had decided they wanted to do — their mission, in a sense.

In contrast, La Bottega del Tortellino is a pennant of the 21st century. In a tiny room lined with sleek machines, Marco and Orella Provenzani can turn out five or more times what Pasta Fresca can in a day without breaking a sweat. Watching the machines grind away was like watching a circus. In one ring, the sheeter rolled out satiny bolts of pasta dough while the cutter sliced anything from linguini to papardelle. Across the way was the tortellini machine. Quick as a bullet, the little handles would slice a sheet, inject a dot of filling, and twist it into the perfect little knot, letting it roll down into the heap below — not an accidental cappelletti in the bunch.

Pasta of Abruzzi
We had grown to love Orvieto, and the day to bid farewell and head east to the coast came much too soon. Zooming south on the autostrada, we circled Rome like a slingshot and headed east into the wild of the Abruzzi region. Forrested mountains became ever more sparse, thinning to signs of civilization every dozen miles or so. Dark clouds in the distance clung to the crests like skyscrapers on a midwestern horizon, the peaks playing hide-and-seek in the stormy enclosure the whole way to the coast, where we were dumped out into the bustling modern city of Pescara.

Our destination was La Cantina di Jozz, a stalwart of simply and exquisitely prepared local cuisine. We spent the morning in the kitchen with Fabrizio Chicella, learning about various fresh pastas of Abruzzi, most notably pasta alla chitarra. Fabrizio laid a thick sheet of pasta on a contraption ‘strung’ with wires, much like guitar strings, then rolled over it with a matarello to make long rectangular strands.

After a lunch of our labors shared with friends we struck out from the restaurant at La Bilancia in the inland town of Loreto Aprutino. The next morning, we were escorted into La Bilancia’s kitchen, where Antionetta was making mugnaia, a rustic pasta of Abruzzi’s ancient shepherds. Antionetta showed me how do take my clump of beige dough, put my thumbs through the center, and make a large doughnut shape. Working gently but swiftly, we squeezed and pulled the dough so it resembled a thick, malleable hula hoop. Then on to the board it went, to be eased between our hands in a movement I had seen both in the making of pici and by the sfogliatrici with their matarelli — firmly, with flat hands, rolling and easing outward so the load beneath them gradually became finer and thinner.

Just as we began to get a feel for the motions, Antoinetta’s husband, Sergio, whisked us away for our extended tour of the Abruzzi. We began with a rustic lunch of grilled arrosticini, skewers of mutton and liver served with bruschetta, at a remote cantina clinging to the side of a dramatic cliff. Tugging at the meat with my bread, I let the sharp, green olive oil dribble down my wrist and popped the bundle in my mouth. I chased each bite with chilly red wine that tasted like the crisp mountain air around me and drank in the view. Pure, wonderful.

We paused on the desolate plains of the Campo Imperatore, where giant clouds tumbled over distant peaks into an unseen abyss, so Sergio could haggle over freshly foraged mushrooms. Exhausted after our long trek, we were greeted at dinner by our mugnaia bathed in a garlicky mushroom sauce that perfumed the table with an earthy lustiness.

On our way north to the airport, we took the opportunity to enter the realm of Carlo at Trattoria Da Cesare for a parting lunch. We climbed the stairs to the airy room and were welcomed by Carlo’s booming voice and a plate mounded with hunks of mortadella beside glasses of bubbly Lambrusco wine. Course after course came, including two different pastas; spinach and egg farfalle in tomato sauce and tortellini in a butter sage sauce. Carlo waltzed from table to table, leaning over people’s shoulders to sprinkle aceto balsamico on this or that as though it were holy water. We considered it an apropos benediction as we headed home and felt ourselves truly blessed.

Dry versus Fresh
Any Italian will tell you that fresh pasta is not necessarily superior to dry pasta — it’s just used for a different purpose. Pastas that arer made of hard-wheat semolina flours, extruded through shaped bronze dies and carefully dried, are great companions to heavier sauces. A number of wonderful artisanal dry pasta products are being imported to the United States today; they are sold both online and through specialty stores (Rustichella d’Abruzzo, Martelli, and De Cecco are some of our favorites).

But the silky, refined taste of fresh egg pasta or the toothsome chew of a just-rolled noodle made of aquafarina is simply incomparable. Don’t for a second fool yourself into thinking that the doughy strands of ravioli sold in the refrigerated section of the supermarket taste anything like what real, artisanal-quality fresh pasta tastes like. Those are mass produced from mediocre-quality ingredients and left to sit on a shelf for far longer than any fresh pasta should have to endure. Aside from a handful of high-quality producers that sell at local farmers markets and small stores, your best bet is to take the time to experiment with fresh pasta at home with the freshest ingredients you can possibly find.