Jowls, feet, trotters, & hearts featured at Slow Food event

Mar 18, 2010

Participants enjoy exotic meat dishes prepared by Tibrata Gilles and her students at Meat Matter, a Lanark County Slow Food event

Convivial and curious foodies, members of the Lanark County Slow Food group, gathered at the Maberly Hall on March 14 for “Meat Matters” to learn about and sample “slow food” made from local meat.

The group’s leader, Janet Duncan of Almonte, formed the Lanark Slow Food group in 2005 after she and her husband attended the first ever Terra Madre in Turin, Italy. Terra Madre is now a bi-annual Slow Food event where the world’s sustainable food communities gather to share ideas and of course - food.

Founded in 1989 Slow Food is an international non-profit organization with 83,000 members in 107 countries, whose goal is to counteract fast food, fast life and the disappearance of local food traditions.

In Janet’s words, “Slow food is all about good, clean and fair food. We always try to have a theme and an educational component at our local events. Our goal is to focus attention on current food issues and to try to connect local producers with customers.”

Saturday’s focus was local meat, and more specifically, cooking with the more unusual parts and cuts.

Participants paid a minimal fee ($3 for members and $5 for non) and were asked to bring along a potluck dish made from local sourced ingredients, which Janet explained, “really encourages people to make relationships with their local producers.”

Tibrata Gilles was the guest presenter at the event. The former chef of Pan Chancho restaurant in Kingston now teaches at St. Lawrence College. She and her team of seven students spent the entire day prior to the presentation preparing a number of

exotic dishes from locally sourced chicken, pork, bison and yak, focusing on the more unusual parts like the head, feet, trotters, jowls, ribs and caul, the thin, white lacey fat that covers the pig’s kidneys.

Tibrata shared her passion and know how on a number of different topics throughout the presentation - like how to cook and cut various cuts of meat to best bring out their flavour and texture. She covered meat broths and stressed the added flavor and health benefits of incorporating collagen-rich hooves. She spoke at length about the various types of pork fat, what they are best used for and how to render them down.

Next she described the ancient French recipe she and her students followed to prepare pigs’ trotters stuffed with wild mushrooms and herbs and wrapped in the lacey white caul The students also had their chance in the limelight. Louis and Ken described how they prepared pork jowls on a bed of garbanzo beans; Colette described a chicken stock using only the heads and feet of the bird and herbs, and Alan described a bison broth made solely from rib cuts. Meagan finished off the presentation with a detailed description of the preparation a yak heart stew.

Following that was the best part of slow food - the not so slow eating part. Participants were invited to add their locally sourced potluck dishes to the meat dish-laden table and everyone sat down to an exotic meal.

If meat is your thing Maberly was where it was at on Saturday. If Slow Food and local produce interests you, contact Janet Duncan or Cheryl Nash at 613-256-2933 and 613-268-2881. Lanark County Slow Food holds regular presentations throughout the year, each followed by a potluck dinner.