In June of last year Darina Allen asked me to be part of a bunch of Irish chefs going to the Slow Food Terre Madre or Mother Earth meeting in Turin in October.
I was delighted to accept.
Then as it got nearer the time and more and more chefs whom I knew dropped out for various reasons, I nearly didn’t go, eventually I plucked up courage and headed off , solo, to Turin last week.
I am so glad that I did.

The first little moment of serendipity happened on the plane on the tarmac in Stanstead.
Who was sitting in the front row but one of my chef heros Antonio Carluccio.
I snuck in behind him, wondering would I ever get a chance to talk to him when the hostess came up, looked cooly at his girth and said; “You’ll need an extension (on his seat belt) you have to find another seat”.
As Carluccio began to protest I saw my chance and said
“You can have my seat Signor Carluccio” thereby making sure that I would at least get an excuse to talk to him.
I did, he is a lovely man.

We were met at the airport by people from Terre Madre and brought straight to
the Oval and Lingotto.
I am still a little confused by which is which.
We are talking about two vast and interconnected buildings, one an ex fiat car factory which has a race track on its roof, the other built for the ice-skating of the winter olympics last year.
One building held the Salone de Gusto, which is like the the stalls in the Spring Show multipied by a hundred and stocking only the finest of foods and wines from the world, the other the Forum for the discussions, the Terre Madre.

To grasp the scale of this here is a few figures.

Represented here were 1600 food communities from 5 continents, 5000 farmers, fishermen and food producers, 1500 cooks and chefs and academics from 250 universities-and this is the official delagate side.
Attending all together were about 250 000 foodies from all over the world.

It was well organised.
Once we hit the Lingotto there were series of tents to take our luggage as all the nations got ready for the grand opening.

Some in their national costumes.

The grand opening itself was celebrated in the
presence of the President of Italy

Senor Napolitano and his wife.

This event is taken extremely seriously in Italy.
The opening was the top item in the news on Italian
television that night

There to address us as well was the founder of Slow Food
Carlo Petrini.

Here I managed to meet up with some of the other Irish Delegates
but discovered that I was alone in my hotel, about 20 kms outside.
That was to turn out not to be such a bummer as I imagined.

There was a special table set aside in the hotel for
the Terre Madre delegates.
There I met up with some people with whom I was to spend
most of my time over the next few days.

Right next to me were Fernando and Marlene Divina
authors of the definitive book on Native American food
“Food of the Americas”
Which, if it is anything of the quality of its authors must
be truly wonderful. (I have ordered a copy from amazon.
com, so can you)
There I also met Sandro Scarpa, who was to be our Italian guide,
David Ash, an English man who runs a foodie web page,
day-tripper.net
and the father and son combo of Christopher and John Farrugia
from Malta.
Christopher has a restaurant there called Ambrosia.
Together we made up the magnificent seven.

The following morning I got down to breakfast early.
There were two American ladies at the table before me.
In answer to my questions one told me she was involved
with school lunches in New York.
That immediately rang a bell.
I had just read a fabulous article in the New Yorker about
this fiesty New York lady, Ann Cooper, who was single handedly
taking on the schools in Berkley,surviving school strikes and much animosity
to try and improve the students diet.
Did she know her?
She was her!

New friends Fernando,Sandro and Marlene
(with Ann opening her emails)

That day I toured the stands of the Salone.
A mind boggling experience.
I did manage to bump into a fair few Irish friends
and drink lots of Prosecco in the Enoteka.

That night the magnificent seven ate in a traditional
Piedmontese Trattoria Called La Burnia in Drubiaglio,
at the foot of the Alps.
There Sandro just told the chef to give us what he
thought was appropiate.
We were fed with at least 7 Anti pasti, one after the other.
Then four different dishes of Pasta, finishing with some
delicious gnocchi.
The main courses were lamb and donkey(sic) but not many
of us were able to do them much justice.
The bill for this feast, including copious quanties of the wines
of the region, was €34 per man.

The following day, suffering from food burnout, I went with
Lorraine Mc Ginnis, another food author, and an Australian
living in Ireland, to have a look at Turin.
Lorraine has written a marvellous book called Feasts and Friends
which she wrote while working with refugees in Australia.

She told be some of their heart breaking stories over lunch in a
pizzaria, I distinguished myself in my usual fashion by weeping
into my calzone.

The Turin Shroud was shroudlike

But the Coffee/Cream/Chocolate drink here
was delicious.

The Torinos, as this cake shop window shows,
enjoy their dolcis.

One down point of the trip was a fairly blatant attempt
at pickpocketing that night on the bus.
Luckily my yells scared them off before they managed to
pick anything

That night the Magnificent Seven, now reduced to six
with the departure of the Divinas and the addition of Lola
from Eat Art in Barcelona went to a much more sophisticated
restaurant (from which I have lost the card) where we dined
in an even more magnificent fashion.

Stop Press, I found the card, it is called La Betulla it is in
S Bernardino Di Trana. Click here to see their website

Our main course there, my undoubted culinary highlight of
the trip, was a pair of fried eggs on some thin mashed potato.
As soon as we were served these the Maitre grated a liberal
shaving of White Truffle on the eggs.
Wonderful!

The following day, to work up an appetite for the next
nights eating I went with Christopher and John to view the
Egyptology museum in Turin.

Father and Son

This too was fairly magnificent.

This Sphinx had the most marvellously
human face.

We got back to the Lingotto in time to hear a symposium
on children and their eating education.
Darina Allen was impressive as was the great Alice Waters
from Chez Panisse in California

This is the same Alice Waters-from a distance!
(and at first left)

After this they made all 1500 chefs put on silly hats and pose for an
enormous group photograph.(I’m at top right)

The high moment of the trip was that night.
All 1500 cooks were brought over to the vast Olympic Village
where we were fed by the combined efforts of the chefs of all
the best Italian Restaurants with rivers of superb Italian wines
to wash it down.
As this was all server buffet style I had a great chance to meet
all my Euro-Toque co-chefs who were there too.

Myself, Lola and Christopher

As you can see from my complexion, much
alcohol was consumed.

That was most of it really.

Dr Vandana Sheeva was incredibly impressive speaking
against GMOs at the closing ceremonies the following day.
But then it was time for the long trip home.

Again on the trip home my Terre Madre serendipity did
not desert me and I discovered that my six hour wait overnight
in Stanstead was considerably shortened by meeting Madeline
Mc Keever, an organic seed seller from West Cork.
She was also on her way back from Terre Madre and has
the most marvellous selection of seeds in her catelogue
which she sells as : Brown Envelope Seeds

All in all a great few days for meeting people