What is the Slow Food Movement? Perhaps the best answer for those of us here in the States is that Slow Food is the polar opposite of the way we live and eat today.

By definition, “Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”

I actually had no intentions of writing about food today, but that was until I got into a conversation with my good friend (and fellow foodie, wine geek, and cigar lover), Tony Ricciardi. For some reason I got on the topic of cheeses and honey from La Porta dei Parchi, which is a farm I’ve mentioned here before because it is owned and operated by the Marcelli family in Abruzzo, Italy. The Marcellis are a prime example of Slow Food and produce hands-down the best honey and some of the best cheeses and olive oils I have ever had the pleasure of tasting.   Their company represents a completely sustainable and very old world approach to making three inherently basic Italian foodstuffs.

In any case, I was telling Tony about the tasting the Marcellis had at Dean & Deluca in SoHo last Friday and I couldn’t stop raving about the family’s honey.  While they offer six different varieties, the honey they used at the tasting was their Girasole (Sunflower), and as Tony can attest, I think this honey is the stuff dreams are made of.  It’s granular, sweet, and while a very vibrant yellow, is so pure that you can taste many of the natural herbs and flowers that are unique to Abruzzo.  It’s only when something is clean and gifted to the palate from the Earth without the “aid” of industrialization does one ever get to taste something so pure and amazing.

After my long soliloquy on something as simple as honey, Tony directed me to a video of Chef Dan Barber who gave a speech in Napa on foie gras.  Now, I LOVE foie…I mean I really, really, really love it.  I’ve literally gone to some restaurants and eaten it multiple ways as appetizers or in one case (thanks to the flexibility of the Blue Ribbon staff), had foie gras incorporated into every course during a dinner there.  On the other hand you don’t need to be a chef or a foodie to know the controversy that surrounds this succulent delight and Barber aptly addresses the conundrum.  He speaks of finding a farmer in Extremadura, Spain by the name of Eduardo Sousa, who as the fourth generation is carrying on his family’s rather private tradition of making foie the kind and sustainable way.  I don’t want to detract from Dan Barber’s ability to tell a story, so I’ve included a link to the video below.  Be warned his presentation is twenty (20) minutes long, but it’s worth it to hear this amazing story:

Dan Barber and the Foie Gras Parable

I couldn’t help but hypothesize  to my friend both before and after this video about what food would be like here in the US if we didn’t go the industrial route.  What would our country look like and what would everything taste like?  For one I’m sure most people would agree that obesity would not be the giant (no pun intended!) issue that it is today because our bodies wouldn’t have been exposed to so much processed junk.  If the US wasn’t so bent on making everything bigger, cheaper, and faster we might not have such high rates of heart attacks, diabetes, and hypertension.  While I could go on forever about the positives, there are of course negatives: Tony aptly pointed out how there is zero incentive for farmers and the US government makes this kind of approach to food and life nearly impossible today.

Have you ever tasted something that changed your perception of it?  Something so fresh and so clean because it is 100% natural?  I would rather eat a piece of beef from a cow that spent its life eating tall, sweet grass than run to a McDonald’s for what they call a burger.  The same case stands for the Marcelli’s cheeses which are young and unpasteurized: made by a unique breed of sheep native to Abruzzo, one can literally taste all of the special flora and fauna consumed by the sheep and it’s magical.  This is the scenario you have when no big machines are used, no preservatives are added, no artificial flavours or colours present — simply  Earth-given ingredients  in the hands of artisans who understand them make the most tasty and most healthy foods of all.

Believe me when I say I know life today is crazy.  Many of us work like beasts of burden and on top of other obligations like family it can be so difficult to put good food on the table in both a timely and cost-effective manner.  I urge any of you whom are reading this to take advantage of the change in season and even if you too live in New York City, head down to Union Square or any other farmer’s market and buy farm fresh ingredients.  I challenge you to get fresh herbs/vegetables/fruit/meat/cheese and cook with it a few times;  I guarantee not only will your food taste better, but you will not need nearly as much of any ingredient to taste rich flavour. Experiment and you will soon see that the pre-packaged (or processed) version of things you’ve become accustomed to requires so much in your food to even be able to come close to the natural, fresh-from-the-Earth version of raw taste.  Besides helping your body, I know you will enjoy your food that much more and you will help keep the farm industry alive. Honestly, you have nothing to lose except maybe a few inches off of your waistline!

      I’m going to start off by saying that I am not a fan of drinking Port. It’s not my style and it’s not something my palate is accustomed to having grown up in a family that is Hell bent on medium-bodied dry red wines, but the pairing of both this specific wine and cigars is one that has been around for generations. 

       Thanks to the success of my first three pairing articles on Stogie Review, I’ve decided based on questions and comments that so many people are curious about Port and therefore I’d step up and write yet another article making all of you think I’m probably an alcoholic. (Ha….)

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        Port is known by a variety of monikers depending on what languages you speak, but no matter what you call it, it is a fortified wine from Portugal’s Douro Valley. For all of you that are not total wine geeks, here’s some trivia you can throw out at your friends the next time you’re dining and talking after-dinner drinks: fortified wine is simply a wine to which a distilled beverage has been added before the fermentation process is complete, therefore killing the yeast and leaving behind a sizeable amount of sugar (and much more alcohol than that bottle of Chianti you polished off earlier during your primi piatti).

         Commonly served as a dessert wine, Ports are thicker, richer, sweeter, heavier and with an alcohol content of around 20%. Although Ports are being made in other parts of the world now, purists will tell you the real stuff of course comes from Portugal and it can be divided into two generic categories:

•  Wines that have matured in sealed glass bottles, with no exposure to air, and experience what is known as “reductive” aging. This process leads to the wine losing its colour quite slowly, resulting in more smoothness on the palate and being less tannic.
• Wines that have matured in wooden barrels, whose permeability allows a small amount of exposure to oxygen, experiencing what is known as “oxidative” aging. They too lose colour, but at a much faster pace. If red grapes are used, in time the redness lightens to a tawny colour – these are known as Tawny (or sometimes Wood) ports. They also lose volume to evaporation, leaving behind a wine that is slightly more viscous and intense in delivery.

           I think what might be the best way to go is to provide all of you with the most simple rule of all when it comes to pairing Ports with a cigar: since Port wine is naturally quite sweet, do yourself a favour and avoid smoking anything light/sweet because you won’t be able to enjoy it once the thick wine coats your palate. Honestly, grab a medium- to full-bodied cigar that not only has fairly prominent spice notes, but is balanced with woodsy essences. Remember that many maduro cigars also have some bittersweet chocolate and dark coffee notes to them as well and this allows the Port to work with the cigar and not against it, providing your palate with a very well-rounded flavour profile and therefore experience.  

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       Everyone laughs when I tell them this little anecdote, but part of the reason why some consider cigars and Port a  natural pairing is due to one name: Fonseca. This story is like trying to figure out which came first with respect to the chicken and the egg since there is no paperwork authenticating one or the other, but the Portugese Fonsecas are heralded for their wine, while next door the Spanish Fonsecas are known for cigar tobacco. No one knows which technically came first and it’s a point of contention for both countries (in polite conversation, of course.) 

       Although Ports are not for everyone, if you’re at all curious because you’ve never tried, go for it and grab a nice cigar based on my simple guidelines above and hopefully you will enjoy an entirely new experience!