The Hotel Cipriani is located on the gorgeous island of Giudecca in the Lagoon of Venice, Italy.  Chef Renato Piccolotto is the Executive chef of all of the Cipriani restaurants, where he proudly cooks authentic Venetian dishes, many featuring produce and herbs from the hotel’s garden.   Our friend Barry Frangipane from the delicious culinary travel group Savory Adventures interviewed chef Renato on his last visit to Venice, and has been kind enough to share it with us.   Chef Renato discusses how Italian food and consumer tastes have changed over the years, and gives valuable advice to new chefs beginning their journey.

We love this one. This new video featuring Rick Bayless was just published yesterday and comes to us via Earthbox, which is a maintenance free, water saving gardening system perfect for urban areas.

Chef Rick Bayless uses the Earthboxes for his urban rooftop garden for Frontera Restaurant in Chicago.  In the video, Rick speaks about how freshness is used to expose the Mexican culture in Chicago.   He discusses working with local farmers as suppliers, sustainability, and organics.  Rick also speaks about a  wonderful program that he has initiated to provide grants to local family farms.

For our recipe lovers, Rick Bayless has several authentic Mexican recipes on his site here, and we also have a collection of short recipes that he has shared on Twitter.   If you visit Chicago, treat yourself to Rick’s newly opened restaurant, XOCO.   It has received countless fantastic online reviews already, and features contemporary expressions of Mexico’s most beloved street foods.

{Please join us in welcoming Chef JoAnna Minneci. Chef JoAnna runs a home catering and personal chef business at chefjoanna.com, and has made several appearances on tv including an episode with Bobby Flay on The Food Network.  As if that were not enough, take a bite of this:  she and her husband are currently transforming 10 acres of abandoned forest in Tennessee into an organic farm and “Bed & Bistro”, and have plans to build a gourmet restaurant featuring fresh farm raised produce and meats.  You can follow their progress and growth on the Mockingbird Acres blog.

In this very special guest post for Savory Tv, Chef JoAnna teaches us how to incorporate slow food into our fast and busy lifestyles.  Thank you JoAnna! }

Slow Food for Normal People

You may hear famous foodies and professional chefs talk about “slow food” all the time .  Many of us have grown weary of hearing about it, but if you’d like become more familiar with the term, click here to read the wikipedia article for it.

On a grand scale, Slow Food seeks to reconnect people with the food they eat.  They pay attention to the cultures, community, and production behind it.  Slow Food’s members include culinary professionals, food enthusiasts, farmers, food producers, educators, and students.  Slow Food USA aspires for a world in which all people can eat delicious food that is good for them, good for the people who grow it, and good for the planet.

On a more immediate scale, and to understand how the movement got it’s name, slow food is meant to be a direct contradiction to Fast Food.  Italian journalist Carlo Petrini in 1986 organized a protest in response to the opening of a McDonald’s, and was dubbed the father of the movement.  Since then, the Slow Food moment has developed chapters all over the world, and succeeds in making us feel guilty about whether or not what we’re eating is good enough.

Michael Pollan wants us to “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”.  Julia Child would make these offhand comments on her television show, “The French Chef” of how much better life would be if people would take the extra time and make food like they did in the old days.  Don’t get me started on Alice Waters, who I find to be more of a culinary bully than her adversary Tony Bourdain.  Back in March ‘09,  I posted my thoughts about that Leslie Stahl piece on “Saint Alice”. Waters has the right idea, but in my opinion her methodology is flawed.  Her premise is that eating good, nutritious food is a right, not a privilege, but her manner of spreading that philosophy reeks of elitism.   Even Julia Child talked a little smack to Alice Waters:

“You have an unduly doleful point of view about the way that most people shop for food.  Visit any supermarket and you’ll see plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.  And if you don’t like the looks of what you see displayed at the market, complain to the produce manager.”

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