KEN IGE / KIGE@STAR-BULLETIN.COM Chef Douglas Lum explained different types of cheeses to Larry Robles, center, and John Blatt at a Mariposa Cheese Culture tasting session last week. Blatt works the fast-paced job of a paramedic, but has carved out time for two tasting events. "It's definitely a good way to de-stress," he says.

Get out of the fast lane and increase
life's pleasures It's the Slow Food way

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By Betty Shimabukuro
bshimabukuro@starbulletin.com

e are a fast-food nation. Takeout, pickup, reheated meals are what get us through the week. Even when we cook for ourselves, we want simple, no-fuss dishes, and if they use frozen, canned or packaged products, even better.

Life demands this of us.

There are rebels in our midst, however, and they are growing more organized and vocal. They preach the benefits of sitting down and slowing down to eat -- and by that they don't mean chewing more carefully.

We need to appreciate fully what we eat, is their message. Not just how food tastes, but what it is and whence it came.

First up, the appropriately named Slow Food Hawaii, a new group organized under the banner of the international Slow Food movement (mascot: the snail). Its first meeting was last month and centered on a tasting of wines and American artisan cheeses. Appropriate, since wine and cheese are foods that simply cannot be rushed, that depend for their quality on slow processing and age.

Next up, the Cheese Culture, a club of sorts under the auspices of the Mariposa restaurant at Neiman Marcus. For 18 months, the Mariposa has been offering a monthly event focusing on various cheese-producing regions of Europe and the wines that show them off best.

"You don't eat these fast," says Mariposa chef Douglas Lum. "It's a treat. It's hedonistic. It's something people in these fast-paced times really need to try, because you're forced to slow down."

To sit and sip with these people is definitely enjoyable, but the group's purposes go beyond mere pleasure.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STAR-BULLETIN.COM Nan Piianaia and her husband, Norm, are organizers of the Slow Food Hawaii group. They enjoyed a tasting of cheeses at the group's first meeting last month at Fujioka's Wine Merchants.

Nan Piianaia, principal organizer of Slow Food, is clear on what the group is not. "It's not a gastronomic club. It's not a food-and-wine club. It's also not a culinary Greenpeace." Slow Food is about protecting food sources, she says, "so that the food that we love will always be around for us."

The movement began in Italy, a backlash to the opening of a McDonald's on the steps of Rome's Spanish Steps. The group has many esoteric goals that have to do with preserving regional food traditions, celebrating foods of purity and craftsmanship, etc. But its 65,000 members in 45 countries also pull weight in a more cause-and-effect sense.

The Slow Food Ark of Taste actively works to save endangered foods, among them Delaware Bay Oysters and Sonoma Aged Dry Jack Cheese. Methods run from raising awareness in order to create demand for these foods, to grants of cash, from introducing suppliers to retailers, to hands-on production. When American heritage turkeys were placed on the ark, Slow Food U.S.A. secured eggs and found farmers to raise the birds, which perpetuate the turkey in its natural state, not the breast-heavy commercially produced modern version.

The result, says Piianaia, is 5,000 heritage turkeys being grown for Thanksgiving tables this year, and a growing new industry.

Locally, she can imagine Slow Food backing farmers who grow taro in the traditional way, perhaps taking aboard the ark fragile varieties of sweet potato, seaweed, true Hawaiian salt. "It's a declining way of life that is threatened," she says, "growing and making your own food."

Mariposa's Cheese Culture has similar aims of creating markets and raising awareness, although its sole focus is imported cheeses. Lum recalls his first exposure to these cheeses during a trip to Europe in 1988. "I hadn't tasted anything like it before. The most exotic was Brie made in Wisconsin."

During last Wednesday's Cheese Culture tasting, Lum offered one-on-one instruction on a sweeping array of cheeses from Spain, Southern France and Italy, explaining how each was made, why some rinds were worth eating and others weren't, pointing out the holes in some wheels where mold had been injected.

Slow Food Hawaii Membership meeting: 4:30 p.m. May 24 Place: East-West Center Gallery at the entrance to John Burns Hall Call: (808) 885-6085 (on the Big Island) or e-mail Nancy Piianaia, nap2@flex.com Also: Membership forms are available at Fujioka's Wine Merchants in the Market City Shopping Center. Annual membership fee is $60; or $75 per couple. Mariposa Cheese Culture Tastings: 6 p.m. June 12, and again on the second Wednesday of every month Place: Mariposa, at Neiman Marcus Ala Moana Cost: $20, includes three wines Call: 951-3420

The subject is obviously his passion.

Lum launched the Cheese Culture believing that by teaching diners to love fine cheeses, he could help build demand, which would make them more easily accessible in local markets. Thus the name of the group, "culture."

"I really want Hawaii to be a place where you can get good cheese in the stores," he says. "I'm trying to produce a culture of people who love cheeses."

Slow Food Hawaii has just 14 paid-up members, but many more took membership forms at the first meeting in April. Piianaia doesn't want a huge organization, anyway, just a dedicated one.

From the Slow Food manifesto: "A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life."

Quiet material pleasure. Doing a little something for yourself, for the sheer joy of it, or because you must.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STAR-BULLETIN.COM Pamela Farris served Rick Demont some cheese at a meeting last month of Slow Food Hawaii. The group's first organizational meeting was at Fujioka's Wine Merchants.

Twenty-two years ago, Piianaia was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time she was running the student activities center at the University of Hawaii-Hilo, although she had always nurtured an interest in cooking. After treatment, once the cancer was beaten, she realized a shift in direction was necessary.

"I went back to work and I found my attitude had changed. ... You have the feeling life is passing you by, and you still have things to do."

Piianaia enrolled in the California Cooking Academy, eventually landing a job as a pastry chef at the famed Chez Panisse -- "the best job of my life."

Soon, though, she and her husband wanted to move the family back to Hawaii and Piianaia took up work in culinary and historical research, and taught cooking.

She learned the aims of Slow Food during a trip to Europe and found them to be a match to her own. "I actually joined Slow Food in Italy. On the spot."

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