Cork Forests: Actually, Money Does Grow on Trees

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Think about the last bottle of wine you drank. Was it sealed with a natural cork? A synthetic plastic closure? A screw top cap? Where does cork come from, and what’s with all the buzz about cork trees being endangered? To investigate, we ventured off to Alentejo, a rural region in south-central Portugal, and one of the world’s largest sources of cork oaks. All told, Portugal produces about 75% of the world’s cork, and about 75% of this goes into wine bottle stoppers. About 33% of all cork trees grow in Portugal, and 95% of these are in the Alentejo region.

At Herdade da Maroteira, Philip Mollet guided us on a tour of his 540 hectare farm. Much of the land is forested, with approximately 2/3 covered by cork forest, 1/3 covered by stone oaks, and some cleared land for vineyards and livestock. Mollet is a 5th generation farmer, whose family originally hailed from Britain. As the story goes, in the beginning there were two brothers who were on their way to Australia. They stopped in Porto to make repairs on their boat and look for cork stopper resources. The brothers ended up traveling to Alentejo, where they found this particular cork farm. One brother continued on to Australia, while the other stayed in Portugal. Later on, the brothers arranged for a cultural swap, with one brother sending eucalyptus to Portugal and the other brother sending cork acorns to Australia. However, the acorns that were sent were sterilized—nothing like a little sibling rivalry to help foment family feuds!
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Lisbon’s Pastéis de Belém: Religiously Good?

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Lisbon, seaside port and the commercial heart of Portugal. For centuries, Portugal wielded outsize influence beyond its borders through a vigorous policy of mercantilism and colonial exploration. From these waters, Vasco da Gama captained the first ships to set sail directly from Europe for India. Other explorers would reach the shores of South Africa, China and Japan. “Look, we have Spain on one side, water on the other. So everyone either has to fight, to conquer, or face the ocean and see what’s beyond,” said our guide, Victor Lamberto, head of Slow Food’s Alentejo chapter.

Unsurprisingly, this thirst for international travel resulted in lots of foreign exchange—in food, in language and in culture. As Lamberto guided us through the mosaic-covered streets and tiled walls of Lisbon, he remarked, “Lisbon has always attracted people from all over. Here, you do not find traditional Portuguese food, but a mix of influences. The Portuguese were the first to take food and flavors from one place to another in a global manner.” Today, the Japanese use the Portuguese words tempura for battered, fried foods and pan for bread, while the African chili pepper piri piri is commonly used in Portuguese cuisine.
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Stuart Franklin’s Political Ecology

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Photography: Stuart Franklin

The entry on our school calendar was unassuming and inconspicuous—”Franklin, Journalism.” The description in our student guidebook was even more humble, simply a thin line that read “Stuart Franklin, English photographer.” I glanced at it and the night before, on a lark, I decided to google the name to see Franklin’s previous work. Much to my shock, I soon realized that Franklin was a world-renowned Magnum photographer, the man who had taken the photo of Tank Man in Tiananmen Square. Yes, That photo.

On the appointed day, we eagerly gathered in class, where a bespectacled chap carried himself with distinction to the front of the classroom. “Dr. Stuart Franklin, Political Ecology,” read his first slide. The student next to me poked my shoulder—wasn’t this class supposed to be about journalism? What’s political ecology? Are we sure this Dr. Franklin is a photographer, and not someone else with the same name?

As it turned out, Franklin is a man of many talents, not only a career photographer for Time and National Geographic, but the recipient of a PhD in geography at Oxford University. He now publishes and teaches courses in political ecology and photography at Oxford.

The burning question: what is political ecology? As he defined it, it is the analysis of complex political economic relationships between society and land- or marine-based resources or products. It’s political economy + environment. It’s a network of cultural interactions with the land around them. Food chains and the working conditions of migrant workers are two topics that might fall into this lens of analysis.

Convinced? Skeptical that this is just another newfangled invention of concatenated existing subfields? Regardless, Franklin took us on a fascinating trip around the world, as we looked at slash-and-burn destruction in Indonesia and Afghans fighting in a bread queue, all photographed in pristine condition. The following are some of his thoughts on photography, politics, and the luckiest break of his career.

There was an uprising that spring. A lot of factors were in play, but it was mostly due to increasing flows of information and the large amount of corruption going on. Young people were finally getting annoyed by corruption by people in power, and so they came out to the streets. It was a huge moment for the Chinese to demonstrate, and I asked if I could go to Beijing. My plane ticket was paid for by Magnum, but when I got there, Time put me on assignment and I ended up just staying there.

The epicenter of the action was Tiananmen, and at that point, I had been working as a photojournalist for about 10 years, and I was a pretty hardened war photographer. I knew that I had to get close to Tiananmen, so I found the Beijing Hotel, and I parked myself there.
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A Chat with Slow Food Founder Carlin Petrini

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In 1986, the first branch of McDonald’s in Italy opened in the heart of Rome, at the Piazza di Spagna. As in many other countries, protesters howled and demonstrated. One man took decisive action.

Carlo Petrini, or Carlin as he is known to Italians, has quietly grown from being a little-known left-wing journalist, to becoming the leader of one of the world’s largest food activism organizations. Concerned about the encroachment of multinational influence on traditional food culture, he built a resistance movement to defend and protect local food ecosystems, a counterpoint to the unrelenting onslaught of corporate hegemony.

Today, Slow Food spans over 100,000 members in 153 countries, promoting thousands of small-scale producers, communities and educational initiatives. I sat down to interview Petrini (in Italian!), and asked him about the direction of Slow Food, the global food system, and what you can do to get involved.

In America, there are many people involved with Slow Food, but more who have never heard of Slow Food. For these people, what is Slow Food?

Slow Food is an international movement that is involved in the defense of biodiversity, not only in agriculture and food, but also culture; in the defense of small-scale producers, small farmers, fishermen, and artisans because these small producers are the ones who maintain biodiversity. So, Slow Food is a network of these actors that will grow ever stronger, until it finally reaches every country in the world. However, it makes no pretense of having a strong structure or hierarchy–no, it is very, very agile.
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Recipe: Potstickers, Politics and Pork

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Photo: Valeria Necchio

Last week marked a new lunar year, so in conjunction with my UNISG classmates, we held a Chinese New Year celebration, with all the Asian-style dishes you can possibly concoct (using the limited supplies found in Italy). There were all the classic, prosperity-bringing foods, like fish and tangerines, along with Thai-style noodles, pork with black bean sauce, and a heaping bowl of deep-fried squid. Yum, bring out the Sriracha!

For the occasion, I decided to make jiaozi (餃子) and nian gao (年糕). Now, I am pretty pro at making potstickers (although I haven’t figured out how to pleat them one-handed yet), but usually I just buy pre-made wrappers. Hey, stop judging, it takes long enough to mince the filling, fold and cook everything! However, in the bountiful land of Italy, packages of jiaozi wrappers are a little more difficult to come by. I could spend the day going to Turin to search them out, or alternatively, make them from scratch. It probably would have taken the same amount of time. In the end, cost won out and I decided to tackle making wrappers by hand.

So, I skyped my mom and asked her for a wrapper recipe. Now, you have to understand that when you ask Asian moms for recipes, they tell you something like, “Oh, that’s easy. First, you take two spoonfuls of X and a bag of Y, then you mix in some Z and add a cup of water, then steam it until it’s done. Is that clear?” Wait, what do you mean a spoonful? Is that a tablespoon or a teaspoon? And a bag, how much is that? “Oh, I mean a Chinese soup spoon. And you know—a bag! The brand of flour I always buy, I just use the whole bag.” Whoa, hold on, so when you say a cup of water, what kind of cup is that? “Oh, I always use this cup [gestures], the porcelain one with the flowers on it.” Um, okay, what about the steaming? How do you steam this? “What do you mean, how? Don’t you know how to steam things? Ai-yah, college-educated and brains are still empty!” At this point, we both throw our hands up in dismay.
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Travel Note: Portugal and Extremadura, Spain

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Not sure how this managed to happen, but I’ve only got three more weeks left on the continent. (But wait, I haven’t even gone to Rome yet!) Of course, the UNISG masters students will be going out with a bang—for our last stage, we’ll be taking a 2-week long excursion to Portugal and Spain. We start off in Lisbon, then gradually move toward the Spanish border region of Extremadura, traveling east to Évora, Cáceres, Mérida and finally, Seville. The foodstuffs look quite similar to Italian cuisine, with a lot of olive oil, wine, cheese and cured meats, but we are also making stops to investigate the production of pastéis de Belém (sweet pastries), herb liquors, paprika, and eating lunch at a zero-kilometer restaurant (with locally-sourced products).

After the Great Internet Drought that was Emilia-Romagna, I have to admit that the part I am most excited for is that we will have wifi at the hotel for 10 out of the 12 nights of this trip. I don’t have a problem, I swear. Also, it is going to be ridiculously warm, somewhere around 7-18 C (45-65 F). After a decade of suffering through New England, upstate New York and Chicago winters, I am relishing the fake Mediterranean “winter” this year. (We’ve gotten snow about two times in Italy so far.)

Here’s a sample itinerary for Friday, Feb. 18th:

7:30 – Breakfast
8:00 – Depart for Aldeia da Serra
9:00 – Walk in the Montado forest, meet with wine & honey producer
12:00 – Lunch at Aldeia da Serra
14:30 – Santiago de Rio de Moinhos cheese producer
17:00 – Redondo: honey producer and tasting of traditional products
19:00 – Azaruja: unique cured meats and other local products (Slow Food project)
20:00 – Arrival at Evora, dinner on your own

Oy veh, I don’t speak a word of Portuguese, and I stopped studying Spanish in 5th grade, when I switched to French. But I’ve heard that speaking Italian to Spaniards works out rather well, so let’s see if I can make them think I’m Italian. (Random note: when I was learning my numbers in Spanish, my mom attempted to learn with me, and the mnemonic she used to remember “ocho” was 污糟 wu zou, or “dirty” in Cantonese.)

See ya’ll from the Iberian peninsula!