Sustainable food and wine festival is back for its fifth installment this weekend. The two-day, industry-run, not-for-profit event promoting organic farming and practices always features a solid roster of minimal intervention wines, food, talks and art.
This year, co-founders James Hird and Giorgio De Maria have bulked up the food focus of the festival by curating their own food program for the first time. They’ve built their own sustainable kitchen, which will be harnessing the power of fire in a number of ways.
“Cooking with fire very much represents Australia and the typical way food has been cooked, obviously by Indigenous people, but also nowadays,” De Maria tells SBS.
A woodfire oven, some modified oil drums and four spits are among the hardware that have been custom-made for this year’s roster of chefs – which includes Orana’s Jock Zonfrillo, Kylie Kwong and David Moyle – to cook with. And electricity and gas are strictly off-limits; it’s a charcoal-only affair.
“We’re trying to get chefs to do something that maybe they don’t have the courage to do in their restaurant – an opportunity to go wild and do something very special,” De Mario says. “It’s an opportunity to have fun but at the same time, to experiment with Australian food.”
Source: Rootstock Sydney
Chefs will be cooking with just fire and charcoal at this year's festival. Source: Rootstock Sydney
The festival will again fundraise and promote the Indigenous agricultural program ‘Gurandgi Munjie’, driven by Victorian author of Dark Emu and activist Bruce Pascoe. They hope to raise $22,000 to fund the kitchen, which will then be donated to two Indigenous Yuin communities on the south coast of New South Wales after the festival wraps. Handpicked by Pascoe, they are The Yuin Women’s Group in Nowra and Ulladulla’s Digging Stick Art and Food.
“Bruce is not just about growing native ingredients and transforming them from seedling to flour to packaging – he’s also about cooking them. The idea is that the Yuin women of this community will be working on Bruce’s project by using the kitchens to cook food using produce that’s grown by the Yuin community.”
The second community chosen by Pasco this year is Ulludulla’s The Digging Stick Art and Food run by Budawang Elder from the Yuin Nation, , and his partner Trish Roberts. The duo will also be educating chefs throughout the festival on how to use native ingredients.
Bruce Pascoe's award-winning book in defence of Aboriginal agriculture, Dark Emu. Source: Magala Books
“Bruce is our connection with the two communities. The idea about Rootstock is always that we need to be able to make sure that whatever we’re bringing somehow needs to be recycled and used by someone else afterwards.”
To see talks by Bruce Pascoe and the rest of the Rootstock Sydney line-up of chefs, producers, sommeliers and educators, book tickets Crowdfunding for Rootstock’s Sustainable Kitchen Project is available via under ‘Rootstock Kitchen’
Saturday Nov 25 - Sun Nov 26
Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, NSW
