Wine secrets from the Istrian corner

JEFF festival follows the various tastes of its diversified audience. If the museum garden is a beautiful location for music concerts, the Istrian corner is like a crowded marketplace where people can meet, talk and enjoy the night drinking good wine and trying new tastes.

Wandering curiously among the various stands, we found Patricija Pirnat, representant of the Agraria Koper. Having partners in Koper, Izola and Piran, she is promoting local fruits and vegetables, involved in a kind of “biological warfare”: she is avoiding pesticides, taking care of the environment in a high level. All her meals looked so inviting that we immediately grabbed some from her stand.

Regarding drinks, two guys from Kšok (Students’ Association of Koper), Andraž and Klemen, were very pleased to introduce us the bar where they sell drinks, as it is a nice addition of JEFF. We were kind of impressed; these guys have a funny (but very interesting!) idea about the connection between music and wine: “If you drink a bit more, you start listening the kind of music you are not used to and you understand it in another way” (N.B. it’s not a suggestion to get drunk!).

At the bar of the JEFF we found different kinds of drinks: selected wines, lager, dark and red beer, and above all, “the top drink for the summer”, peaches in wine, called boula in Slovenian. This is a refreshing drink, really enjoyable and very easy to prepare: you have just to get peaches, chop them in small pieces, put them in white wine and add sugar and water. That’s all, just don’t forget the ice on this hot weather when you are in Koper!

The selection of wine is different every week, it depends on the sponsors. So we never know what will we have, but the boys assured us they try to get the favorites of the locals and offer something alternative as well.

Talking about Istrian wine, Andraž and Klemen mentioned a joke: “Italians say that there are four types of wine: red, white, good and bad. Here in Istria there are only three types: red, white and good. We don’t have a bad wine here”. The reason of such good wine is the particular Istrian soul, a green and cozy garden of a museum and the temperate climate of this area, that fortunately doesn’t have too cold winters or hot summers.

JEFF DAILY -- Chapter #2 -- Jeff is ...

The video group kept up the hard work on the second week. They released a new video which contains all 4 parts of the festival: art, music, food and workshops.

During the preparation of the 1^st video Sanne came up with the idea to present all sides of the festival in one short film. The team welcomed the idea and started to cooperate with the sustainable development team (which switched the name into eco-team – title seems to be simple, so not only mentors, but members also can understand it). Thanks to this coworking, you can see some shots from a farm (done by Ági, from Hungary). 

Eco-team in action - interview with a farmer

Shots made by the eco- and the "accompanying program"-team (this is us! our name is also a bit too long though...) are always funny but really hard to work with them: most of those, who are not working in the video team, don´t have experience with cameras. You can check out in the video how we did exercise with cameras for example on the workshop-part…

 

As we promised last time, here is a photo of Sebastian, working

This time Sebastian was the editor, he is really grateful to the rest of the team. After some changing requests the video could be showed to the public on the festival and on the internet channels. We were all standing in front of the screen between the two concerts of the 2^nd JEFF and started to laugh when we´ve appeared in the film – fortunately not only us were interested in the projection, but we were the most active public, for sure.

We all hope the video diary will be a good promo for JEFF, and the video group is look forward for the following video (videos) coming during our last week here.

Labyrinth of tastes

You might already noticed that JEFF is not just about music and concerts. Now it is the moment to discover the tasty world of the restaurant "Labirint", the place which organizes food workshops during JEFF. Thanks to Andrea (the owner) who, in a friendly way, told us something more about Labirint and its values we present you an explanation of the philosophy that inspires this particular kind of cuisine.

 Andrea, excited about JEFF

 

 This alternative restaurant located in the centre of Koper has a bit mysterious name: Labirint. When we arrived we immediately understood the reason why they chose this name: the place has different rooms and the disposition of the space is all looks like a labyrinth, we are still a bit lost there, having confused memories about rooms, colors, differently shaped chairs and tables. But, unlike in a labyrinth, the owners welcomed us in a very nice and kind atmosphere, so we felt also being at the right place – being lost here, equipped with quality food is not bad at all…

Labirint promotes a new, different way of preparing food, using homemade ingredients and offering products without preservatives or flavor enhances. Instead of white flour, they prefer spelt and rye flour or almond flour for cookies. So, if you would like to taste something different, natural and genuine you should come and try!

The cuisine is inspired by mostly Balkan culture, by personal experiences, by having mixed families around (Serbians, Bosnians and Slovenians). Three things are sure: they offer healthy dishes which are colorful and are accompanied by great wines. We should not forget about the specialties neither: a special kind of lasagna, salty pancakes with spinach and other dishes made with spelt.

The strength of this restaurant is its dishes and ambiance. Sitting inside the playful and modest interior design we hear now radio music, but they are planning to play instrumental music next year. Andrea catches the strict connection between food and music, in a very nice quote:  

“Good food in good company cannot go without good music”.

Take it raw!

Have you ever heard about raw food? Maybe just like us, you have, but never tried to taste or prepare it. JEFF and restaurant Labirint offered a workshop, which was a good opportunity to get to know more.

The culinary side of JEFF appeals also to those who have never attended the concerts. Among the participants we met vegans and vegetarians from different Istrian places, youngsters from high schools and also older ones (unfortunately for us without English knowledge). We experienced also the kindness of Slovenians and Hüseyin (from Germany) will soon have a Turkish – Italian language tandem.

Don’t think that we only prepared green vegetables, raw food has much more to offer! Besides salads and an anti-vampire soup (containing a fair amount of garlic), we made also many sweets, which were a pleasure to see and also perfect for dessert. During the preparation we were working all together like bees around a precious flower: there was almost no space around the table because everyone was cutting, rolling, peeling, chopping and mixing ingredients. The food stayed cold, but the place turned into a warm nest.

To us, the workshop was a lovely and short introduction to the world of raw food. Those who were not cooking at home so often, definitely got some good inspiration. And those who missed the workshop, don't need to worry, because we will give you a recipe (many thanks to Artur from KŠOK for translating the recipe).

  
Sunflower seeds spread
 
* 200g of sunflower seeds (two hours soaked in water)
* 1 or 2 pumpkins
* About 100g of leek
* Salt, sunflower oil
* Lemon juice

Just mix everything together, at the end we can add seasonal vegetables for decoration.


You should definitely come to  the restaurant Labirint at Čevljarska 9, 6000 Koper. Next Thursday there will be a workshop about cookies. Something you don’t want to miss: the taste of good ambience and food.

JEFF DAILY -- Chapter #1 -- Preparation

Here are the preparations of JEFF. While some were setting up the blog, others were discovering the world of sustainable development, the third part of the group picked up the cameras and microphones and took long (and maybe a bit exhausting) walks behind the scenes.

The Dutch and the Spanish are combining their energy in order to finish the editing just some minutes before the beginning of JEFF.

If you think  Sanne and  Lucia look stressed, you are right. This week they were editing videos, having really close deadlines, which seemed to be challenging. Janar (Estonia) who still thinks that "handkerchief" is not an existing word (we should convince him till the end of the EVS) was working with the graphical designs and spent hours learning to use the program After Effects.

The back of Janar ( like a swimming champion).




Fortunately the whole team feel more and more comfortable with their tasks and they look forward to the next week and the upcoming videos. The same for Sebastian (Germany) who – besides working hard on the sounds and shooting around Koper – showed us a really special ability of him: he can appear and disappear very quickly in the most unpredictable moments. Next time we will catch him too with our camera and you can see him working.

The premiere of the video was on the first day of JEFF, the visitors had the privilege to witness the fabulous start of the journey of the video group.

You can check it out now!

 

JEFF Daily is an international one month group European voluntary service project that joins 15 young volunteers from six different European countries with aim to gain knowledge and skills related to communication and promotion of cultural events. On Festival JEFF gained knowledge and improved skills are being tested and this video is one of the project results. It is being screened on the festival with hope to bring JEFF happening closer to its visitors.

Visiting Noemi Zonta

Noemi will exhibit on JEFF, she is a young painter from Koper. Now we are going to give you some sentences about Noemi and our first impressions of her. 

Finding paths between classical school and modern art

We did mainly theoretical things at the art high school (Umetniški gimnaziji Koper). It was a kind of academical and classical education, we didn’t cover modern art. However, I’m interested in modern art – it’s important to be able to create classical things, to know the rules, the history, but then I think now the world needs something new and fresh.

I was planning to go to the Academy of Fine Arts to Ljubljana but because it seems to be too classical, finally I decided to learn something else, film or design. I am doing animations, illustrations and graphics too, I got many inspirations from films (I especially like Kubrick and Xavier Dolan). My art has still a very wide scale; it’s a mixture of everything from a kind of impressionism through classical paintings of bodies until working with stencils. I’m just searching the right direction for me.

We could really observe the big variety of Noemi’s work. There is a bluish painting in the blue kitchen with some white sailboats, there is a small one of a tree (5 cm canvas) and there are others, highly abstract, pieces of an imaginary cartoon…

 Time and space

I don’t think that Koper and its surroundings inspire me. Maybe the sea or sometimes the landscape. Here the situation is quite bad; there are few opportunities to meet other artists or to have an exhibition. I want to live in a bigger place where I can build new relationships with artists, I’m planning to go abroad a bit. I hope from now I will have more time to paint because at school I had many other subjects. Now I can concentrate on painting, this is what I want to do.

My works are from imaginary cartoons and from a fantasy world; they are not from a well defined space and time. I don’t like when something is too realistic, I prefer abstract paintings.

Noemi is working in the small garage of their house and she would like to find more galleries in which she can exhibit. Her neighbors don’t really know she is painting but the young people in Koper and Izola know her works in some degree. The time has come to extend her experiences in time and space – it seems this starts at JEFF.

  

Noemi Zonta's work will be exhibited on 10th, 17th and 24th July, on the JEFF.