As the chef carefully dressed his angliotti with a creamy sauce, it's hard to say who was prouder -- him or the farmer who stood, beaming, nearby.

Chris Capron, chef at Weaver Street Market and Panzanella in Carrboro, raved about the green garlic and tender collard greens that Cathy Jones of Perry-Winkle Farm in Chatham County grew to fill the ravioli-like pasta. Jones thought Capron's creation was gorgeous.

About 40 chefs and farmers spread across the pasture at Chapel Hill Creamery last week to celebrate the things that happen when great local products meet food fans. Organizers of the Farm to Fork Picnic matched farmers and chefs to show off the local bounty. More than 300 people showed up to eat the results.

The picnic also honored Carlo Petrini, the founder and head of Slow Food, who made the Triangle one of six stops on his current U.S. trip.

Chef Andrea Reusing of Chapel Hill's Lantern restaurant matched the farmers and chefs. Reusing is the head of Slow Food Triangle, which sponsored the picnic along with the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, a group that supports and develops sustainable farms, and South Eastern Efforts Developing Sustainable Spaces.

Petrini's lecture in Raleigh last week drew more than 800 people, according to organizers.

The picnic also was a kickoff for Eat Local Triangle, a month of events to make consumers aware of connections between locally grown foods and better flavor, economic opportunities and preservation of farmland.

Petrini arrived looking forward to North Carolina food. There was plenty of Tar Heel pork: from Eastern-style barbecue by Ben Barker of Magnolia Grill in Durham to cooks from Lantern, who took the old adage "use every part of a pig but the squeal" seriously. They turned Fickle Creek Farm pork into dishes including pickled pig's ear salad. They also prepared cabrito -- spicy roast goat with a tomatillo sauce atop homemade tortillas.

Petrini's new book, "Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean and Fair" (Rizzoli, $22.50), says that consumers should consider themselves "co-producers" and be mindful of the effects their food choices have on the world. He urges that food be produced in ways sustainable to the environment, that it be healthful and delicious, and that it be produced with fairness to those who create and harvest it.

Through an interpreter, Petrini said at the picnic that he wanted to visit North Carolina because the Triangle has one of the oldest Slow Food convivia, or chapters, in the United States. Many farmers from the state also have participated in Terra Madre, a Slow Food-sponsored meeting of farmers, chefs and educators from around the world in Turin, Italy.

Petrini was pleased to see the growth in the Triangle's small farms since his last visit nine years ago. He thinks the recent attention on global warming has drawn more popular interest in sustainable agriculture and small local farms. For example, eating locally reduces the need to transport food long distances and burn fuel.

People are also realizing that individual choices can make a global difference.

"It's a historic moment," he said. "Also with the problems around climate change, people feel more responsible."

Who benefits, and how?

To bring sustainably grown, good-tasting local food to more people in North Carolina and the U.S., farmers need to be paid well enough to grow it, Petrini said, and consumers need to understand more about their food.

"The problem in the United States is not the expense," he said. "The problem is that food in general is too cheap. It's the expectation level."

In his book, Petrini points out that food raised by his "good, clean and fair" standards costs more. The way he tried to explain the point started a controversy earlier this month on a stop in San Francisco. Representatives of the popular Ferry Plaza Farmers Market there canceled a signing for Petrini after they read his description of the market in the book as an expensive boutique for status seekers populated by "well-to-do college graduate" farmers.

Petrini called the controversy "a sensation" that got out of hand.

"It's good that this food costs more" than mega-mart produce, he said.

Farmers have to make a living. According to figures from NC Choices, a program encouraging local small-farm hog farming, less than 25 cents of every dollar spent on food in the U.S. goes to farmers under the conventional system.

The dust-up did revive charges that Slow Food is elitist. Petrini countered that the group's efforts to help farmers around the world through Terra Madre, and to build relationships between farmers in wealthier countries and poorer ones, show that's not the case.

Locally, proceeds from the Farm to Fork Picnic will help plant old Southern apple trees at Lakewood and Burton elementary schools in Durham. The group also is working for better nutrition and taste education in the schools and with NC Choices to help local farmers promote pasture-raised pork.

Also, NC Choices is promoting meat-buying clubs, such as one started recently at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill. Shoppers place orders and pay in advance, so that the farmer only delivers what is pre-sold and all at one time, rather than having to make a lot of small stops. Bailey Newton of Triple B Farms, who is working with the Southern Season club, said it makes things a whole lot easier for him.

Small farmers need every little bit of help to keep going, he said.

"We're losing 383 acres [of farmland] a day to development," Newton said as he supervised the transformation of one of his naturally grown hogs into barbecue.

Across the field, Sara Foster of Foster's Market in Durham served a salad of produce from Peregrine Farm in Alamance County that included snow peas, spinach and thinly sliced beets and cucumbers. She thinks the demand is there for local food but more supply is needed.

"More and more people support farmers markets," she said. "We need more farmers growing these great things."

Supply vs. demand. It's like that chicken-or-the-egg question, which one farmer answered at the picnic.

Ristin Cook posted a photo of one of her laying hens at Castle Rock Gardens next to the plates of garlic-and-horseradish-flavored deviled eggs she offered. Now, that's a collaboration.

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