The Food Programme

Stories of harvest from around the UK to celebrate the autumn equinox and the passing of the summer.Presented by Andi Oliver Produced by Siobhan Maguire and Clare Salisbury

Rowley Leigh, to many the "godfather" of modern British cooking tells his story to Dan Saladino. Along the way he cooks the perfect omelette and shares the secrets of great pasta.After dropping out of university at the end of the 1960s, Rowley Leigh says he was a young and lost soul. Desperate for cash he applied for a job cooking burgers and immediately fell in love with restaurants and kitchens. It took him to Le Gavroche and an apprenticeship under the Roux brothers. Armed with that classical training and a curiosity for British ingredients and flavours he helped launch the British food renaissance of the 1980s. In Kensington Place he created one of the most talked about dining rooms in British restaurant history.He is also a writer and so he takes Dan Saladino through some of the recipe highlights of his two decades worth of columns at The Financial Times.Expect the perfect omelette, some great spaghetti and one of the simplest vegetable dishes you could probably add to your own repertoire.Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Meat, drink, fire and bands - every year top chefs gather in London for a hearty celebration that has become a carnivore's delight. Tim Hayward arrived fork in hand to see if there is any substance to the Meatopia craze. Lennox Hastie, 'Lord Logs' Mark Parr and the Hang Fire Barbecue Girls are among the names he interviews, while Genevieve Taylor reveals how easy it is to cook on fire back home. With music from Charlie Mingus, Wendy Rene and Fats Waller.The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde.

Sheila Dillon investigates the world of food and drink labelling; what has to go on, what doesn't, how we got here - and where things might be going.A complex legislative framework has built up over many years in the UK - Sheila looks at the shape of today's labelling regulations, seeks to demystify some of the terms, and asks where things might mislead or confuse. On her journey Sheila goes down a rabbit hole, reveals some labelling surprises - and makes use of a time machine.Her guide is Vitti Allender, who teaches food law at Cardiff Metropolitan University. The programme also features author and professor of religion Alan Levinovitz, Sue Davies who advises on food for the consumer rights organisation Which?, professor of food safety at Queen's University Belfast Chris Elliott who wrote a high-profile report on the UK's horsemeat scandal, Investigations Manager at the Advertising Standards Authority Jessica Tye, and wine importer and writer Doug Wregg.The podcast and Monday broadcast of this edition also features Dan Charles, food and agriculture correspondent for NPR, on the controversy around the labelling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the USA. The podcast is an extended version of this programme.Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

Dan Saladino and food historian Polly Russell share stories of seeds as told at this year's Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. From the link between amaranth and cannibalism to edible acorns.Founded in 1981 the Symposium takes a theme and invites scientists, anthropologists, historians, cooks and food enthusiasts to deliver papers and share experiences on the topic. This year they chose one of the biggest subjects possible, seeds. Using the Oxford Botanic Garden's "Plants That Changed The World" display as their backdrop, Dan and Polly have selected six speakers to provide insight into the past, present and future of seeds, from politics to pleasure and from culture to cooking.Professor Simon Hiscock, Director of The Oxford Botanic Garden, starts of by explaining what a seed is and when they first appeared in earth history. Over millions of years biodiversity has meant we've so far identified 400,000 different plants. Elinor Breman of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank explains why a team of seed hunters have been travelling to the most remote parts of the world in search of seeds. As Elinor explains, a fifth of these seeds are at risk of becoming extinct and need to be stored safely for the future.All seeds have a story to tell and one of the most intriguing (and disturbing) is told by food historian David Sutton, "Amaranth: Food of the Gods, or Seed of the Devil?".Meanwhile Steve Jones of the Washington Bread Lab describes his efforts to bring deliciousness back to wheat.Produced by Dan Saladino. Presented by Dan Saladino & Polly Russell.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of varieties of mango. Some creamy and sweet, some a bit hot, some like pineapple and some that are just a bit bland. Unfortunately it's the latter that are usually peeled, chopped and potted for us on supermarket shelves. In this programme, Sheila Dillon and Romy Gill meet Monica Bhandari to talk about the breadth of mangoes that we could all be delighting in and they hear from Chef Allen, a Florida-based chef known for using mangoes in his fusion cooking, BBC Gloucestershire radio presenter Primrose Granville-McIntosh describes her lifelong infatuation with mangoes and BBC Asian Network presenter Noreen Khan explains the mango ban that shook Britain's mango-loving communities.

Sheila Dillon visits Shetland to meet the people transforming Shetland's food culture by reinventing traditional dishes as well as creating new food initiatives. Social media is playing a huge part in promoting a vibrant, young food scene that is attracting entrepreneurs as well as bringing back those who may have left the islands as teenagers. Jonathan Williamson left to manage the food hall at Fortnam and Mason but came home in his late 20s to build and run Cafe Fjara on Lerwick harbour. Akshay Borges from Mumbai answered an ad for a trainee chef at the Scalloway Hotel nine years ago. He has been here ever since and is now launching his own restaurant the String bringing food, music and art together. Traditional skills like fishing and meat production are thriving too. A career in food was never on the agenda for 29 year old Chris Wright who worked different jobs in his early twenties before following his dream of becoming a butcher. He blogs about the meat dishes he prepares in addition to his day job at Anderson's Butchers in Lerwick. Elizabeth Atia is the UK's most northerly food blogger and one of the few who makes a living from it. She says being Shetland based gives her blog -Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary- a USP in the blogging world. Many restaurants on Shetland get their vegetables from Transition Turriefield run by Penny Armstrong and Alan Robertson. They have nurtured the barren land on their croft since returning to Shetland fifteen years ago, building poly tunnels and enriching the soil to grow a variety of seasonal vegetables which they sell to customers through a box scheme. All of them stress the importance of social media in spreading the word about Shetland's renewed food culture and its high quality fresh local produce.Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Harlem based chef Marcus Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia, adopted in Sweden and made his reputation in New York City. He tells Dan Saladino his extraordinary story through food. The third of The Food Programme's 2018 season of African food stories.Marcus's restaurant, The Red Rooster is part of a success story that has seen the 46 year old chef become a major television personality, a cook for Presidents and a major influence of the food scene in the US. But on the restaurant's menu, if you know the story behind some of the delicious dishes, an incredible life story is also being told. A pasta dish from Ethiopia captures an early life being born in a mud hut in a tiny east African village where everyone had berbere spice, coffee and the grain tef in their store cupboards. This was the world Marcus left at age of two after he, his sister and mother contracted TB and had to make a 70 mile trek to a hospital in the capital Addis Ababa. Macus and his sister survived, their mother died.They were adopted by a Swedish couple, and Marcus grew up with two passions, football and food. His grandmother Helga taught him to cook and forage. This is why on the menu of his Harlem restaurant is a dish called Helga's meatballs. After a brutal apprenticeship and training in restaurants across Europe, Marcus travelled to New York City, narrowly missed being caught up in the attack on the Twin Towers and 9/11 and realised his life had to take a different path. That's why he ended up in Harlem. Dan Saladino hears his life story, from Ethiopia to New York.Presented and presented by Dan Saladino.

Dan Saladino explores the relationship between tunes and taste with Andi Oliver on the link between Sam Cooke and roast chicken and chef Stephen Harris on food and The Buzzcocks. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

Richard Corrigan's is a story of Ireland, the story of a turning point in British food culture and the story of a deep connection to the land and its produce. But most of all it is the story of a man committed to his principles in a notoriously unforgiving industry. He is a rare voice of authenticity from the kitchen and one of our most important chefs.Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Siobhan Maguire.

For food writer Yasmin Khan, the Balti conjures up family meals out in her childhood home of Birmingham where she would regularly tuck into deep bowls of the city's most iconic dish -- richly spiced chicken or lamb, that she scooped up with freshly made warm naan breads. In it's heyday, the Sparkhill area of Birmingham was saturated with Balti restaurants, so much so that it became known as the "Balti Triangle", a place which defined Birmingham's food scene and became one of the few parts of the UK where working class, immigrant, food was celebrated. Since then, the Balti has grown in reputation as one of Britain's truly regional dishes, so much so that a bid was made, albeit unsuccessfully, to give it protected EU status.Now, Yasmin heads back to Birmingham to explore what this uniquely British-Pakistani dish means to a new generation of people growing up in the so-called 'Balti Triangle'. What she finds is a community with strong bonds and deep pride, that continues to come together around a deep love of food. Presented by Yasmin Khan Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury.

To celebrate the start of the Tour de France, cycling presenter and former racer Rebecca Charlton takes you behind the scenes at one of the world's biggest bike events to find the race is on in the kitchen to fuel riders who need to eat up to 8,000 calories per day for three weeks straight. She learns about Chris Froome's nutrition plan with Olympic coach and now Team Principal at Team Sky, Sir Dave Brailsford, she joins chef Sean Fowler as he cooks for the Groupama FDJ team as they fight for a place on the podium and she hears how the author of the Grand Tour Cookbook Hannah Grant had to battle to get her meals on the table in some of the worst kitchens imaginable.

This week's programme about the Eatwell Guide featured an interview with Prof. Louis Levy from Public Health England. This is the unedited version of his interview with Sheila Dillon.

Sheila Dillon questions whether the government's Eatwell Plate that's issued to the medical profession and used as public guidance for a balanced diet could actually be harming us. An increasing number of medics are abandoning the plate because they say it still promotes dangerously high levels of starchy carbohydrates and processed foods that contain high levels of the sugars that cause many of today's chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra author of the Pioppi diet is campaigning to change the official advice and says that a healthy diet and lifestyle are the key to reducing disease and the need for medication, but he says that vested interests from the food and pharmaceutical industries make some of these healthier choices more difficult to achieve. Dr David Unwin is a GP who has seen a huge spike in patients presenting with Type 2 Diabetes since he began practicing forty years ago. He advises lifestyle changes that include abandoning the Eatwell Guide and cutting out the starchy carbohydrates, processed foods and sugars and has seen a reversal of the disease in a significant number of patients. Sheila also visits Tameside Hospital in Greater Manchester which is overhauling its canteen food and vending machine produce to reduce processed carbohydrates and sugary drinks and snacks. In celebration of the 70th anniversary of the NHS the hospital will go completely sugar free on July 4th. Is it time to revise the Eatwell Guide and what will it take to do so?Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Grace Dent, restaurant critic and broadcaster asks what's going wrong in the restaurant trade. With hundreds of small and large food outlets closing their doors, some say the restaurant business is in crisis, yet many argue that as an industry its contribution to the British economy is vastly overlooked and underrated. Recorded at Bristol Food Connections in front of an audience, Grace chairs a discussion with guests, Russell Norman restaurateur and TV presenter, broadcaster, critic and restaurant owner Tim Hayward, West Country chef and restaurateur, Romy Gill and chef proprietor Cyrus Todiwala OBE to find out what ails the restaurant scene and how it can be remedied.Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Sheila Dillon presents the people and the stories behind this year's Food and Farming Awards. Hear the winner of this year's Derek Cooper Outstanding Achievement Award, join Adam Henson and Charlotte Smith as they go in search of the farmers in the running to win Countryfile's Farming Heroes Award 2018 and hear who became this year's Food Chain Global Champion.

Andi Oliver, Alex James and Matt Tebbutt join Sheila Dillon for a night once dubbed 'the Oscars of the food world'; the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2018. The night that the country's best loved chefs, cooks and food writers gather to celebrate unsung food heroes. Farmers, community cooks, shop owners, food and drink producers; You nominated them in your thousands. Now, at the Food and Farming awards ceremony in Bristol, the winners are revealed.Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury.

As part of the BBC Food and Farming Awards Nigel Barden and Tom Parker Bowles met an amazing array of street food vendors. In this programme Nigel tells the finalist's stories and visits KERB market in Camden to hear how the industry is rapidly evolving across the UK.First they meet Manjit Kaur and Michael Jameson from Manjit's Kitchen in Leeds. Manjit and Michael started by doing home deliveries of vegetarian traditional Punjabi food and now have a permanent home in Kirkgate market as well as a horsebox they use to serve across the country.The Bees Country Kitchen in Chorley is run by Sarah and Mike Bryan. The Bees serve a huge array of dishes from Chorley Market including vegan and healthy meals. They have a huge commitment to using local produce and serving their community. The Old Granary Pierogi in Herefordshire is run by Emilia Koziol-Wisniewski, husband Piotr and brother Jacek Koziol. They talk about the difficulty they had as immigrants coming to this country and starting their business selling traditional Polish food when hardly anyone knew what it was. Nigel also talks to Mark Laurie from The Nationwide Caterers Association (NCASS) about how the industry has changed even in a short amount time as well as what we can expect in the future.Presented by Nigel Barden Produced in Bristol by Sam Grist.

Dan Saladino and drinks writer Pete Brown find out why Belgium beer is so influential.

From prisons to research chefs, Sheila Dillon and chef Romy Gill hear how food is used around the country to transform lives. As judges on the 2018 BBC Food & Farming Awards, Romy Gill and writer Kathleen Kerridge visited three finalists in the UK - Helen Boyce who cooks with inmates at Hydebank Wood College and Women's Prison in Belfast, the Welcome Kitchen and Cinema in London where Rose Dakuo cooks for refugees, asylum seekers and the general public and Sam Storey, a research chef in Newcastle working with head and neck cancer survivors who have been left with altered eating difficulties.Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced in Bristol by Caitlin Hobbs.

Europe's migrant crisis is far from over. Already in 2018, the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) estimate that more than 24, 475 people have arrived in Europe by sea. 609 people are dead or missing since January*. The conflict in Syria is now into its 7th year. With an ongoing backdrop of war and violence, and more people arriving into Europe from Syria and elsewhere, Sheila Dillon wants to hear how people fleeing the crisis are living, eating and using food to tell the stories of the journeys they have made. In summer 2017, she travelled to Greece to speak to people living the migrant crisis every day. In Greece, Sheila spends a day with a man who since arriving in the country has volunteered all his time to coordinating a vast network of volunteers distributing food to thousands of migrants and refugees in Northern Greece. She travels to refugee camps, meeting people distributing and receiving the food donations which supplement any support payments.In a remote, coastal refugee camp, she meets a teenager with his mind firmly set on travelling to the UK to reunite his family with his father. Sheila hears how the family cook and eat every day, how they found food during their journey to Greece, and asks whether the family ever make it to the UK.And in London, Sheila meets a chef from Damascus who has found a way back to cooking the food he was once famous for in his own city. She hears how he is spreading the message and raising money for people who have stayed in war-torn Syria.Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury* UNHCR figure last updated 7th May 2018.

Dan Saladino goes on a journey through the history, culture and flavours of Japanese whisky. Why and how has this nation taken a drink so strongly associated with Scotland and made it their own?In 2001, the drinks world started to pay attention to Japanese whisky after one if its distillers scored top marks in an international whisky completion. In the years that followed, the awards and the global attention for Japanese whiskies continued to grow. Critics have described some Japanese whiskies as the "work of genius" and, just last year, one whisky produced by a small, new-wave distillery in the north of the country was voted the world's "Best Single Cask Whisky".With the help of whisky writer and author of the award-winning 'Way of Whisky: A Journey Round Japanese Whisky', Dave Broom, Dan asks: what lies behind the rise and rise of Japanese whisky and who are the people who helped make all this global recognition possible?The story has its origins in the 1860s when a recently opened up Japan started to forge close trading links with Scotland, paving the way for whisky imports. Once the taste for the spirit developed, distillers and chemists within Japan started to work on ways of producing a home-grown version of the drink.A breakthrough came in 1919 when a young student called Masataka Taketsuru travelled to Scotland, worked inside some renowned distilleries, married a Scottish woman and returned home with the secrets behind Scotch. Another pioneer, Shinjeero Torri, would put that know-how to good use and create the Suntory distilling empire and brands such as Yamasaki and Hakushu. Taketsuru would go on to found another respected and award winning whisky brand, Nikka.After record whisky sales in Japan throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the industry fell into decline for the next quarter of a century, with drinkers switching to other spirits and beer. A range of factors lie behind the recent whisky revival and boom, ranging from Japanese innovations in fermentation, distillation and barrel aging as well as the drink that brought whisky to the attention of a younger generation - the High Ball, a mix of whisky and soda. As Dave Broom also explains, the resurgence has encouraged a new generation of distillers to enter the whisky world, including Chichibu, an operation run mostly by people in their twenties, now winning awards. To explore the unique flavours on offer in Japanese whisky, Dan travels to the Highlander pub in Craigellachie, Scotland, where he meets landlord Tatsuya Minagawa and samples a "next to impossible" to find bottle of whisky.Recommended reading: Dave Broom: The Way of Whisky - A Journey Through Japanese Whisky. Dominic Roskrow: Whisky Japan - The Essential Guide To The World's Most Exotic Whisky Brian Ashcraft: Japanese Whisky - The Ultimate Guide to The World's Most Desirable Spirit Stefan Van Eycken: Whisky Rising Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

You know their names, now Sheila Dillon helps tell the stories of the finalists in the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2018. For the last month, our judges, including Tim Hayward, Andi Oliver, Tom Parker-Bowles and Romy Gill have travelled the length and breadth of the UK to meet this year's finalists. In this programme, our judges meet a Northern Irish farmer who went from never trying salami to producing award winning charcuterie in a year. They visit a local deli and cafe owned by a fisherman who has spent his life catching eels and salmon on the Severn. And speak to the founders of a brewery devoted to making great tasting beers with less than 0.5% alcohol.In the first of two editions of The Food Programme, we celebrate our BBC Food and Farming Awards 'school of 2018'.Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury.

Salt has long been prized, but in recent years it has become, for many, something to be avoided: to reduce or even eliminate. At the same time, there are new salt making businesses popping up all over the UK, celebrating salts with - they claim - unique characteristics due to their location and methods of production; they are salts of a place. In this edition of The Food Programme Sheila Dillon asks if there is a place for salt - in our kitchens and on our plates.Featuring chef and writer of 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat' Samin Nosrat, lexicographer and etymologist (and Dictionary Corner resident) Susie Dent, Senior Health Correspondent for online news site vox.com Julia Belluz, salt makers Alison and David Lea-Wilson, and the chef and author of 'Salt is Essential': Shaun Hill.Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.The reading of 'Sugar and Salt' in the podcast and Monday's broadcast is by Vicky Coathup.

Sheila Dillon travels from the border to Belfast to learn why Northern Irish food has blossomed in recent years and what leaving the EU could mean for producers.

Dan Saladino looks behind the headlines of the newly introduced sugar tax.

Dan Saladino reports from Parabere Forum, with five life changing food stories. At the annual gathering for women working in food Dan finds unexpected and inspirational stories.Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

The NHS is at crisis point. Despite the diet books, the fitness videos, the health bloggers, in 2016, Public Health England estimated that Illness associated with lifestyle costs the NHS £11 billion every year. But are we missing something obvious? Could we bring down the cost to the taxpayer, reduce pressure on the health system, with simple advice on what we should eat and drink when we go to see our GP? A growing group of medical professionals think so. Meet the doctors demanding better training on food and nutrition for students at medical school; Dr Rangan Chatterjee (BBC One's Doctor In The House), Dr Michael Mosley, (BBC Two's Trust Me I'm a Doctor) and Dr Rupy Aujla (The Doctor's Kitchen) and many more, all believe that if tomorrow's doctors were taught more about nutrition and diet, it could have a transformative effect on the health of the UK. In this programme Professor Sumantra Ray, doctor and founding chair of NNEdPro Global Centre for Nutrition and Health describes a decade of work which could soon see widespread training for trainee doctors. And Sheila Dillon meets the students taking the conversation about food and health into their own hands.Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced by Clare SalisburyPhoto credit Neil Macaninch (above).

Dan Saladino talks to Modernist Bread author, Nathan Myhrvold, about one of the biggest bread research projects ever undertaken, which involved the baking of 36,000 loaves. Nathan Myhrvold has spent his life trying to understand how things work, he's been a post doctoral fellow researching quantum theory with the late Stephen Hawking, he went on to work as the chief technology officer at Microsoft working directly with Bill Gates and then....... he turned his attention to food.In 2011 he published Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, which explored the history, science and techniques of cooking, including the world of Modernist cuisine, in which chefs continue to push the boundaries of the kitchen. Now he's turned his attention to bread.The research for Modernist Bread goes beyond the production of a book, new ideas about bread history are introduced (the first baker could have lived 100,000 years ago), myths are dispelled (French baguettes and Italian Ciabatta are not as traditional as we think they are) and techniques explained (why kneading might often be a waste of time and a squeeze of pineapple juice can work wonders for dough).Dan and Nathan discuss bread history, correct some falsehoods and ponder on the need for a Modernist bread movement (and Nathan also explains which loaf out of the 36,000 they baked is his favourite).Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

It's a matter of course that in January, food writers, critics and chefs try to predict the food trends of the year ahead. And if you trawled the columns in 2018, no doubt you would have found 'African food' among them. For Zoe Adjonyoh, restaurateur at Zoe's Ghana Kitchen in London and author of cookbook of the same name, this is a difficult term. Africa is the second biggest and most populous continent in the world and its 54 countries are home to a plethora of localised and regional cuisines. Yet, so many of these cuisines have failed to make a mark in mainstream restaurant culture internationally and in the UK, can a new interest in promoting African flavours help us to discover more about them?This programme is Zoe's guide to getting to know African cuisines becoming more available in the UK. She meets British chefs and cooks exploring their African heritage through food, and asks them the worth, or worthlessness of the term 'African food'.The first of The Food Programme's 2018 season of African food stories in Britain.Presented by Zoe Adjonyoh Produced by Clare Salisbury.

Dan Saladino meets the runners convinced low or no carbs is the way to peak performance.

Tim Hayward embarks on the big pig road trip to meet some of the people who devote their lives to rare breeds of British pigs. He speaks to Adam Henson, best-known as a presenter on BBC One's Countryfile, about why pigs like the Gloucester Old Spot and Tamworth are important to the heritage of the UK, and explains the work his late Father Joe did to keep these breeds alive. Two of Adam's Tamworth pigs became the starting point for brothers John and Nick Francis who came to pig-keeping fresh out of university and now produce meat for a number of Michelin-starred restaurants. Robert Buttle gives Tim slices of artisan charcuterie which he produces from his Large Blacks and Oxford Sandys and explains why pork of this quality needs to be treated like the finest steak. Tim also meets the next generation of pig keepers at Holme Grange School in Berkshire and discovers that showing pigs is not as easy as it looks.Producer: Toby Field.

Sheila Dillon celebrates the power of food to comfort us in hard times, especially during these dark days of the year. Dumplings, marshmallows, chicken soup, fried chicken, curried goat: all the things we long to eat when we're sad, or sick, or homesick. She talks to Antarctic explorers about the food they miss from home, and eating marshmallows at the South Pole; to teenagers in a Fried Chicken shop; to homesick Polish emigres eating proper Polish dumplings, and to a class of eight-year-olds about what their parents cook for them when they're sick. Chef Raymond Blanc goes into an almost mystical trance as he remembers the puddings his mother cooked for him as a child and their trembling caramel; he confesses this is what he craves now when he's sick. Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner reveals the secret of "Jewish penicillin", or chicken soup; Dr Rupy Aujla reflects on what you might call the culinary placebo effect; and Reggae singer Levi Roots explains about the consoling power of curried goat. Not forgetting Jill Archer's famous flapjacks - the Food Programme presents a comfort feast for February!Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Elizabeth burke.

Sheila Dillon and Dan Saladino pay tribute to greengrocer extraordinaire, the late, great and encyclopaedic Charlie Hicks with help from Jamie Oliver, Gregg Wallace and Raymond Blanc. Many radio listeners will remember Charlie Hicks as a co-presenter of BBC Radio 4's Veg Talk series, in which listeners phoned in to speak to two great experts of fresh produce. Charlie was a 4th generation, Covent Garden market fruit and veg man, but he was so much more including a great cook, a food scholar and broadcaster.Charlie, along with Gregg, helped changed British food culture in the 1980s and 1990s. They supplied London's top chefs with fresh produce and helped introduce new flavours and varieties to British tables. Food fashions spread as chefs influenced supermarkets who then made relatively obscure ingredients such as rocket, artichoke and baby beets popular with domestic cooks.The series Veg Talk, which ran from 1998 to 2005 attracted all of the UK's top named chefs including Jamie Oliver (who described Charlie as a "Vegetable Yoda" and "the Chef's Secret Weapon", Angela Hartnett, Michel Roux Jnr and Cyrus Todiwala. The programme gave Charlie a platform to share his knowledge and expertise of fruit and vegetables, as well as his sharp sense of humour and unique banter with his co-presenter Gregg. Charlie Hicks passed away in January and all parts of the food industry mourned his loss. Dan and Sheila tell his food story and explain why he made such an impact on British food culture.Produced by Dan Saladino.

When the BBC World Service's Language Services moved into New Broadcasting House in central London, different services would take it in turns to host a 'Meet-Your-Neighbour' event to introduce themselves to other parts of the BBC. People started bringing in food that reflected their country or region. Other people took up the mantle and an idea was born. Three years on and this extraordinary collection of recipes has been compiled into a truly global cookbook, available for staff to download. But this is just more than a collection of recipes - this is food that connects the journalists, correspondents, managers and producers to their homes, and provides a cultural bridge between themselves. Sheila Dillon meets Paula Moio who describes how a fish stew - Calulude Peixe - epitomises long Saturday afternoons in Angola when friends and family come to put the world to rights over long lunches, and how on moving to London a Saturday afternoon could be a poignant and emotional time. Sadeq Saba discusses the flavours of North Iran and why nothing can dampen down the Iranian's love of food. Lourdes Heredia gives Sheila a tour of the fifth floor before unveiling an incredible selection of salsas that has colleges from the African and Middle Eastern sections arguing about which country produces the hottest chilies. BBC Urdu presenter Aliya Nazki talks quinces and Kashmiri food, and Dmitry Shishkin is joined by his daughter Masha to explain how there's a lot more to Russian cooking than meets the eye. Producer: Toby Field.

Saffron is one of the world's most evocative spices, shrouded in myth and mystery and conjuring up images from the ancient Silk Road. Often seen as 'expensive', 'complicated' or perhaps for a special occasion, for British food writer Yasmin Khan, the spice was a store cupboard stable. Because of her mother's Iranian heritage, as a child she ate it almost every day.Later, Yasmin's love affair with saffron inspired her to travel across Iran, documenting the country's rich culinary heritage in her book 'The Saffron Tales'. On her journey she learnt that the saffron crocus was cultivated in Iran by the 10th century BC and today has multiple uses in perfuming a variety of Iranian dishes. But she also made another discovery, that saffron has a unique and mysterious British history, that brings this magical spice, much closer to home.In this programme, writer Pat Willard, chef Charlie Hodson, botanist Dr Sally Francis and community grower Ally McKinlay help to unfold an almost forgotten British saffron story, one that captivates and entrances everyone that comes into contact with it. Presented by Yasmin Khan Produced by Clare Salisbury.

Dan Saladino looks at ideas that could make an impact on our food future featuring America's Impossible Burger, a Sardinian maggot infested cheese and mussels being grown in downtown Copenhagen. Most people are aware of the challenges that lie ahead linked to predictions of population growth peaking at 9bn by 2050 but who is coming up with ideas of how we can feed more people with a finite amount of land, water and other resources? Dan looks at three ideas that provide an insight into work underway to find solutions.The expert on the science of cooking Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, tells the story of The Impossible Burger, a decade long endeavour, based in California, to find a plant based replica of beef and burger patties. Impossible Foods was founded by a bio-chemist Professor Patrick Brown. Because he was approaching the problem of rising global meat consumption from outside of the food industry he was forced to ask some very basic questions, most important of which was "why does meat taste like meat"? One of the answers Pat Brown discovered was a molecule called heme. He also knew heme could be found in plants. The outcome of years of work and millions of dollars of investment is The Impossible Burger. It's aimed not at vegetarians or vegans but meat lovers and has been designed to have the meaty, bloody juiciness of a real burger. Harold McGee describes the science behind the burger and the experience of eating one.By the way, listen out for the traditional Sardinian music "Su Cuntrattu de Seneghe" performed by Antonio Maria Cubadda who is from Seneghe town.The next future food story has its origins in Sardinia and a cheese called Casu Marzu. As the cheese ferments a fly called the Cheese Skipper is attracted by the aromas being released and lays its eggs inside the cheese. The larvae then hatch and start to digest the proteins and turn a hard textured cheese into a soft one. The cheese is then eaten while the wriggling maggots are still alive within the cheese. A researcher working for the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation's Edible Insect project, Afton Halloran went in search of the cheese as a rare example of a European food involving edible insects. In Sardinia she met a chef Roberto Flore . They eventually married and since, have travelled the world in search of other examples of edible insects that could provide a clue to future foods. They tell Dan the story of the cheese and the conclusions they've reached so far when it comes to the potential of insects in feeding the world.The final story comes from Copenhagen where Joachim Hjer is attempting to get people in the city to grown their own mussels in the heart of the city.In the studio with Dan is Dr Morgaine Gaye, a "Food Futurologist" who explains which of the three stories she believes will be the one to watch in 2018.Presented and produced by Dan Saladino.

Where are the cooks changing the lives of their communities? Which food shops or markets make shopping a more unique experience? Who is making the UK a more delicious place through food and drink? Rick Stein, Giorgio Locatelli, Angela Hartnett, Yotam Ottolenghi and this year's head judge Andi Oliver join Sheila Dillon to launch 2018's search for the best in UK food, drink and farming; the BBC Food & Farming Awards 2018. Sheila celebrates the impact of previous award winners and reveals the expert panel of judges who'll crown the Food and Farming Awards 'Class of 2018'. But it all begins with your nominations... Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced by Clare SalisburyNB. The BBC Food & Farming Awards will open for public nominations on Sunday 14th January for 2 weeks, closing on Monday 29th January. Details can be found at bbc.co.uk/foodawards.

The sudden proliferation of porridge is there for all to see, across the country. Café chains like Pret, Starbucks, McDonalds; instant tubs on offer in your local supermarket; on the train, even. Sheila Dillon explores the current fashion for porridge, and meets the "porridge pioneers" who have ridden the sticky porridge wave and created booming porridge businesses. She eats breakfast with Alex Healy Hutchinson, founder of the Covent Garden porridge restaurant 26 Grains; she tours the Edinburgh factory of Stoats Oats, a business which started from a mobile porridge van at rock festivals and is now on track for a turnover of £10 million. She hears from contestants from all over the world at this year's Golden Spurtle International Porridge Championship, and she talks to the Harvard scientist who published the largest study about the health benefits of porridge. (Yes it certainly is good for you.) Finally, back in her kitchen Sheila convenes her own porridge championship with Jamaican chef Levi Roots, Scandinavian chef Trine Hahnemann and Scottish chef Shirley Spear. Whose porridge will taste best? And which Bob Marley song has a verse about cooking porridge?

Champagne sceptic Dan Saladino travels to the French region in search of the mavericks of fizz. These wine producers are part of a movement that's causing many to re-evaluate the world's most celebrated bubbles. For many, including Dan, champagne is a drink purely of fun and celebration, a glass of bubbles most often enjoyed standing up; popping a cork has played a part in countless moments and memories of joy. But to others, it's also increasingly being treated as a serious wine, that as with the world's best bottles, can offer a sense of place, and that behind the fizz champagne can also be a wine of "terroir". Dan is taken on a road trip through the Champagne region to meet a movement of small scale, vineyard driven "grower champagnes" by award winning wine writer Dan Keeling of the magazine Noble Rot. Influenced by the approach more often found in Burgundy and Bordeaux they're using specific vineyards to produce great wines that just happen to have bubbles.As wine merchant Robert Walters, author of Bursting Bubbles: A Secret History of Champagne and The Rise of the Great Growers explains in the programme champagne was a product of the scientific and industrial revolutions. Initially an unwanted accident in winemaking in the 18th century, this sparkling wine became a popular novelty feature across Europe. However it would take 200 years to master the bubbles. The complex process of secondary fermentation of wine in bottles needed a huge amount of technical innovation and capital investment. From stronger glass bottles to muselet (the wire cage that helps to hold the cork in under great pressure), better understanding of fermentation and skills such as riddling, disgorgement and dosage all needed to be mastered and funded. This explains why champagne production fell under the control of the big houses, the "Grand Marques" e.g. Krug, Dom Perignon and Bollinger. These brands, also known as negociant houses, typically buy in grapes and wine from thousands of growers throughout the Champagne region and then make a blend in their house style.Dan and Dan visit Krug, one of the most prestigious Grand Marques, to hear how this model works.Meanwhile, from humble beginnings in the 1990s, a small group of growers have taken a different approach. They've decided to stop selling their grapes to the negociant houses and produce their own champagnes that are very much the product of their vineyards. Dan Keeling takes Dan on a tour of some of the best "grower champagnes" to see if this can convert a bubble sceptic into a lover of fizz.Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.Additional reading; Bursting Bubbles: A Secret History of Champagne and The Rise of the Great Growers - Robert Walters. Champagne: The Essential Guide to the Wines, Producers and Terroirs of the Iconic Region - Peter Liem.

Sheila Dillon invites some special guests, friends old and new, to come and share a festive meal.Before they start to arrive, Nigel Slater drops by to help Sheila prepare. Each visitor will bring a dish, or a drink, that for them captures something unique of the flavours and spirit of the season.Knocking on Sheila's door are: Giorgio Locatelli, Angela Hartnett, Anna Jones, Pete Brown, Neil Borthwick and Yotam Ottolenghi.Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

Dan Saladino reports on the past, present and future of what's thought to be the world's most widely produced and consumed cheese, Cheddar. Dan also meets producers who are trying to discover what cheddar might have tasted like more than a century ago, using some of the earliest known Cheddar recipes.Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

We have a national passion for crisps. Every week, on average, each person in Britain eats 4 bags of crisps - a staggering 240 million bags a week. This is a good moment to look more closely at crisps, since this year they celebrate their bicentenary. It's 200 years since the eccentric Dr William Kitchiner published "The Cook's Oracle", a best-seller in its day, with the first recorded crisps recipe. But quite what made them such a part of British life it's hard to say. In search of answers, Sheila Dillon is allowed a rare visit to the Walkers crisps factory in Leicester to meet people whose job it is to taste crisps all day long. What new flavours are in the pipeline? She hears from schoolchildren about why they insist on crisps in their lunchbox, and from twenty-somethings spending a wild Friday night at a "bottomless crisps party" in a Birmingham bar with all the crisps you can eat. She meets Charles Spence, Professor of Psychology at Oxford, who won an "Ignobel Prize" for his "sonic experiments" with crisps, and talks to Dr Sara Lodge, historian of the crisp, who believes crisps are a symbol of proud British individualism: the individual bag of crisps is on a par with other national icons like the mini or the red telephone box. More disturbingly, Sheila discovers from investigative reporter Joanna Blythman what is actually in crisps and what this gargantuan national consumption might be doing to our health. Producer Elizabeth Burke Presenter Sheila Dillon.

It's that time of year when Sheila Dillon and special guests take a close look at the food, cookery and drink books of 2017.Joining Sheila are the food writer Bee Wilson, and the Features Editor at the book trade magazine The Bookseller, Tom Tivnan. Expect tales of literature, simplicity, deliciousness... and a deep dive into the idea of 'comfort'.Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

Dan Saladino is at Food On The Edge, a gathering of people with food stories to tell; from a Black Panther breakfast to a chef convinced her emotions could be detected in her food.Held in Galway, the west of Ireland each year chef JP McMahon invites fellow cooks, chefs and restaurateurs to take to a stage and for 15 minutes share a food story of experience. Over two days more than 40 different stories from countries as diverse as Japan, Italy, Bolivia and Australia are told.Dan selects a handful of the stories that made an impact on him during his time at Food On The Edge.The first story is of how a Syrian kitchen came to be set up in Amsterdam. Tens of thousand of Syrians arrived in the city during the peak of the recent refugee crisis. Among them was a photographer, fashion designer, fitness machine repair man and a lawyer. Together they ran a kitchen in the Salvation Army centre where they were being housed, aiming to feed their fellow refugees with food from home. After spotting an appeal for help on Facebook, Dutch chef Jurriaan Momberg visited the kitchen to see if he could help teach them to cook. What he discovered were some of the greatest culinary talents he'd encountered in his career. It led to the creation of a pop-up restaurant which caused a sensation in Amsterdam. But all good things comes to an end and in the programme Jurriaan explains why one day he walked into an empty kitchen.Another story comes from Oakland California. It was there in 1966 that the radical political movement The Black Panthers were created in response to police violence against black communities. By 1969 what had first looked like a militia, promoting armed resistance, the organisation had also created a series of social programmes. The most successful of which was a breakfast programme set up to feed black children who were often going to school undernourished and hungry. Chef Saqib Keval of the People's Kitchen Collective, a group of cooks, historians and researchers who tell stories through food, explains why he's brought the free breakfasts back to California.Meanwhile Chef Matt Orlando of the Copenhagen restaurant Amass reveals some of the kitchen experiments he's been undertaking to convert so called "waste food" and by-products into delicious meals. He explains the ingenious way flavours and nutrients inside used coffee grounds can be released to make a meal.Irish chef Domini Kemp took to the stage to express her frustration of how, based on her own experience of cancer treatment, the medical profession neglect the power of food in conversations about prevention, recovery and long term health.Finally, New York chef Elise Kornack tells the story of how a mental breakdown led her to become convinced that her own powerful emotions were being transferred through her cooking and onto her customers. Like a scene from the book and film, Like Water For Chocolate, she believed every mouthful of food she was serving would result in diners sensing what was unfolding in her troubled mind. Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.Additional recording in Oakland, California by Meradith Hoddinott.

The number of young people turning vegan is rising. Grace Dent meets some of the people opening vegan eateries and finds out how creatives are using social media to further the "vegangelical" cause. Grace goes to the Hackney Downs Vegan Market to speak to Jay Brave who argues that adopting a vegan diet is as much about personal autonomy and challenging the status quo as it is an ethical step. He delivers a few bars of 'Vegan Shut Up', his parody of Stormzy's 'Shut Up' released on World Vegan Day, and tells Grace why veganism is becoming big in the London grime scene. She also speaks to Sean O'Callaghan AKA Fat Gay Vegan who set-up the market and has seen its popularity grow, and gives his reaction to the mainstream restaurants who are falling over themselves to come up with vegan menus. Ian Theasby and Henry Firth from Bosh! create simple and imaginative vegan recipes which are filmed and broadcast to over 1.4m Facebook users. Toby Field visits them at their studio to find out what fuels their idea to create plant-based options and to ask why they keep out of the argument around the ethics of veganism.Maria Rose has just opened a vegan cafe in Barnstaple and explains how it's slowly creating a more enlightened scene in North Devon. So is this just a trend that's fine for the hipster herbivores of Camden, or can it gain traction across the country and start a food revolution? Producer: Toby Field.

With Catalonia in the midst of a political crisis, Sheila Dillon travels to the region just as they self-declared independence and discovers how the spirit of the region and its people are very much reflected in their passion for food.

Dan Saladino gets a practical masterclass with the world-renowned teacher and author of 'The Art of Fermentation' - Sandor Ellix Katz.Presenter: Dan Saladino Producer: Rich Ward.

Following years of reporting on UK chicken scandals, Dan Saladino looks at investigations now underway by The Food Standards Agency and MPs into practices at supplier 2 Sisters.

In this final programme of the series How We Eat, Sheila Dillon explores eating as a family, the reality and the myth. As working hours increase and with both parents working, it becomes more and more difficult to sit down together with the children for meals. Separate meals, often in front of the tv, are more the reality in Britain today. But in this programme Sheila meets two families who believe that there is nothing more important than eating together. The Parker family have two children of their own, but they have also fostered dozens of children, some with special needs. Crucial to the success of their extended family, they believe, is the fact that they sit together every night at six o'clock round the table to eat. Sheila Dillon joins them to find out why this structure is so important to the children they look after. She visits too the Brooks family, who sit down together every Friday night for the Jewish Friday night dinner. Emma Brooks married into Judaism and found it strange at first; she reflects on the demands but also the benefits of this ritual meal. So what exactly can family meals do for us? Sheila talks to best-selling child psychologist Steve Biddulph whose books ("Raising Boys", "Raising Girls") are in 4 million homes, and finds out why he thinks eating together is crucial if you want to solve conflict and raise happy children. He gives his top tips for successful family meals. But many people, Sheila included, remember dreadful family rows over the childhood dinner table. With historian Chris Kissane, the programme explores whether the family dinner, like the perfect family itself, has always been more of a myth than a reality.