The Food Programme

In this series of four programmes broadcast over the Christmas period, Sheila Dillon explores the link between tradition and food. Food can bind a community together, and give it new life. In this third programme of the series, Sheila travels to Loch Fyne to see how this rural Scottish community has preserved its food traditions, with recipes handed down for generations. She discovers how local fo...

In this series of four programmes broadcast over Christmas, Sheila Dillon explores the link between tradition and food. For Christmas Day, Sheila celebrates The Wild Boar Feast - an ancient Viking tradition which still lingers on in Britain (think of 'pigs in blankets') and inspires our love of the Christmas Ham. Historian Eleanor Barraclough introduces Sheila to a stuffed boar's head in the cella...

In this series of four programmes broadcast over Christmas, Sheila Dillon explores the link between tradition and food. First, in the run-up to Christmas, she takes an irreverent look at baking - and the connection between baking and being a "Good Wife and Mother. She begins by visiting a "Clandestine Cake Club", which meets every month in a secret location. This month's location takes the theme o...

Dan Saladino finds out what the future holds for cheese, including the role of raw milk. It's a story of microbes, mystery, discord and symphony. Dan is joined by Bronwen Percival, cheese buyer for Neal's Yard Dairy and contributor to the new Oxford Companion to Cheese. Also featuring John Gynther from Arla Unika, cheesemakers Jonny and Dulcie Crickmore, food writer Patrick McGuigan, researcher Dr...

'Pop-up' chef and food writer Olia Hercules, The Great British Bake Off contestant turned Youtube star Chetna Makan, Film academic come supper club hostess Dr Alissa Timoshkina and cafe chef / 'instagrammer' / writer Elly Curshen are among ten women from different food cultures coming together for the first time to cook a truly female feast. It's a 'pop-up' dinner hosted and put together in Bristo...

Sheila Dillon and guests discuss the year's food and cookery books - focussing on debut food books. Joining Sheila in the studio is cook, gardener and writer Jojo Tulloh, journalist and food writer Alex Renton, and the Features Editor at the trade magazine The Bookseller, Tom Tivnan. There's also tales of cider, science and rogueishness with drinks writer Henry Jeffreys. Also offering up her 2016...

Sheila Dillon heads to Galloway, Scotland, to meet forager and wild food teacher Mark Williams - who claims to be able to match anything in our spice racks with flavours found in the wild, in the UK. Can he assemble a 'native spice rack'? What might a 'wild Scottish curry' taste like? Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

Spain's Basque region exerts a powerful influence on global cuisine, Dan Saladino finds out why. Heston Blumenthal and writer Harold Mcgee provide insights into this food culture.

Every four years, the most established names in Chinese cuisine pitch their skills against each other in an international competition which has become known as the Olympics of Chinese food. This year the World Championship for Chinese Cuisine was held in Europe for the first time in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Teams of chefs descend on the competition from around the world and compete for highly...

Sheila Dillon and special guests discover a delicious world of pumpkins and winter squash. It's Halloween time, and pumpkins are making their annual appearance in windows and on doorsteps. But these winter squash are part of a fascinating family of fruit (yes, fruit - not vegetable) with huge culinary potential that many feel uncomfortable around. This programme aims to change that. Sheila invites...

From ancient Egyptian bread to Native American food, Dan Saladino reports from Terra Madre.

Dan Saladino reports from Slow Food's global food event Terra Madre with stories from Africa. Terra Madre (aka Mother Earth) is probably one of the world's biggest gatherings around food. Thousands of farmers, cooks and producers travel from 140 countries and five different continents to congregate in the northern Italian city of Turin. Hundreds of thousands of people simply interested in food als...

As apple fairs and celebrations are held all around the country, Sheila Dillon travels to an orchard in Devon for a conversation with drinks writer Pete Brown, who has just written a book about his two-year journey into all things apple: 'The Apple Orchard'. Sheila and Pete are joined at Otter Farm by its owner - food grower and writer Mark Diacono. From the Hoary Morning to the Bramley's Seedling...

For the 850 thousand families in the UK living with dementia, the simple daily practise of eating a meal can escalate into a dreaded challenge. Spurred on by a listener's personal experience, Sheila Dillon meets people living with dementia to ask how their relationship with food has changed. American food writer Paula Wolfert has written award winning books on the food of the Mediterranean. In 201...

This week, as aid convoys carrying food into Syria have been under attack, Dan Saladino revisits the conflict. A year ago, he reported on how displaced Syrians managed to eat and survive in conflict and its impact on the country's ancient food culture. In this episode he investigates how food is being used as a weapon - and target - of war. He hears from the World Food Programme about new efforts...

Charles Green. Chas to his family, 'cook' to his colleagues. A young baker whose sense of adventure drew him to a career cooking on the sea. You may never have heard of Charles, but you certainly will have heard of an expedition on which he played a crucial role... Charles was cook for the crew of the 1914 Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. A disastrous expedition which ended...

As the much-anticipated new series of Poldark returns to our screens, most eyes will be on Aidan Turner but behind the scenes a raft of experts has worked to ensure each setting is as accurate to the time as possible - including the food. The Food Programme was given special access on set to see the effort that goes into recreating the fantastic feasts that marked so many social functions in the G...

Dan Saladino journeys into coffee's past, present and future. He discovers a world of new flavours, far from his formative espresso experiences in Sicily - and finds that things are more precarious than they may seem. Are we living in a golden age of coffee? Behind every cup of coffee is a story - or rather many stories. A whole chain, from people to processes, all of which make a difference to th...

With 20 million casks lying in storage maturing, Scotch whisky looks set to hold its strong place in the world market for decades to come. It's the third biggest industry in Scotland, contributing £3.3 billion to the economy per year. But the landscape is changing - both within Scotland and across the UK. Recent years have seen dozens of new distilleries opening in Scotland and also in Wales, Nort...

In French, 'l'aperitif', in Italian, 'l'aperitivo'. We don't of course have a translation in English, but the aperitif, the drinks and snacks which proceed a meal have long captured our imaginations. The sounds and smells of Mediterranean holidays, the tastes of a summer day... and those glamorous and just a bit tacky TV adverts from the 70s. ('Dubonnet vous?') Food writer Diana Henry fell for tho...

From being tucked under the pub bar stool as a baby to getting into Fleet Street pubs underage, Roger Protz's passion for beer began early. He's spent 40 years on a mission to celebrate and protect brewing traditions - writing about brewing and beers including over 20 editions of the Good Beer Guide. Arguably what he was writing about then is what many hold important today - in both food and drink...

2016's strawberry solstice fell as the UK's strawberry pickers embarked on a bigger crop than ever before. Strawberries have become a supermarket staple - no longer a seasonal treat. But as our appetite for the berries has increased, production it seems, is becoming more complicated. Californian strawberry farmers, who produce one of the biggest crops in the world, are facing some of the most chal...

Pulses are little marvels - protein packed lentils, peas and beans are cheap, good for health and help the soil. They're central to many food cultures including Italy and France but as a nation we eat very few other than baked beans. Now the Food and Agriculture Organisation has announced the 'Year of the Pulse' to encourage us to eat more but they may be met with reluctance from some quarters. Sh...

The range of fats and oils available to us is growing but the advice has changed dramatically. Sheila Dillon looks to cut through the latest thinking to help gain clarity of which we should be using when. She's joined in the studio by Dr Michael Mosley whose recent investigation looked into how the composition of saturated and polyunsaturated fats changed when heated with food and resulted in the...

Why is cheese essential when the German Chancellor comes for dinner? Dan Saladino explains why a plate of food shouldn't be taken at face value in this special episode of the Food Programme, made in collaboration with the Food Chain on The World Service. This week we enter an arena usually hidden from public view; the kitchens behind the most powerful people on the planet, where politics, policy a...