The Food Programme

Sheila Dillon investigates the appeal of shellfish - bivalves and molluscs - from the point of view of taste and sustainability and asks why we don't eat them more in Britain. She finds out what has happened to the marine environment in Lyme Bay since a scallop dredging ban was introduced in part of it and about the implications of a proposed mussel farm there. She discovers why whelk fishing is a...

Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett prepares a hearty winter's meal for Sheila Dillon using ingredients from the Best Producer category of the 2010 BBC Food and Farming Awards. On the menu was pumpkin soup, spiced up with a spoonful of chutney from finalists The Tracklements Company, and served with a rather superior cheese on toast made with ciabatta from winner and artisan baker Alex Gooch and...

Sheila Dillon, with the help of some famous food lovers (including Giorgio Locatelli, Cyrus Todiwala, Fuchsia Dunlop and Bee Wilson) hears about their favourite kitchen gadgets. From a 300 year clockwork roasting spit to a 21st century thermal blender, what are the must-have qualities of these kitchen necessities? And how do you choose from the ever increasing plethora of expensive all-singing-all...

Sheila Dillon traces the legacy of Elizabeth David's more scholarly work and reviews food writing in 2010 with blogger and critic Tim Hayward, photographer Jason Lowe and publisher Anne Dolamore. We hear from Elizabeth David's literary Executor Jill Norman about the shift in her work from recipe-driven writing in her early career to the later, more academic books and debate who has taken on her le...

Panettone and chocolate logs - Sheila Dillon embraces two of the cakes replacing our "traditional" Christmas cakes on our Christmas tables, and ponders what what we mean by traditional when it comes to Christmas cakes. Panettone is a traditional Italian Christmas cake. John Dickie, Professor of Italian Studies at University College London and author of "Delizia! A History of the Italians and their...

The Danish chef Rene Redzepi of Noma, the "World's Best Restaurant", forages for food in Lapland and London. He's become one of the most influential chefs in the world because of his use of wild ingredients, foraged from the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. With dishes that revive lost food traditions, that use unfamiliar ingredients like mosses, lichen, spruces as...

Sheila Dillon explores the varieties of venison - wild and farmed - we can now find in butchers and supermarkets in the UK. She joins a stalker in Berkshire and talks to the biggest game dealer in the country. Producer Dilly Barlow.

From Caribbean to Thai and Vietnamese - Simon Parkes looks at the latest trends in British street food and takeaway meals. And we hear from some of the finalists in the BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards. Producer: Elaine Lester.

A distiller, a brewer and a cider maker - but who will be the first winner of the Food and Farming Awards Best Drinks Producer Award? Oz Clarke joins Sheila Dillon in Birmingham's NEC to reveal all. Food writer and critic Charles Campion and restaurateur and writer Mark Hix were the judges for this category and talk Sheila through the finalists. In this first year of the Best Drinks Producer categ...

Sheila Dillon looks at new ideas for using food to save the British pub. With 40 pubs a week closing down and food sales starting to equal those of drinks, the role of food in the future of the public house has never been more important. Sheila Dillon explores how one pub has come up with a groundbreaking solution to keeping business thriving. Producer: Dave Battcock.

Over the past few months Supermarket price wars have halved the cost of one of Britain's best loved fruits - the banana. Even though retailers say they aren't passing cuts down to growers Sheila Dillon asks, whether our appetite for cheap fruit is having an impact on workers at the other end of the supply chain. We travel to Ecuador, one of the world's leading banana exporters, to explore the reac...

Sheila Dillon hears from some of the world's disappearing food tribes and finds out why efforts are underway to preserve indigenous food cultures in north America, Scandinavia and in Scotland's Highlands and Islands. She travels to Turin for Terra Madre, the biannual gathering of food communities, farmers, fishermen and cooks organised by the international Slow Food movement. Among the 6000 delega...

In these hard economic times does a Private Members Bill introducing new standards for the food sourced by public bodies stand a chance of becoming law? Simon Parkes visits Nottinghamshire, where some hospital meals and all school dinners are procured this way, to look at what such a change might mean in practice. The Nottingham City Hospital has been sourcing sustainably for 7 years, buying its m...

What food do students have access to, what do they eat? Sheila Dillon investigates the catering provided for students across the country in these financially straightened times. She talks to industry expert Chris Druce about the big catering companies and their expansion into higher education. She visits a food co-op at the School of Oriental and African Studies; Dan Saladino visits Plymouth Unive...

Sheila Dillon hears from the people attempting to revolutionise the sandwich. We're now seeing the rise of food businesses specialising in just one type of sandwich using authentic recipes from around the world. The food entrepreneurs are making everything from the Vietnamese Bahn Mi through to the Argentinean Lomito, all are sandwiches which rely on the makers finding authentic bread to match the...

Scagglethorpe Queening, Ribston Pippin, the Wass - Simon Parkes meets those restoring the orcharding tradition of the north, from the walled community garden at Helmsley to the orchard village of Husthwaite, and samples some of the commercial fruits of these orchards including a new cider brandy from the orchards of Ampleforth Abbey. Dr Joan Morgan, apple expert and author of the seminal New Book...

Sheila Dillon looks at some of the latest developments in airline food. The supply chain is beginning to open up and innovative producers from the north east of Britain have succeeded in winning contracts to supply leading airlines. One of these suppliers - 'Look What We Found' - has led the way in technology to deliver quality ambient food in a bag. They've converted this to a tray of food that c...

Sheila Dillon looks behind the scenes of the world's largest and smallest pasta factories. It's a difficult time as wheat prices are high and so competition for grain is fierce. Fires, droughts and speculation in the wheat market together with poor harvests of durum wheat is creating a rise in prices. Pasta producers all over the world compete for the best quality semolina, produced from the mille...

Northern Ireland's new Focus on Food policy, published earlier this summer, aims to put food at the heart of economic growth, and encourage value added, and quality, food production. While in the South the food revolution of the past 30 years created a plethora of innovative, quality food businesses to feed a burgeoning tourism sector, in the North the food and farming industries have been more co...

Ice Cream : Everyone seems to like ice cream and with the market worth an incredible one billion pounds a year, it would seem to be recession-proof. This programme explores the market and the marketing. There has been an explosion in the number of artisan producers so how do they all compete? And what keeps the big players at the top of their game? What is real ice cream anyway? And, what is the d...

Chef Mark Hix travels to Transylvania to help revive a disappearing food culture. From cheese making shepherds to pickle producers, he meets the people improving food in Romania. Producer: Dan Saladino.

Richard Johnson is on a mission to revive the fortunes of the British kebab. A life long lover of the world famous street food he's convinced that a more authentic kebab culture can flourish in Britain. On his travels he finds out how and why it became so popular here and where most of the UK's kebabs are made. Then, in order to understand the authentic techniques used in Turkish kebab making Rich...