Dan Saladino tells us what motivates him to work on The Food Programme and why, in its 16th year, the BBC Food & farming Awards are more important than ever.

Sometimes I feel my early years were meant to be my grounding, my preparation to work on the BBC Food & Farming Awards. My father arrived in Bristol in the 1960s from Sicily and spent his entire working life in food. I spent a lot of my school holidays sitting at the back of restaurants watching chefs. During these holidays I’d also visit relatives in Sicily and spent time on farms surrounded by grapes, olives, oranges and almonds. Meals there would be loud family gatherings around the table. I guess the most powerful memories I have from childhood involve food. From that early experience I also got to understand what it takes to produce and prepare great food. The patience, skill and sheer hard work that goes into making something delicious, nutritious and memorable. That’s what we also see each year in our Awards.

They also tell a story and provide people with inspirations insights into what goes on behind the scenes of a food business, food production and farming. As well as our weekly editions of The Food Programme, the Awards are also designed to counter another problem I’m aware of; a lack of information and in depth storytelling about food. That’s a big motivation for all of us who work on The Food Programme and the Awards.

Each day all of us have to make decisions about what to put into our bodies. As a nation we buy more cook books, watch more television programmes about food and go out to restaurants more than our parents did. However I’m not convinced we all know as much as we need to about how our food is produced, what the consequences of our buying decisions are and what impact any particular food has on our bodies. Life is so busy and often we have to make tough economic choices about food, but knowledge is power and we all deserve to know more about what we are eating. Curiosity and asking questions is essential when it comes to food.

The Food Programme’s mission statement is “Investigating every aspect of the food we eat” and that pretty much sums it up. The founding presenter Derek Cooper who created the programme in 1979 wanted to open up to the audience the world in which our food is produced, to reveal things we need to know as consumers and celebrate the foods and drinks that give us pleasure. We still do that, in recent times we’ve investigated the horse meat scandal, looked into intensive poultry production and explored the food issues around the Syrian conflict.

In 2000 The Food Programme wanted to mark its 20th anniversary of being on air. The Food Programme was one of the few places people working in school food or public health, or pioneering chefs and farmers received recognition and the so The Food and Farming Awards were created to ensure they had a dedicated national platform for their stories to be told. They’ve continued to do that ever since and we’ve added to the categories to reflect new trends and the rise of different food businesses.

It takes a lot of work to feed a school full of kids well, or to make a great cheese or turn up in the rain to sell fresh and delicious food at a market. Our lives would be a lot poorer, the world a duller place and our economy less diverse without these producers or food figures. We know that by shining some light on great work – that can also help spread ideas and inspire other people to act.

The issues we face around food are bigger than we’ve faced before (just think obesity or food poverty) and for that reason I think people look to the awards as a way of having a national conversation about food and drink and what matters to them.

At our Awards ceremony in Bristol last night those conversations were certainly flowing. Bristol is the perfect backdrop for an awards ceremony celebrating excitement and innovation around food. Not only is it where we make The Food Programme, it’s a dynamic city full of people with lots of new ideas. I grew up in Bristol in the 1970s and 80s. It already had a great grass roots food scene but it has exploded in recent years. It’s a place that accepts new ideas and is a great place for new businesses to take off (think of the restaurants, streetfood businesses and bakeries the city has seen in the last five years alone). Also (and I know this from my own background) it has a rich diversity that has brought lots of different cuisines and flavours to the city.

This year we have a new category called The Future Food Award. It’s been designed to highlight the ideas and work taking place behind the scenes in some of the UK’s bigger food operations. We wanted our judges to find the food and drink ideas that could be making a difference in five or ten years’ time. The award went to a dairy farming family in Sheffield who’s found an innovative way of surviving in the milk business.

They understood that few of us get to taste truly fresh milk (in the larger national supply chains, it can take days to work it’s way through to the consumer). One day they handed a fresh litre of milk to a coffee shop in the city. They received a call within an hour from a barista who explained he hadn’t been able to make a cup of coffee as good as the one he’d made with the Our Cow Molly milk (that’s their brand name by the way). From that experience, they’ve set up a processing business selling their super fresh “Made in Sheffield” milk.

When I watched them take to the stage at the awards ceremony last night it was moving, a feeling I get to experience each year at the awards; watching someone who does important work each day, who receives little recognition from the wider-world, who is creating something important, yet finally receiving applause and recognition. On stage Sheila asked them if other farmers had approached them to find out if they can also adopt the model. Since we started telling their story as part of the awards process, they explained, more and more people are discovering their approach to the tough business of dairy farming, and perhaps through these awards many will be inspired to work in a different way. That’s why I think the awards are special. They not only change businesses, I genuinely believe they change lives.

• The BBC Food & Farming Awards were presented in Bristol on Thursday 28 April.
• On Sunday 1 May at 12.30pm, the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme will broadcast the first of a two-part special about the Food & Farming Awards. A special highlights package recorded at the awards ceremony will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 2 May at 3.30pm.

2015 marks 25 years since Delia Smith’s Christmas, so Press Officer and foodie Alasdair Drennan remembers that landmark programme and looks back at Christmas food on the BBC. 

On Christmas Eve, 1990, the nation woke up to begin preparing to cook their Christmas dinner to under the reassuring direction of Delia Smith.

The celebrated chef who had already spent almost two decades on screen explaining the basics of cookery in her trademark straightforward and unpretentious way presented her first Christmas special in 1990.

In a six part series, Delia took her viewers through the basics, from making the pudding weeks in advance right through to preparing the perfect turkey the day before (25 years ago today), offering a sprinkling of her characteristic hints and tips throughout.

Delia returned to champion festive fare in 2009 but in between a new television favourite emerged. The Christmas cookery special.

Gary Rhodes

Restauranteur and chef, Gary Rhodes, whose programmes championed British cuisine, established himself as a festive favourite in the late Nineties with a series of Christmas specials. Gary brought his charm and spikey hair to the festive table to cook up Christmas treats the whole family could enjoy.

Jamie Oliver

In 1999 a little-known chef made his TV debut and the country was introduced to Jamie Oliver. The fresh faced and cheeky Naked Chef shot straight to stardom and made his Christmas TV debut the very same year. In The Naked Chef: Christmas Comes Early Jamie introduced us to delicious festive menu. The next year, Jamie took his viewers across the pond to cook up a New York Christmas inspired meal and in 2001 he gave us the perfect Christmas party and has not looked back since.

Ready Steady Cook

Everyone’s favourite daytime cooking competition Ready Steady Cook debuted in 1994 and continued on air until 2010. In the late Nineties and early Naughties, Fern Britton and later Ainsley Harriet was joined in the kitchen by a host of celebrities battling it out to be crowned the festive champion with their winnings being donated to charity.

Nigella Lawson

Nigella first adorned our festive TV schedules in 2006 with her original series for the BBC, Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen. She brought fun to the kitchen, set out her philosophy for enjoying kitchen duties in the run up to Christmas. This series marked the start of a host of fantastic programmes, both at Christmas and throughout the year with her simple and delicious recipes. This year, Nigella rounded off her series Simply Nigella with some American-themed treats, including an indulgent cider and 5-spice bundt cake.

Two Fat Ladies

Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson were the Two Fat Ladies. Famous for their rich and indulgent cooking, the pair brought good humour to the kitchen and in 1998, they cooked up an alternative Christmas feast from Jamaica.

Hairy Bikers

David Myers and Si King, also known as the Hairy Bikers first rode onto our screens in 2006 with The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook and it wasn’t long before the joined the BBC’s cohort of festive chefs. In 2008, they travelled the country cooking up their favourite festive recipes. They returned a year later to reinterpret festive classics in The Hairy Bikers’ Twelve Days of Christmas when they cooked up a delicious array including three French hens, six geese a-laying and, of course, a partridge in a pear tree. In 2010 they, once again, took to the road in Mum’s know best at Christmas seeking out the most interesting and unusual Christmas recipes from around the UK.

Bake Off

What list of yuletide culinary delights would be complete without a nod to the year’s most successful television programme? More than 13 million people tuned in to watch Nadiya crowned winner of this year’s series but the nation couldn’t be expected to embark on a season of cakes, biscuits, pies and gingerbread houses without the guidance of baking royalty. This year, as they have done in years gone by, Paul and Mary guided us effortlessly through a host of stunning bakes culminating in a stunning Pandoro.

Fanny Craddock

And of course, let's not forget the woman who forged a path for everyone who came after her. The end of the war and a halt to rationing heralded a new era for food and dining in Britain. Television ownership was booming but reviews of the earliest cooking programmes were far from flattering - black and white television sets were not the best way to exhibit a chef's culinary delights. Cooking needed its first personality. And this arrived in the form of Fanny Craddock. And what a personality she was.

In Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas, in just 10 minutes the formidable cook adorned in a fabulous pink dress, showed her audience the many ways to serve mincemeat - none of which included small bite-size pies, for which she did not hide her disdain. The show has since become a cult favourite and was dusted off and repeated on BBC Four in 2006.

• You can find all your festive food solutions at BBC Food
• Catch up with Nigella's Christmas Special

Last Sunday morning I found myself on “washing up” duty at the Sikh Temple in St George. There were four of us up to our elbows in sudsy water at the sinks – a trainee dentist, a solicitor on maternity leave, a student preparing for her exams and me –sharing stories and laughing about our grandmothers cooking – good and bad. Time just flew. They were regulars and I was visiting as part of an open morning organised for Bristol Food Connections to give anyone who wanted the chance to discover the workings of a Sikh langar (free kitchen). Visitors got to see and taste what was being cooked, have a go themselves, share in the preparation and, of course, find out about the role of food in the Sikh religion. And the whole point was that preparing and sharing food together connects people.

On that same day there were 13 other events taking place in Bristol as part of Bristol Food Connections – a partnership festival which I initiated last year on behalf of the BBC.  Between May 1–11 this city will host 130 events from large scale ones with recognised BBC brands and starry names to small intimate ones. I’m writing this on day 7 and, so far, over 175,000 people have taken part in the festival across many sites and venues all-round the city. To get a sense of the scale and size of it you need to look at the website.

It’s a first for the BBC. A ground-breaking partnership event with a strong emphasis on the 'P' word which meant that, throughout the process, how we worked with the rest of the city would set the tone. I put my idea for a food festival initially to Dan Saladino, series producer of Radio 4’s Food Programme, and Kalpna Woolf, then in Factual TV, who thought it was worth pursuing and our initial working title was “Project Pasty”. 

We issued an open invitation to the food community in Bristol and 150 people turned up at the BBC on Whiteladies Road for a conversation. From the outset we made it clear that the BBC would not produce the whole event but we would be a good partner and help facilitate and support ideas where we could.  But people would need to find their own funding and prove they could deliver what they promised. They also would need to sign up to agreed objectives. Bristol City Council, with the endorsement of the elected independent mayor, George Ferguson, came on board almost immediately and we all agreed that good food would be the perfect way to bring people together.

Bristol takes food seriously. It is one of the few UK cities to have an official Food Charter. But Bristolians also know how to have fun. We were inundated with ideas. People wanted a chance to showcase their talents; to help us use food to make connections with people and places the BBC doesn’t normally reach; to provide learning opportunities for all ages and backgrounds and, from a programme making point of view, we suddenly found ourselves in direct contact with young and dynamic food talent across the city. It did help that, in 2009, Bristol and the BBC had signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding to work in partnership and I had also run a Radio 4 festival in March 2012 called More Than Words which had shown me that it was possible to deliver something special by calling upon the creative talents and expertise of the public.

Abigail Appleton in BBC Learning had the vision to get behind the event and her support was essential in getting it off the ground with the BBC Learning Hub at the centre of it all. I formed a local steering group and we all signed up to an agreed set of objectives. We wanted Bristol Food Connections to be affordable, achievable and inspirational. We wanted it to connect and welcome people of all ages, from all backgrounds, through the enjoyment of good food. It had to be participatory and not just about watching. And we wanted it to have a legacy and impact on the city over time. So not your normal food festival. 

I won’t say it has been an easy process along the way but everyone has kept their good humour and found ways of compromising and making things work. The culture has been one of support and help and sorting things out together. Bristol City Council has been amazingly flexible, resourceful and generous in finding solutions to tricky problems. To deal with the financial challenges Bristol Food Connections set itself up as a Community Interest Company which meant they were able to fundraise for the non-BBC side of the festival but on the basis that any money raised would go directly back into the community and the festival. Nobody has made a profit.

The May Bank Holiday celebrations started with the BBC Food & Farming Awards which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and across the BBC local radio network and, on Saturday, Sunday and Monday the city centre became one big food adventure playground – bread, chocolate and coffee trails, local producer markets, buskers, pop-up street food vendors and children’s events filled College Green, with Italian chefs from Slow Food International arriving to teach people how to make real pizza using the best British produce as part of the Ark of Taste project. 

There was a huge Eat In with people sharing dishes prepared by chefs which had, originally, been destined for the landfill sites and bus trips took people on a Ploughman’s Day Out around local farms on the outskirts of Bristol to learn about bread, cheese and cider making. Farming and the link from plot to plate has been a key part of the event.

Parts of Bristol which are often excluded from these kinds of events have been running their own markets, food fairs, foraging walks and cook-ins – Easton and St Paul’s ran a Cook & Converse feast pairing up single parents who had never cooked before with chef mentors to teach them how to prepare affordable, delicious food and then invited their local shopkeepers, health professionals and community support workers to join them – making useful connections. The underpass Junction 3 became the site for a pop-up global street food market and planting fair which brought together the local community for the first time

Along the way we have learned so many lessons, tasted amazing things and we’re already talking about doing it better next year. From a BBC point of view we have found some amazing stories and made connections which will benefit a UK-wide audience. Personally, thanks to my experience at the Sikh Temple, I have learned how to make chapattis, made some new friends and heard some fantastic stories which may well find their way onto the BBC very soon. 

Clare McGinn is Head of Radio & Music Production, Bristol & Creator of The Bristol Food Connections Partnership Festival.

 

• Follow Bristol Food Connections on twitter.
• Read Food Programme presenter Sheila Dillon's blog on how the BBC Food and Farming Awards began.

 

On Monday at 3pm Radio 4 will broadcast a special hour-long edition of The Food Programme, including excerpts from the BBC Food and Farming Awards. In this post, Sheila Dillon explains how the awards were established 14 years ago. 

On the train to Highgrove (Paddington to Tetbury-if you get an invite and live around the capital), Derek said, “We’re agreed, no servility?” We were agreed. Derek Cooper was a life-long republican, but he had no animosity to any royal as a person. He was an admirer of Prince Charles’ support for farmers and quality food producers and of the way he’d remained steady in the face of unrelenting hostility from the big farm media. Derek also knew from programmes we’d made that without Charles’ active support, farmhouse cheesemakers would be a tiny and threatened breed instead of a thriving part of the economy as they are today.

Derek and I weren’t actually going to Prince Charles’ house as his guests; we’re not in that league. We’d been invited to lunch in the dining room in the Highgrove grounds that Prince Charles lends out to groups he supports. That day in 1999 it was an event put on by the Soil Association. Neither of us would have gone in the normal run of things - that wasn’t how we spent our time - but we’d accepted because Prince Charles was going to be present for part of the occasion and we needed to nobble him.

A few weeks before, The Food Programme’s editor, Graham Ellis (now deputy director of BBC Radio) had come to us with an idea. We should set up some awards that would reach out to a wider audience, awards that would celebrate people who were changing the country for the better through food.

It was a great idea. Derek and I were both enthusiastic but we knew there was no way it would happen without some high-profile support. So, without servility and bypassing the BBC’s red tape when dealing with the Royal Household, we’d set off on our unauthorised mission to nobble the Prince of Wales.    

And it worked - to truncate a long, complicated story - mostly because Prince Charles employs very smart people. One of the smartest back then was his private secretary Elizabeth Buchanan, who, I learned later, came from a farming family. We introduced ourselves to Elizabeth, Elizabeth listened (seduced, in part I’m certain, by the rich tone of Derek’s voice and his equally rich - and real - charm) and she in turn   introduced us to Charles. They were both interested. We were off... on a year of negotiations, arrangements, discussions, meetings, and then, finally, calls to BBC audiences for nominations for the first BBC Food and Farming Awards.

So in April 2000, St James’s Palace: Prince Charles made a speech, the conventionally great and good met the normally unacclaimed great, Stephen Fry was our host (he’d written a fan letter to Derek the year before and I’d saved his address) and happiness was written on all our faces. BBC audiences had responded in their hundreds to our call for nominations. And those nominations were a document of the change that was taking place in the way we in the UK produced, sold, shopped for and cooked our food.

On that memorable night, butchers, public caterers, cheesemakers, campaigners, farmers... all had their place in the glorious glow of a palace that all of us pay for but rarely get to see. And the glow that comes, even to republicans, from the attention of  the man who would be king, a thoughtful man who showed that night that he understood how important good food is to all of us.

Sheila Dillon is a food journalist and presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme.

 

• Radio 4’s The Food Programme will reflect the most successful awards to date with an hour-long edition on Monday 5 May at 3pm.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013y0nz

I remember very vividly the smell that used to greet me on entering my Grandma's house, the smell of traditional home cooking. A piece of meat roasting in the oven, potatoes dug up from the garden.

When my Grandma got too old to cook for herself (she steadfastedly refused to go into a home until she was 93!) she was eligible for the local Meals on Wheels, I know she relished the daily visit that this amazing service offered, a hot meal and a chat with someone from her local community and it took the pressure off my own busy Mum.

So when the idea for Hairy Bikers' Meals on Wheels landed on my desk I was instantly drawn to it. I knew it could be a series that would resonate and address some of the big issues of an ageing population in hard economic times. It absolutely felt like a public service programme, but the big challenge lay in how this might translate into the Reithian values of educational and entertaining television.

The thing that made this a really distinctive proposition, for me, was The Hairy Bikers. They are home cooks who have an amazing affinity with people. They also had personal experience of some of the issues in the series - both Dave & Si had cooked for their mothers through illness and old age so they knew the importance good fresh food could make. I knew they would bring real value to the subject and that this was going to be much more than a chop-and-cook style TV show; this idea would have a real emotional investment.

This commission was never about badgering cash-strapped councils or taking on big businesses We all agreed what this series was about was showing love and heart through food and time and really making a difference.

The Hairy Bikers know food - this was the easy part. However, this series needed to be about so much more than food. It was about rallying a volunteer force to cook and deliver the food and to change its old-fashioned profile to appeal to a whole new generation and inspire them to come forward to help the elderly people in their community. A lot of the under 35s we talked to didn't even know what Meals on Wheels was!

We focused on two different models, a council in Elmbridge that had an existing MOW service but one that was on the brink of collapse due to ever-tighter budgets and an ageing volunteer force. And an area in Yorkshire - Slaithwaite - where there was no existing MOW at all. What we tried to achieve was to show that if people care enough, have the passion, the enthusiasm and the drive to make a difference, they really can, whether that's improving on an existing service or starting one from scratch.

We managed to get a leading ad agency on board to rebrand the service which gave the series a real boost, as did support from a number of celebrities. Making a difference is really what's at the heart of this series. Meals on Wheels is about respect, independence and community, whether that's giving an hour of your time to drive meals to those that need them once a fortnight, or fundraising to start a brand new service like our amazing ladies in Slaithwaite.

We knew it was important for this series to have a life after it had transmitted. BBC Online and BBC Learning both invested in the project and managed to get the UK's leading volunteering website Do-it involved in the series, so if people were inspired to do something after watching the programmes they could simply click on the website and find out how they could help in their local area.

It's amazing how many different opportunities are out there over and above Meals on Wheels and details of all these are on the website. Dave and Si say in one of the episodes; "we don't want to be those two blokes who do something for the telly then walk away and it all falls apart." We all wanted this series to have a legacy. After the first episode transmitted last Tuesday, the BBC and Optomen were almost over-whelmed with people offering to volunteer. We hope it's struck a chord with people across the country and that you enjoy the rest of the series.

Lisa Edwards is Commissioning Executive for Hairy Bikers Meals on Wheels

• Watch episode three of Hair Bikers Meals on Wheels on Tuesday at 2100. The previous episodes are online too.