Food

Want to reduce waste, use less energy when cooking but still achieve kitchen triumphs? The chef and bestselling food writer (A Modern Way to Eat, One: Pot, Pan, Planet) takes 12 hero ingredients that are guaranteed to make your food taste great, and gives 125 all-new dishes that you’ll want to cook on repeat. Think Double Lemon Pilaf with Buttery Almonds, Traybake Lemon Dhal, Miso Rarebit and Cherry and Chocolate Peanut Butter Sundae. Jones shares tips distilled from her 20 years of experience, with practical advice on layering, texture and seasoning, plus plenty of ideas for vegetarian swaps. She talks to Welsh presenter and producer Meinir Howells.

Join Chris van Tulleken the host of Radio 4’s chart-topping podcast, Fed, as he unwraps the forces that shape what we eat.

Make your summer more salad-full in this demo and tasting event with the River Cottage chef. Alderson demonstrates how, with a bit of creativity and flair, simple ingredients can be combined to make truly great salads. Watch him as he cooks knockout recipes in front of you using everyday foods, drawing on his book River Cottage Great Salads – and you get to taste the results. He redefines the idea of salad, as playful flavour pairings, clever techniques and vibrant dressings bring out the very best in seasonal produce. Executive Head Chef of River Cottage for over ten years, Alderson has worked with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to create the menus served in all six River Cottage restaurants.

In this demo and tasting event, the London-based chef celebrates recipes that have been passed down the generations. The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, her debut cookbook explores the connections food can foster between friends, families and strangers. Its 80 dishes include crispy saltfish fritters, slow cooked jerk pork, zingy lime and ginger cheesecake, confounding misconceptions that Caribbean food is all about intense heat, pungent smoke and a handful of familiar dishes. Mitchell takes us on a journey through the region’s myriad food cultures, emerging from the convergence of African, American, European and South Asian influences in its troubling history, its legacy transformed by the kinship of those who share food. Alongside talking about the influences in her cooking Marie will be showing us how to create creamy tomato curry, rotis and rum punch (or non alc version) and tastes of all of the recipes demonstrated will be handed out to be enjoyed together.

The two writers discuss the history and future of food. Taras Grescoe argues that the key to sustainable eating lies in looking back to the foods, many almost extinct, that have sustained us throughout existence. His The Lost Supper reveals the flavours captivating gastronomes today: ancient sourdough bread last baked by Egyptian pharaohs; raw-milk farmhouse cheese from endangered British cattle; ham from Spanish pata negra pigs foraging on acorns. To save these foods, we have to eat them, or face famine and ecological collapse. Pen Vogler tells the stories of foods at the centre of social upheaval: the medieval inns boosted by the plague; the Enclosures that finished off the roast goose; the post-war supermarkets luring customers with strawberries. Her book Stuffed draws on cookbooks, literature and social records, to tell a tale of feast and famine. In times of plenty, we stuff ourselves. When the food runs out, we’re stuffed too. In conversation with writer, photographer and broadcaster Robert Penn.

Our panel of experts talk to Dr Peter Olusoga – senior lecturer in psychology at Sheffield Hallam University and host of the award-winning performance psychology podcast, Eighty Percent Mental. They share long-term strategies and offer unique advice on looking after your physical and mental health.

Dr Federica Amati is a medical scientist, researcher and head nutritionist at ZOE, and combines nutrition, medical science and public health advice in her book Every Body Should Know This. Dr Alex George’s The Mind Manual shows readers how to assess their mental health and understand their own normal. George is a TV doctor, bestselling author and Youth Mental Health Ambassador to the government. Ultra-athlete Josh Llewellyn-Jones was born with cystic fibrosis and given a 10% chance of surviving his first night due to complications. He’s now a World Record-holding endurance athlete and founder of the extremely inclusive and inspirational Lift Club, a community focusing on the mind, body and health.

World-leading microbiome scientist and surgeon James Kinross shows us how everything from exercise, sleep and diet through to antibiotics and ageing are directly impacted by the state of our microbiome. He introduces us to the microbiome, a vast genetic universe of ‘dark matter’ – bacteria, yeasts, viruses and parasites – living inside us, which adapts with us as we age and influences how we think and feel, our sex lives and even how fast we run. Kinross is a senior lecturer in colorectal surgery and consultant surgeon at Imperial College London. He talks to neuroscientist Dr Hannah Critchlow.

The food production experts talk to science presenter Kate Humble. Could cultivated meat from stem-cells grown in a bioreactor beat climate change? Provide real meat but without the slaughter? Cultivated Meat to Secure Our Future: Hope for Animals, Food Security, and the Environment, co-edited by Philip Lymbery, argues that it could be a game-changer in reducing animal suffering and helping solve the growing crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and the rise of ill-health. Ed Winters demonstrates How to Argue With a Meat Eater (and Win Every Time), explaining the principles of veganism as a way to create a more ethical, kind and sustainable world, and breaking down every argument used against it.

Enjoy cheese tastings and a glass of wine while our panel of experts recount how a generation of cheesemakers, farmers and retailers revolutionised the UK food landscape, saved small-farmhouse cheese and championed new techniques while embracing tradition, terroir and taste.

Cheesemonger, historian and author of A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles Ned Palmer talks to producer and farmer Rebecca Holden of Hafod cheese (made at Bwlchwernen Fawr Farm on the Ceredigion coast, the longest standing registered organic dairy farm in Wales); cheesemaker Hugh Padfield of Bath Soft Cheese (made in the village of Kelston, near Bath, where he and his family have farmed since 1914).

The world’s human population acquires two thirds of its calories from just three crops, each with one harvest in each hemisphere. With a burgeoning population, cities spreading onto productive agricultural land and climate change, the area we have for producing food is steadily declining. So where will we grow our food and what will it look like? Will we go vegan or produce all our food organically?

Agronomist Jonathon Harrington (Cardiff University) leads a discussion with three world authorities, Professor Tina Barsby (University of Cambridge), Professor Denis Murphy (University of South Wales), and International Agricultural Economist Graham Brookes, on this essential subject. Join the experts to hear the scale of the issues and then come together to workshop some solutions.