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The Food Programme

African Food

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4977 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:04.7

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0:06.7

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0:16.8

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0:19.5

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0:23.4

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0:26.6

and Patty O'Connell for our daily podcasts.

0:29.4

Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds. This is the BBC.

0:35.0

Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.

0:42.0

Welcome to our world, cooking to culture, politics to pleasure.

0:47.0

We hope you enjoy it. Do you want to introduce yourself?

1:03.0

Yeah, my name is Zoe Ajonia. I am a chef and writer from Southeast London.

1:08.0

I have a food business and cookbook by the same name called Zowie's Ghana Kitchen and I've been

1:15.4

on a bit of a mission for the last eight years or so to spread some love and familiarity for

1:21.9

food from across Africa.

1:25.4

We come along and ask you to do this program.

1:28.4

Why?

1:29.4

Yeah.

1:32.4

Something really exciting is happening to the British food scene and that is a new

1:36.4

conversation about African food. Everyone's talking about it from broadsheets to tabloids to online press.

1:47.8

The food is very good in Africa. I love it.

...

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