Comfort food for dark days

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4 • 977 Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sheila Dillon celebrates the power of food to comfort us in hard times, especially during these dark days of the year. Dumplings, marshmallows, chicken soup, fried chicken, curried goat: all the things we long to eat when we're sad, or sick, or homesick. She talks to Antarctic explorers about the food they miss from home, and eating marshmallows at the South Pole; to teenagers in a Fried Chicken shop; to homesick Polish emigres eating proper Polish dumplings, and to a class of eight-year-olds about what their parents cook for them when they're sick. Chef Raymond Blanc goes into an almost mystical trance as he remembers the puddings his mother cooked for him as a child and their trembling caramel; he confesses this is what he craves now when he's sick. Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner reveals the secret of "Jewish penicillin", or chicken soup; Dr Rupy Aujla reflects on what you might call the culinary placebo effect; and Reggae singer Levi Roots explains about the consoling power of curried goat. Not forgetting Jill Archer's famous flapjacks - the Food Programme presents a comfort feast for February!

Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Elizabeth burke.

Transcript

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0:43.9	Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.
0:48.9	Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. We hope you enjoy it.
0:55.0	It might seem crazy what I'm about to say.
1:00.0	It's so cold out there and I'm so happy to be home.
1:07.0	Today's program is a feast of all the things we long to eat when we're cold or sad or sick or under-appreciated by our bosses or our partners or our children.
1:20.8	Dumplings, marshmallows, chicken soup, fish fingers, curried goat, and fried chicken.
1:28.0	Six pieces of chicken, three regular fries and 1.5 liter a drink.
1:32.0	This is my local chicken shop.
1:35.0	So it's my favorite thing to eat on a Friday night,
1:38.0	most definitely.
1:39.0	After I've had a long day at work, I want something that's going to film me up.
1:41.0	I want something that's going to be hot, tasty, crispy, and I'm not going to feel like I've just eaten slop afterwards,
	...

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