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The Food Programme

Pumpkins and Winter Squash

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4977 Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sheila Dillon and special guests discover a delicious world of pumpkins and winter squash.

It's Halloween time, and pumpkins are making their annual appearance in windows and on doorsteps. But these winter squash are part of a fascinating family of fruit (yes, fruit - not vegetable) with huge culinary potential that many feel uncomfortable around. This programme aims to change that. Sheila invites chef, restaurateur and squash-lover Romy Gill to her kitchen, where they're joined by Neil Munro - manager of the Heritage Seed Library at Garden Organic (formerly the Henry Doubleday Research Association). To help with the deeper history, they enlist the help of Ken Albala, Professor of Food Studies at the University of the Pacific in California.

Presenter: Sheila Dillon Producer: Rich Ward.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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

0:05.0

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

0:10.0

We hope you enjoy it.

0:18.0

Dinner Foster Farm, I'm so excited to come to house Sheila and thank you for having me here. A little bit of salt and some oil please.

0:21.0

This one do?

0:22.0

Yes, perfect. Thank you. The salt's in the box here by the stove.

0:26.0

This morning I went to the green grocer and this is what I found what do you think?

0:29.2

Yeah just like me very vibrant and colourful. This thing looks like a Chinese or a Korean

0:34.7

piece of porcelain, doesn't it? This one. Like all of them look so so different.

0:38.6

We're in my kitchen because we're going to be working with some ingredients that I have to

0:43.6

admit at this season of the year make me nervous. Winter squashes and pumpkin

0:48.8

Romy Gill you're a chef with your own restaurant and I know that this actually is a season that you like you like it

0:56.2

Partly because of what we've got in front of us here on this trolley I'm like a child I'm a couple of like a child

1:02.1

I just I'm so happy at this time of the year it's just a taste it's just so easy to make and it quicks

1:08.4

the best thing about squashes of pumpkin is it cooks very quickly.

1:13.0

You can cook your kitchen freeze it,

1:15.0

you can do whatever with it, it's so easy to play around.

1:18.0

Which brings us on to our other guest.

1:21.0

The other person in the kitchen with me is Neil Monroe and we'll find out why Neil is here, his special interest in winter squashes and pumpkins in a minute.

1:31.0

But Neil, you've brought in a big plastic box like like

1:36.4

is it you know your groceries are delivered in and you just brought that on the

1:39.2

tube. That's right it's the first time I've seen people interested on the tube rather than just looking at their phones etc was trying to look into the box

...

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