Food Programme – Belfast: Creating a New Food Tradition, Radio 4
On Your Farm: Gathering nuts in Wicklow, Radio 4
Saturday – St George’s Market – Radio 4 goes to Belfast – or as presenter Sheila Dillon calls it – “one of the handsomest markets in the UK”.
We’ll forgive her for saying, Bel FAST – it isn’t quite a home grown pronunciation and has a hint of that Boney M hit about it.
Good food has become a serious part of the economy – it generated over £5m for the Northern Ireland economy last year, she said.
But to those of us home grown here, the best of food was always important – a decent meal on the table; fresh sheets on the bed; four walls to call your own.
Sheila got the city market tour with straight talking chef Paula McIntyre – and she even had a word with a young fella taking the local food tour.
“What do your parents think of it?” she asked.
“They’re a bit shocked I’m out here tasting foods on a Saturday morning instead of at football,” he joked.
McIntyre talked about the old “bacon and potato” culture – the dour way we had – adding that, happily, we are not as self deprecating as we once were.
Howard Hastings looked back on the days of the Troubles when courgettes were exotic, then the early ceasefire days when, he said, people bought Guatamalan mangetouts, as if we had “turned our back on our own”. Now, we’ve had a second look at what we have, he said.
And, by the sound of it, it is very good. Dillon visited butter makers, who churn it the proper way and wander occasionally into creamy fudge and she even ventured to Rathlin to the growers of kelp for the Japanese market – you couldn’t make it up.
As if the schedulers could not have enough of Irish food, On Your Farm featured a dairy farmer who’s branched out into hazelnuts.
Presenter Ella McSweeney paints beautiful pictures with her words – the soft haze of an Irish morning and the cows dandering in: “The girls are walking into the parlour, they want to be milked.”
You could almost taste the dip used to clean the cows’ teats: “It’s very minty, ooh that’s lovely,” she sighs.
