Past Programs
Food and Cooking - 2005
Home Affair: The Children's Food Education Foundation
12/11/2005
The Children's Food Education Foundation was launched in Sydney this week. Its aim is to create innovative food education programs for children with chronic illness, disabilities, mental disorders and for those who, through whatever circumstances, have to care for themselves or others.
This week on 'Home Affair', Kay Richardson, the founder and CEO of the organisation, discusses how it can help Australian children learn about food and healthy food choices.
Coffee
27/08/2005
A multimedia artist based in California has created a website, launched in April this year, called Delocator.net. It enables you to find independent coffee shops in your area by typing your postcode into a database. She's created this site as a kind of protest against the homogenised culture of multinational franchises like Starbucks and Gloria Jeans. She wants people to support locally owned businesses who are under attack from multinational franchises.
Genes and Food
23/07/2005
While most of us feel we know at least the basics of healthy eating, for many of us there are some foods we just can't touch or we'll feel the immediate repercussions. Whether for you it's the instant burn of a hot chilli, or a red face as soon as you take a sip of wine, it could mean you're part of the one third of the world's population who have sensitivities to particular foods because of how your genes interact with them. While these sensitivities used to be seen as genetic disorders, they're now more commonly viewed as adaptations our ancestors evolved to their environment. And today they're leading to new ways of understanding our health and the value of diverse food cultures.
Gary Paul Nabhan is an ethnobiologist and the author of a fascinating book called Why Some Like It Hot - Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity which looks at the interactions between our genes, the food we eat and our different cultural heritages.
Dining in the Dark
30/04/2005
The Dark Side of the Park is a very strange restaurant in Sydney (with a sister establishment in Melbourne) where diners sit in total, absolute darkness. In theory, the absence of visual spectacle heightens all their other senses, particularly taste and smell. So, no light at all, and you can't bring your own, so no flashlights, matches, mobiles, cigarette lighters or luminous watches. Customers order food and drinks in a lit area, then a waiter wearing night vision equipment escorts them, single file with hands on the shoulder of the person in front, into the darkness of the dining room for a meal that will appeal to all the senses but one. Alan Saunders stumbled in to investigate.
The Anzac Biscuit
23/04/2005
On Sunday 24 April, the renowned cook and writer Margaret Fulton will be at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra to judge the best Anzac biscuit baked by Country Womens Association cooks from across the nation.
The national bakeoff, called 'The Great Anzac Biscuit Bash', is the final event organised by the museum on April Sundays to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli in 1915. Today, we talk to Kirsten Wehner, Senior Curator at the Museum, about the history of this national biscuit.
RECIPE. This recipe comes from the CWA (NSW)'s Calendar of Cake and Afternoon Tea Delicacies from 1933.
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup flour
1 small cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp bicarbarbonate of soda
3 tbspns boiling water
Mix the oats and flour together in a basin. Melt the butter and syrup together and mix with the oats and flour mixture. Dissolve the sugar in boiling water and add the bicarb of soda, mixing until it foams. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Drop 1/2 teaspoonfuls of mixture onto a cool and well greased slide and back in a slow oven. (Margaret Fulton indicates about 160 C for about 20 minutes).
Heritage Apples
02/04/2005
With the apple season upon us we'll be joined from Orange by Borry Gartrell, to talk about his collection of heritage apple trees. - many bearing fruit with exotic names like Early Joe, Peasgood Nonsuch and Lady of Snow - and to tell us about some of their virtues: some of them, for example, need to be picked three or four times as year (which makes them economically unviable for supermarket, who want to pick just once, but ideal for the domestic gardener, who doesn't want a glut of apples); many are naturally resistant to fungoid infection and the Egremont Russett will last for up to three months in the fruit bowl.
Everyday Health - Glycemic Index
26/03/2005
Rosemary Stanton explains the GI, or glycemic index, which is attached to so many foods. It's a way of measuring the speed with which the body digests carbohydrate. Foods which have a low GI are broken down slowly in the small intestine, eg multi grain breads, and those which are high are broken down quickly.
Anthony Bourdain
19/03/2005
A conversation with the New York chef and writer Anthony Bourdain about his new cookbook, why it's important to plan well ahead when cooking a meal and why anybody who puts tomato ketchup on fish at the beginning of one of his novels is likely to meet a bloody end in the final chapter.
The Meaning of food in the Chinese New Year
12/03/2005
Food to the Chinese, especially during Chinese New Year, is about celebration, a form of thanksgiving to the gods for the abundance of nature and family values. Melbourne chef and food historian Tony Tan describes his trip back to Malaysia to cook a New Year's meal for his family in accordance with very specific culinary traditions. He also tells us how the Asian Tsunami made things difficult for him.
Everyday Health - Salt
12/02/2005
The first of a series about everyday health and wellbeing.
Dr Boyd Swinburn takes aim at salt, particularly the amount that is routinely loaded into bread. It doesn't make bread more tasty, and does have negative effects on the body - blood pressure in particular.
A Celebration of Pinot Noir
05/02/2005
This weekend in the Mornington Peninsula, Pinot Noir fans will gather for two days of presentations, tutored tastings and meals, showcasing of over 60 pinot noir wines selected from the Old and New world - and of course, from the Mornington Peninsula.
Among the voices to be heard will be that of Matt Kramer, a writer with an international reputation as a columnist and interviewer for the influential US Wine Spectator, who joins us on the phone from the Mornington Peninsula to tell us what Pinot Noir is and what makes it so special.
