Spice Britain (28/08/2011)
We think of Ramadan as a festival of fasting. But in fact eating plays a major role in Ramadan, and its now playing a surprisingly big role in British culture too.
Stand up comedienne, Shappi Khorsandi, looks at the way that food from Muslim countries has helped revolutionise the British palate.
Along the way, she discovers that the British love of herbs and spices can be traced back nearly 1000 years, how the owner of the first British curry house in the 19C went bankrupt and how when Shappi's own family came over from Iran in the 1970s her mother brought over spices and other cooking ingredients to cope with the food Britain had offer.
Shappi traces how British taste buds have now become amongst the most sophisticated in the world thanks to the steady arrival of foods from all over the Muslim world - from the subcontinent, through Iran and the Middle East to north Africa.
And Shappi also discovers the surprising effect those foods have had on British identity.
