Greetings fellow film buffs. This week, the CineTV crew has challenged us to write about our favorite food competition, whether it is a series, season, or a singular show. There really are a lot of competitive cooking shows out there, and I figure I would put a bit of a twist on my entry in highlighting an episode from a series that is a friendly competition, which, considering it is a Chef Gordon Ramsay series, is a bit unusual to watch something where HE is a contestant, rather than seeing him losing his temper with his contestants. And yes, he still has a bit of a potty mouth. Just a friendlier manner. There are several reasons why I am picking an episode from from his Uncharted series. No yelling, no screaming, no tears (except maybe from the joy of cooking); the occasional bleeped out words are present for those playing the Gordon Ramsay Drinking Game. The episode I am featuring from this series is “The Mountains of Morrocco”.
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Uncharted - IMDB
In this episode, Ramsay is facing off against local chef, Najat Kaanche (I had to turn subtitles to get her name correct), who applied to Ramsay’s restaurants not once, not twice, but seven times, and didn’t make it through the front door. BIG MISTAKE! The series, and this episode, focuses on Ramsay having to go out and learn the local culture and cuisine, and he is gracious to his many hosts along this culinary journey. That is one of the big appeals to me for this series as we see a lot of different cultures and their cuisines. As a man who enjoys cooking (and has developed a reputation of being pretty darn good at it), the show gives me a lot of food for thought. At the end of the week, Ramsay nd his opponent, in this case Chef Najat, face off in preparing a feast for the local Berber people that Ramsay met along the way, on a major holiday, the Berber New Year’s Eve, and these people serve as judges of the competition.
Not only does Ramsay have to learn to cook some of the local favoprite foods, and try some along the way, he has to go out and get some of his own ingredients. To Adventure! For mushrooms, he has to rappel down a cliff, and join a group of mushroom hunters; later he meets the only man selling camel meat in Fes, where this episode starts, and dines on Camel Tangier; he meets many other people along the way and learns many traditions. This region Ramsay is visiting is steeped in history, and we get some glimpses into that history, as well as the culture of the Berber People.
It is a wonderful episode, and, no, I have only seen a few of them thus far, but this particular episode did sing out to me and enticed me to try my hand at Moroccan cuisine. Although camel meat is not available here in the USA (and if it was, you get bet I would have used it), lamb or beef are excellent substitutes.
I did a search for recipes that sounded like they would be tasty, and found a recipe for Lamb (or Beef) Tagine with Dates. It requires a Moroccan spice blend called Ras el Hanout, which is pretty easy to find a recipe for and blend together after a visit to the store for a few ingredients I didn’t have in the pantry. To go with it, I dug up a recipe for Moroccan bread. All of this takes a moderate amount of prep work, but is easy to do. In other words, if I can do it, so can you!
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My Lamb Tagine on the cooktop.
Tagine is a style of stew, with the meat slow cooked in a pot. The dates that go with it is used as a sauce, served on top of the Lamb Tagine. I served this over a bed of Basmati rice, the bread on the side. I’ve made this meal three times now, twice using boneless leg of lamb and once using beef chuck roast. Both meats work equally well, so feel free to try it with which ever meat you prefer. I did trim off some of the extra fat, and although the recipe called for precisely 2 pounds 3 ounces (sounds like a kilogram to me), that may not be enough to server more than four people. I used about four pounds of meat before trimming off some of the fat, leaving about 3.5 pounds of meat going into the pot.
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Dinner is served
The recipes are all easy to follow, and the links are as follows:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/easy-ras-el-hanout-simplified-version-2394676
https://www.thespruceeats.com/lamb-or-beef-tagine-with-dates-2394354
https://www.thespruceeats.com/basic-moroccan-white-bread-recipe-khobz-2394386
All of these recipes work quite well. And, as I leanred the first time I made the tagine, if you mess it up some, it will still be delicious (I added way too much cinnimon the first time...but it was still really good).
As for Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, I am looking forward to watching more episodes (hint, it is on Disney+), and discovering more cultures and cuisines to try in my own kitchen. I just wish Ramsay would write a cookbook covering the many different cuisines he covers in this series.
I hope you enjoyed this post and are enticed to try some of the many cuisines that can be discovered by watching a friendlier food competition show.
For more information on the CineTV Competitons and the CineTV.blog community, please check out their latest competiton post at - @cinetv/cinetv-contest-57-favorite-cooking-or-baking-competition
Thanks for stopping by.
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