While the lockdown has officially turned my friends into amateur chefs and my Instagram feed into a virtual menu, I’m just satisfying my cravings by staring at my laptop screen and bingeing on cooking shows.
So I was randomly watching episodes of Gordon’s Great Escape where he travels across South-East Asia on a journey to discover new flavours and recipes when I bumped into the one where he was in India.
As I watched the toughest culinary genius roam the streets of India in search of hidden recipes while sweating through his pores, I couldn’t believe that he was the same chef who made grown-ups cry with his harsh insults.
Would you believe me if I told you that Gordon Ramsay lost a cooking competition to an Indian woman and her age-old family recipe?
No, I’m not kidding. While he was touring the seven sisters, Gordon decided to enter an annual competition with 40 home cooks to try and make the best Assamese dish in the region.
He first hunted down his winning local recipe of a signature chicken in sesame seeds and then went on to perfect it in the competition.
And while he was battling against the 40 odd contenders for the title, he made efforts to build a rapport with his competition to understand Indian flavours and cuisine better.
Even though his sesame chicken recipe got Gordon the title of a runner’s up, it was Eliami Goswami’s papaya-carrot chicken that ended up bagging the first position.
Well in Gordon’s defense, he was working with these flavours for the first time in his life. Just like I am learning how to work with the basic flavours during the lockdown