Kitchen Connection - Featured Cheffie: Amanda From Morocco
Amanda is an American expat living in Marrakech, Morocco. She writes the website MarocMama.com sharing culinary adventures and cultural experiences from around the world – and especially from Morocco. Along with her husband, she owns and operates Marrakech Food Tours, showing visitors to her adopted city the best eats.
Who is your favorite person(s) to cook for? / Eat with? My family because they're always honest and (almost) always love what I make!
What are your favorite dishes or cooking topics to teach? I love to teach people how to make a basic Moroccan tajine because so many people are overwhelmed by the idea, when in reality, it's a very simple dish.
Do you have any cooking/food superstitions? If it doesn't taste good - don't eat it.
If you could get a tattoo of a food, what would it be and why? A stick of butter because butter makes everything better
What is one dish, drink or food topic that you really want to learn or master? I really love to learn about the history of food--tracing where a dish came from and the different influences that went into it to create the dish it is today.
Favorite food(s) /drinks from your home country (ies) US: Macaroni and cheese
Favorite food(s) / drink(s) from other countries: Anything Italian and Khao Soi from northern Thailand
If you're not living in the same place where you grew up, how have your food traditions changed/ evolved with you? Where I grew up, the only spices used in cooking were salt, pepper and sometimes garlic. It's safe to say that I have evolved quite far from this. I can't imagine not having a pantry full of spices to create with.
Who was the first one to expose you to cooking/good eating? Who has the most influence on how/what you cook? * My paternal grandma. She always let my sister and me in the kitchen and we spent a lot of time as kids standing on a chair in her kitchen while we mixed up cookie dough or made pasta sauce. I never really "loved" cooking as a kid, but I think those early years of being in the kitchen had an influence.
What is your never fail piece of cooking advice? Did someone pass it on to you? Did you learn that lesson the hard way? * Don't be afraid to try new things. When I started cooking, it was mostly trial and error. If something sounded like it would work together, I would try it. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. But, I learned as much from the failures because they helped me think differently the next time.
What would your last meal on Earth be? Cheese raviolis with marinara sauce, Parmesan cheese and my grandma's garlic bread.
Favorite kitchen equipment/gadget? A food processor makes life a lot easier but I don't have many electronic gadgets in Morocco, so probably my good knives and a heavy-duty whisk.
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