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6 Episodes 2009 - 2009
Episode 1
48 mins
Jamie visits L.A. but not the famous rich quarters, just Mexican barrios, in search of authentic food from various Mexican provincial provincial traditions. Unlike westernized Tex-Mex, he finds it richer and more diverse the he could imagine, including exotic ingredients like cacti and even the fungus mescal. Food is crucial in Mexican family life, especially home-cooked feasts. he attends some and ends up cooking a baptism dinner as he makes friends with some cooks, notably in rehab programs for ex-gang members turned family fathers.
Episode 2
47 mins
Jamie checks his cowboy cuisine clichés in Wyoming. A rancher takes him along to a small town rodeo, branding calves, to a local festival and as 'camp jack' on a real cattle drive. Coboys really are addicted to huge amounts of meat, mainly unseasoned beef, but Jamie appreciates the natural flavors from cooking in 'medieval' cauldrons on smoky campfires.
Episode 3
47 mins
London chef Jamie Oliver starts his US tour in favorite city New York, a microcosm of cuisines in the States, almost worldwide. Avoiding his usual Manhattan luxury, Jamie experiences some ethnic traditions implanted in Queens. First an Egyptian chef's restaurant. Next a Peruvian underground restaurant and a temporary 'underground', in this Greek cuisine. Then a Colombian, who started as illegal immigrant, running a soup kitchen for the homeless. Finally, Chinatown.
Episode 4
Jamie touches down in Louisiana just weeks after Hurricane Gustav has wreaked havoc in New Orleans and the surrounding area. Seeking to understand why people continue to live in a place that keeps getting battered by hurricanes, Jamie finds a state full of people who use food as a way to celebrate life and to keep the party going through adversity. Along the way, he meets authentic cooking experts from the region, New Orleans 'gumbo queen', Leah Chase, jazz star and BBQ expert Kermit Ruffins and alligator-hunting grandmother Sydney Mae Durand. As Jamie journeys deep into Louisiana, he finds himself in the company of Creole and Cajun comfort staples.
Episode 5
48 mins
Jamie's road-trip hits the deep South in Georgia, in search of Dixe cooking traditions. Rednecks near Atlanta treat him to farmers' self-reliant, fairly rich diet, a plus just now the economy crashes. Diesel prices would prohibit them from again participating in the national barbecue contest in Florida, but Jamie puts up fuel money to participate with the family and the man who shows him the laborious process of all-night whole hog-smoking. After visiting society in Charleston, meeting people who with their jobs lost home and health care, and tasting de facto segregation as well as the slave progeny's persisting 'soul food', it's off to Florida.
Episode 6
48 mins
Jamie explores original American, pre-colonial cuisine in Arizona's Navajo reservation, the US's largest, but essentially a barren desert where the native tribes were deliberately starved into submissive integration. Amazaed at the tribal cooking, rather comparable to real Mexican, but unlike those and fast-food featuring no single restaurant, he resolves to help set one up to 'city-like' Navajo youngsters' taste with people who revive the traditional sheep and blue corn farming to prevent the culture getting extinct by neglect.