Nadiya’s American Adventure episode 2 – California: Nadiya Hussain continues her tour of America’s culinary melting pot in California.
She starts just a stone’s throw from downtown Los Angeles, in a Latino neighbourhood, home to an authentic Central American night market. Here she find the country’s newest arrivals, on the first step of their American dream, cooking up a taste of home: delicious Guatemalan stuffed chilies and, from El Salvador, thick corn tortillas with spicy salsa.
In LA’s trendy arts district, Nadiya meets Wes Avila, whose gourmet tacos are redefining modern Californian cuisine. She meets Wes’s father, who emigrated to the USA in the 1970s, causing Nadiya to reflect on her own father’s immigration experience.
Nadiya discovers an extravagant way that Latinos are holding on to their heritage. The quinceanera is a lavish 15th birthday party that celebrates a girl’s coming of age. At the centre is an elaborate cake and a fairy tale dress. Nadiya is invited to spend a day with a family as they celebrate a full day of cultural festivities. She discovers that, this being America, everything is supersized, with a price tag of $25,000 to mark the occasion.
Nadiya’s American Adventure episode 2 – California
Over the last three years, hate crimes in the USA have reached an all-time high. Nadiya visits an event at a mosque where halal tacos are being used to bring Latinos and Muslims together and create a greater political voice to tackle racism.
Leaving LA, Nadiya enters a land that looks like the Wild West. Out here, she discovers there is an all-female Mexican rodeo team, who compete alongside the men, carrying out daredevil manoeuvers in a dangerous equestrian ballet that requires skill and bravery. She learns how these modern American Mexican women seamlessly combine their two lives and reflects on her own experience of growing up in two different cultural worlds.
In San Francisco, Nadiya visits the last remaining handmade fortune cookie factory in Chinatown, where she is taught how to mould and fold like the resident expert, the grandma of this family business.
She also visits a charity called La Cocina, which is helping women who are new arrivals in America launch and run their own food businesses. Nadiya meets women from Palestine, Thailand and Senegal who are preparing authentic homemade food and joins them for a picnic under the Golden Gate Bridge, where she shares with them her own delicious prawn biryani.
