Muslim woman from Catalonia on MasterChef: «Ham, how disgusting!»
Contestant Soko says «how disgusting!» when she finds ham scraps in the meat slicer. She also refused to cook with pork so as not to go to the Muslims' hell. Now she's facing eviction.
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Soko is a Muslim who works as a nurse in Girona but said at the presentation that she is from Gambia. The religious radicalism of this contestant on the 14th series of MasterChef has not gone unnoticed. In yesterday's programme on Monday 6 April she featured in two moments in which she can be seen as Prioritises religion over education, respect and professionalism..
The first challenge was to make a bikini and she chose to use turkey. She had a ham alternative and used it. The «problem» was that when she went to slice it on the machine there were traces of another contestant's ham. In a very disgruntled and rude tone, he exclaimed, «Ham, what a disgust!».
«My religion is more important than anything else.»
In statements to the programme, she explained that she made the turkey bikini.«Because pork is forbidden by my religion, and if you can't eat it you can't cook it. I don't want to have dilemmas of this kind because my religion is more important to me than anything else.»While her friends were making sandwiches with bacon, sobrasada, salted ham or mortadella, she opted to secure her place in paradise.
The real cultural clash between his radicalism and normality came when it was time to cook a dish combining sweet and savoury. His idea was to make a meat dish with glazed pear, but at the supermarket there was only pork, beef fillet and beef steak. Faced with the inconvenience, she made the glazed pears with a small slice of steak and used the rest of the meat to make a sauce.
The jury rejected the dish because He used premium, top-quality meat such as steak to make a simple sauce., a practice seldom used in professional cooking. Entrecôte is considered a meat that should be served as a main course and not used to make stocks or broths.
«I can't let you waste the product.»
The programme made available cuts of pork far more suitable for making a sauce. The decision to waste a rib-eye steak on a dish that didn't require it infuriated the judges: «I can't let you waste the product.»Jordi Cruz said to him, '…', before handing him the black apron that sends him to the elimination zone.".
It was Pepe Rodríguez who first showed his bewilderment on seeing the saucepan: «Have you used pieces of a rib-eye steak to make a stock?». Beside him, Jordi Cruz was even more forceful and reproached the contestant for what he considered a lack of respect for the product, one of the programme's basic principles: «This pot costs 150 euros. This dish would be priceless.».
«What do I do if there's only pork?»
Soko, aware of the mistake, apologised on several occasions: «I know I was wrong and that the product must be respected. I've learned my lesson.» He explained that his only intention was to achieve a sauce with an intense meat flavour, although he admitted that the result did not justify the expense. But far from admitting that the problem lies in the version of religion that was instilled in him, he blamed the programme: «Next time, give me proper meat for making stock. If there's only pork, what am I supposed to do?», he said in a low voice, visibly affected, to a colleague.
In a low voice, a colleague said to her, «You should cook pork even if you don't eat it.» Her response was clear: «If they serve me pork in a test, I'm not going to cook it.». The colleague went back there, quite taken aback: «If you're a cook, they won't let you in either?» And no, the response from the nurse from Girona, who introduces herself as Gambian, is that they won't.".
Samya's precedent: «I'm a Muslim from time to time»
Soko is not the first Muslim contestant on MasterChef. In the 2024 edition, Samya took part; she was born in Morocco but has lived in Madrid since she was three. On one occasion, amid laughter, they asked her if she was Muslim, and her response did not leave anyone indifferent: «I'm a Muslim off and on. For example, sometimes I go out partying and fancy a drink. Praying five times a day every day of the year seems too much to me.».
The two situations demonstrate that there are Muslims capable of living among Westerners and others who insist that everything be adapted to them to guarantee they will not go to hell. As one might expect, there are all sorts of opinions on social media, and Islamic radicals have come out in droves to criticise that the programme does not take into account that she is Muslim and cannot come into contact with pork. The curious thing is that it was obvious she knew she would be in a gastronomic environment where it is inevitable that pork would be in the same room.
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