International Food Smackdown, Friday March 12 on WBEZ

This Friday at noon, I will be one of a panel of three judges on Worldview on WBEZ (91.5 FM) for the International Smackdown, where we will be tasting foods cooked up by individuals from foreign countries (I remember Uganda and Iran, but not any others) who have already been on the show. Judges were selected on the basis of a 300 word essay describing a notable food experience outside the US. Are ony other LTH posters on the panel?? You would think we would be qualified.
Here, FYI, in the mealwinning essay:

In the mid 1980s, we were living in Cote d’Ivoire, where I was conducting anthropological research. The country was still prosperous, though the Ivorian economic “miracle” was beginning to wear thin. Throughout the country, though particularly in the richer southern half, a whole new crop of restaurants had emerged. They were known as “maquis” in Ivoirian French. Don’t ask me why; the word means “swamp” in France. They were small restaurants serving African food to a middle-class clientele. The best of them were marvelous, where you could eat a fantastic meal for what was (for us, not for all Africans) a very modest sum. In the process, they created a distinctly national cuisine, with dishes that you would not normally find anywhere else, even in neighboring countries: foutou (pounded yam or plantain) with a rich red palm oil sauce; attieke, grated fermented manioc, served
with chicken in rich tomato sauce or simply with grilled whole fish; and, most special of all, kedjenou. A kedjenou is cooked in a largish ceramic pot, in which layers of meat – chicken or a wild rodent known as “agouti” in Ivoirian French – alternate with layers of vegetables: tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers (the heat depends on the ingredients, but the dish is typically fairly mild). The chicken is
generally a “poulet bicyclette” – a bicycle chicken – raised uncaged, small, scrawny, tough, and incredibly tasty. The pot is covered with a moistened banana leaf, and the meat and vegetables simmer in their own juices. You know the dish is ready when enough steam has built up to lift up the banana leaf cover. The meat is done perfectly, the vegetables have blended into a kind of puree, and every bite is
pure heaven, with only the flavor the ingredients coming together in a harmonious whole.

Robert Launay (1/2 of the French couple)