Top Chef ™

OG Jerk Pork, Plantain Miso Glaze, Callaloo and Coal-roasted Roots

Tristen: "At this point, I have no clue what I'm going to do with this dish. I'm really struggling. (Speaking to butcher ...) Let me have five of these pork chops, please. (Back to camera) I'm just going to grab some familiar things that kind of mimic the little bit of flavors that I got from these foraged herbs, because everything that's going in it will be charred or toasted on open fire and add a lot of depth of flavor."

Day Two, Tristen: "I woke up in the middle of the night, like, yo, I didn't come up with the idea for my dish until legitimately 3 o' clock in the morning. It literally just woke me up. And I was like, I. know what I'm gonna do. I think I learned how to do it using my own story, you know, I was asking myself. I was like, man, I missed the mountains yesterday. Black people don't go to no mountains. And then I was like, wait a second. The Tainano people went to the mountains, and that's where jerk was invented. The Taino people were the indigenous people of Jamaica, and they used to hide in the mountains and cook with all the foraged ingredients and greens, and I immediately just ran with that. I'm gonna make a version of jerk pork. All I need is  a thread that connects to me, and that's all I needed, and that's what I got. I really want to go to Italy, guys. I want to go to Italy and do all Ethiopian food."

Tristen: " I want a lot of coal so I can grill later. I have to separate this fire somehow. Cooking in this style of open fire is very difficult. I'm going to use half of the fire for grilling and the other half for smoking. It's very low to the ground. It's hot. And maintaining the zones of heat are very important. Feels good next to the fire."

Tristen: "I'm going to start skewering my pork so I can get it set up for a slow roast. They're thick steaks, I need to cook my pork with indirect heat. Pork dries out immediately. This is ghetto. After the last challenge where I lost to Massimo, I want to make sure that every slice or the protein will be perfect. We're going forage Jamaica here."

Tristen, talking to Tom while cooking: "I'm doing a Canadian version of jerk pork. I had a hard time, honestly, relating to black people in the mountains. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's just not a place we're at. So that's the direction I'm kind of going, but using all of the forged items that I use.

Tom Colicchio: "So what are the foraged items?"

Tristan: "Some poplar bark. So I'm using that kind of as cinnamon for my jerk sauce. Yarrow that I'm using as thyme and rosemary kind of as a flavor. Rose hips went in my jerk as well."

Tom, discussing Tristen behind the scenes: "Tristen, he has a very good way of downplaying what he's doing and letting the food speak for itself."

Tristen: "These are nettles. I'm going to be using these to make my callaloo with parsnip in place of coconut milk. In Trinidad, callaloo is greens that's been cooked in coconut milk with spices. I'm trying to really stay in the theme, so I'm gonna actually make coconut milk out of parsnips. There's a little bit of milkiness, a little bit of maltiness to it, so you get that creaminess. I used to watch my grandmother make her own coconut milk all the time, so I'm going to harness that knowledge and create the really creamy texture of the callaloo that I knew growing up."

Tristen, glazing his pork: "This is a birch sap miso syrup."

Presenting to the Judges

" I wanted to reference my Afro Caribbean culture. And the Tionos were the indigenous people of Jamaica. They used to go into mountains, and that's where jerk pork was basically started. So I call it the OG Jerk. It's then glazed with birch chap and plantain miso syrup. Poplar bark was used as cinnamon. Yarrow was used this thyme, and then the greens. It's a Quarry Lake callaloo. Instead of coconut milk, I made a parsnip milk so that I can kind of mimic that same flavor."