Tournament of Champions ™
Baker:
Season:
Week:
Challenge Type:
Thai Waterfall Salad with Pork and Pepper
Jet: "We are gonna do a pork and bell pepper waterfall salad."
Jet: "Char, pork, bell peppers. There's only one direction I'm going in. Waterfall, or what we call nam tok salad. Northern Thailand. It's a very common protein dish where you char the protein and you make a really delicious dressing with roasted rice, which I'm gonna char."
Jet: "I'm making the dressing now, so it's going to be on the brighter side. It's going to be all the yum flavors, but I'm going to char everything. Char the bell peppers in here as well."
Jet: "So at this level of cooking in TOC, I'm not just putting bell peppers and pork on a plate. I'm taking the bell peppers, and I'm weaving it through the dressing."
Justin Warner (commentator): "Smart moves by Chef Tila here. He's rubbing off some of the char just to get the exact amount of char that he wants."
Jet: "I let them rest. I take jasmine rice. I put some chilies in there. I want to char about 60 to 70 percent of that rice."
Jet: "It brings texture to this dish, and it's a very creative use."
Jet: "First, I plate the bell peppers and herbs as a base. I cut up the pork, apply that onto the vegetables. It is a privilege to compete on TOC."
Voiceover (Justin Warner): "This is a waterfall salad of pork loin and bell pepper. The pork loin was marinated in a mixture of shallot, fish sauce, sugar, chili, and a little dashi. Then it was done in the grill basket. The bell pepper was done in the grill basket. It then found its way into the salad. From there, in the dressing, you'll find charred chilies, charred garlic, and charred shallot."
Dominique Crenn: "First of all, this dish is incredible."
Dominique Crenn: "Different technique, different texture. This is a balance of everything they've been asked."
Alex Guarnaschelli: "I'll tell you what it is for me. It's the juiciness of the lettuce and the herbs and the onions that add further juiciness to the peppers that they lose when they're charred. That is the complexity of having a series of ingredients that are threaded together into a composed plate."
Tiffany Faison (commentator, not judge): "I almost feel like the pork becomes the backseat driver in the dish, which is really interesting. I'm enjoying the vegetation more than the pork. The ratio for me is off a little bit. There seems to be more vegetable than pork. I love the herb syrup, but really, it's the char on that rice that I think tied this whole dish together. I think that is brilliant."
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