Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

For­get the "dark horse" id­iom when dis­cussing Mari­da Mo­hammed's per­for­mance on the com­pet­i­tive re­al­i­ty cook­ing show Mas­terChef Cana­da. The Trinidad-born, Toron­to-based chef con­sid­ered her­self the hot pep­per of the com­pe­ti­tion–bring­ing the heat and spic­ing things up all the way to the fi­nals. Al­though she lost the ti­tle and $100,000 prize mon­ey to Cana­di­an chem­i­cal en­gi­neer Er­ic Chong, Mo­hammed feels the show pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case just how ver­sa­tile Caribbean food can be.

On Thurs­day, dur­ing a two-week hol­i­day in T&T, she sat down with the Sun­day Guardian in Price Plaza, Ch­agua­nas, to dis­cuss the com­pe­ti­tion and plans for her culi­nary ca­reer. Mo­hammed was born in Co­coyea Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, and at­tend­ed AS­JA Girls' Col­lege for two years be­fore she and her fam­i­ly mi­grat­ed to Cana­da in 1995 when she was 13 years old. Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from high school, she worked a se­ries of odd jobs be­fore be­com­ing a per­son­al fit­ness train­er which made sense giv­en her in­ter­est in nu­tri­tion and di­et.

While she has nev­er had any for­mal culi­nary train­ing, she said she learnt a lot from her moth­er about cre­at­ing some­thing quick and tasty out of noth­ing. "I went in­to the com­pe­ti­tion feel­ing con­fi­dent in my cook­ing be­cause if it's one thing that I know how to do, it's to whip up a meal with just two or three in­gre­di­ents. We grew up here with not a lot of mon­ey, my mom was a stay-at-home mom with six chil­dren and al­ways hav­ing to come up with a meal even when there was noth­ing in the fridge."

Ear­ly on in the com­pe­ti­tion, she showed off her skills by win­ning the first "mys­tery box chal­lenge" which called on con­tes­tants to make a meal out of a box of ran­dom in­gre­di­ents which in­clud­ed peanut but­ter, pork loins, con­go pep­per and noo­dles. Mo­hammed was the on­ly con­tes­tant ad­ven­tur­ous enough to use the pep­per in her meal which was a Thai-in­spired dish of pep­per pork with a peanut but­ter dress­ing and noo­dle stir-fry. She man­aged to im­press the judges and win her­self im­mu­ni­ty from the next elim­i­na­tion round. An­oth­er chal­lenge re­quired the am­a­teur chefs to make a meal us­ing dif­fer­ent cuts of beef which ranged from pre­mi­um steak to cow brains and tongue. "They gave me the cow's kid­neys so I nat­u­ral­ly cur­ried it up with some dhal and rice. When in doubt, cur­ry. That was my rule."

Asked which she thought was her stand­out meal of the show, Mo­hammed said it was a toss-up be­tween her ra­zor clam dish and the fi­nale meal. For the first, she used the white, black and red Hi­malayan sea salt to cre­ate a T&T flag on the plate which served as the back­drop to her sal­sa clam dish. For the fi­nal episode which aired at the end of April, the two con­tes­tants had to pre­pare a full course meal and they were giv­en an hour to pre­pare each dish.

In this chal­lenge, there were no lim­i­ta­tions to the in­gre­di­ents and for her ap­pe­tiz­er, she made a callaloo soup with co­conut lime creme fraiche with sliced pump­kin, crispy pig tail and bread­fruit chips. Her main dish was a "Cana­di­an-Caribbean fu­sion" of black cod wrapped in a bha­gi leaf with pi­geon peas puree and cu­cum­ber chut­ney.

The fi­nal episode al­so brought a sweet sur­prise for her when her fam­i­ly came on set to wish her luck. Among them was her three-year-old daugh­ter My­la and her twin sis­ter Nar­i­da who was al­so one of the top 50 con­tes­tants in the com­pe­ti­tion but got knocked out dur­ing one of the elim­i­na­tion rounds. She said, "We au­di­tioned for the show to­geth­er and it was our in­ten­tion to make it un­til the end. When Nar­i­da was cut from the show, they made a very dra­mat­ic sto­ry of it say­ing, 'One twin makes it...the oth­er doesn't' and they showed me cry­ing. It was bit­ter­sweet but I knew I had to make it to the end for both of us."

Per­haps the great­est chal­lenge for Mo­hammed was be­ing away from her daugh­ter for 42 days while film­ing the show. She made up her mind that if she was leav­ing her be­hind for that pe­ri­od, she would make it to the end and win the $100,000 which she and Nar­i­da planned use to open up their own restau­rant called Twice The Spice.While there was no prize mon­ey for the run­ner-up, the sis­ters haven't giv­en up on the idea of es­tab­lish­ing a fine din­ing Caribbean restau­rant in Cana­da and they even hope to have their own cook­ing pro­gramme one day. For the mo­ment, they're do­ing cook­ing demon­stra­tions and pri­vate cater­ing. Next month, they will launch their own pep­per sauce at the Hot and Spicy Food Fes­ti­val in Toron­to. More than any­thing, Mo­hammed said the Mas­terChef ex­pe­ri­ence taught her how much Trinida­di­ans take the ver­sa­til­i­ty of our food for grant­ed.

"In Cana­da, peo­ple go wild for the sim­ple lit­tle eco­nom­i­cal meals that peo­ple in Trinidad make every day. Things like ed­does, cas­sa­va and bread­fruit are now be­com­ing trendy in Cana­da. Re­al­ly we just want to bring re­fined Caribbean fu­sion cook­ing to North Amer­i­ca and show how we make healthy, flavour­ful meals out of the sim­plest in­gre­di­ents." She tries to come back to Trinidad at least once a year for some "culi­nary ex­plo­ration" but said that she stays far from multi­na­tion­al food chains, adding that it's usu­al­ly the "run-down hole-in-the-wall restau­rants" that have the best food.