Top Chef - Puerto Rico

I'm behind I know. We had company so I am playing catch up. Thanks for bearing with me! After a six month break, the chefs are in Puerto Rico for the finals. During the break Stephanie says she was enjoying life by traveling to Thailand, Viet Nam and Cambodia. Thailand sounds good but Cambodia? Antonia opened her restaurant and has been cooking non stop. We don't get to hear what Richard and Lisa have been up to but it's clear the other chefs didn't expect Lisa to still be around. The quickfire challenge is to make two kinds of fritters and they have to include plantains. Stephanie makes a tuna fritter and a pork & shrimp fritter. Antonia comes up with crispy oysters and a fried yellow plantain while Richard makes pork meatballs with plantain and green plantain chips. Lisa makes tostones with pan roasted duck with mango papaya salsa and a sweet plantain with onions and chorizo. What a setting these guys have to cook in with the surf in the background. I was wondering how they could concentrate. Anyway, Stephanie wins the quickfire just edging out Lisa. The chefs get to relax a little and attend a party with traditional dancers, a band and a whole pig being roasted on a spit. That's my kind of party, dancing and a whole lot of pig! At least the chefs didn't have to good at this party. The finale is being held at a fort which is the home of the governor of Puerto Rico. For the challenge, each chef is given a whole pig to make two dishes using different parts of the pig. The chefs get help from, who else, chefs that have already packed their knives. Stephanie's advantage for winning quickfire is she gets to chose who cooks with whom. She picks Dale for herself and pairs Lisa with Andrew who pretty much hate each other. They all walk into the kitchen and there lying on the counters are the pigs. After seeing that, it will take awhile before I can eat a pork chop. They were white and, well, dead. It's one thing to see them on a spit all brown and crispy and quite another to see them laying there all white and dead looking. Call me quirky! Off to market they go and Andrew gets someone who doesn't speak English so he tries to refer to what he wants by color. He comes off, as he said, looking like a retard. Somehow he manages to get the ingredients he needs and it's back to the kitchen. The kitchen is very cramped with all those chefs in one place and they start to get a little cranky. Lisa kept stepping in on Andrew saying she could do better on all he was doing. I would have said, have at it and left if I was him. He is only trying to help. They all get to prep their dishes and come back the next day to finish. On the way out we see a container full of Stephanie's pork bellies on the counter. When the chefs arrive the next day, Stephanie and Dale find out their mistake and have to trash the dish and start over. They decide to go with chicharrones, coconut pork and pork satay on sugar cane. Richard makes BBQ pork shoulder, ribs and pork belly. Antonia also makes pork belly and also pork sausage and curried pork. Lisa has pork rellena, pork belly (of course) and adobo pork tostone. What's up with all the pork belly? And is it any good? Stephanie is nervous at the judging since she had to start from scratch but relaxes when the judges seem to like her dishes. Richard was looking pretty frazzled. As the guests were commenting on the chefs and their dishes, one guest said he had been Puerto Rican all his life, in reference to the food. I'm thinking, good for you, I've been American all my life but I can tell good food from bad also. It just seemed like an odd thing to say. At judges table, Richard and Stephanie are the judges favorites with Richard winning. His prize is a car. I think this is the first time they have given a car. Not bad! That leaves Lisa and Antonia as the least favorite. Lisa immediately defends her dishes and took on that famous attitude. The judges didn't like Antonia's undercooked beans. After the judges have their discussion, they call back Lisa and Antonia and Lisa turns on her death ray glare. In a shocker, at least to me, Antonia is told to pack her knives and go. In the war room everyone is hugging Antonia goodbye with Lisa sulking. Lisa finally confronts Steph & Richard saying why don't you congratulate me? For what?! That girl and her attitude should have been sent packing long ago. Double D