Sage Garlic Brined Pork Chops

Photo by Julia Frost, on flickr.

 The first recipe I prepared from the Ruhlman cookbook was the Sage Garlic Brined Pork Chops. I've been brining pork for a while now, so the method isn't exactly new to me, but Ruhlman adds a lot more to the brine than I ever have. Ten (10!) cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of sage, lemon, shallot, etc. He also has you boil everything together briefly, which I suspect is important to releasing all the flavors, especially the lemon. Everything in a bag, and then we just had to wait seven hours.

Once the pork chop was done brining, we coated it in flour, breaded it, and pan-fried it, also according to instructions from Ruhlman's book. While frying it, I made a lemon-caper sauce and my wife prepared brussels sprouts and roasted potatoes. While the pork chops were thinner than Ruhlman suggested, they cooked perfectly -- if anything, they were slightly underdone. I've always been impressed by how much brining makes pork much more tender and juicy, and this brine added some really good flavor. It's a really heavy dish, though. The lemon-caper sauce was necessary to cut the heaviness with the acidity of the lemons and the saltiness of the capers. The brussels sprouts were a good side, and complemented the pork chops nicely; I'm glad we didn't roast them, as that may have been too much. Similarly, the potatoes were good, but they may have been a carb too far. I really enjoyed this meal, and look forward to trying it again!

Pork!

Lauren DeSantis reminds us that Cochon 555 is only three months away:

Guests will be treated to an epic pork feast of seven whole heritage pigs from amazing chefs, wines from five different small wineries plus special tastings from celebrated food and beverage producers. New additions in 2013 include the streaming live cocktail competition called "Punch Kings" featuring local mixologists, our unique take on "Guy on His Buffalo" Cocktail Series, a special Mezcal tasting and the launch of the TarTar Bar. Everyone enjoys butcher demonstrations, interactive tasting contests, ice-cold brews, artisan cheeses, Rappahannock River Oysters, the infamous Manhattan Bar, a pork-spiked dessert, cold brewed coffee and to close the evening, attendees and local judges will help us announce the 2012 NYC Princess of Porc.

 A lot of these sorts of events are pretty gimmicky and not really worth the cost of admission, but I've only heard good things about this pork-centric event. Tickets start at $125.

Apple-Pie Pork Chops

By some strange coincidence, there is no supermarket between the store where I pick up my CSA and home. There is a Yes! Organic Market across the street, but their selection of meats is pretty limited, so I usually avoid them. But the other day, I had no idea what I wanted to do for dinner anyway, and I figured I'd go to Yes! and poke around. They had some good looking, relatively cheap pork chops, so I picked them up. 

I wanted some fall flavors, and I still had some crabapple schapps. I know pork chops go well with apples, and it's fall, so time for fall flavors! I've never marinated with alcohol, and I was eager to try: I put a good slug of the schapps in a bag, along with some thyme and some cinnamon, and threw it into the fridge for a few hours.

I was a little worried that it would marinate for too long, and the pork would end up mushy, since it was in the fridge for five hours. It turned out, it may have been a bit longer than ideal, but not too long. I fried the pork chops for about 10 minutes, turning up the heat at the end to get a bit of a sear. I really enjoyed these. The pork was good and tender from the marinade. It was, however, a bit disconcerting to be eating pork that tasted an awful lot like apple pie. If I do this again, I'll marinate for a shorter period of time, and probably not bother with the thyme. It was overpowered by the other flavors, and so a waste of thyme.

Puerto Rico: Pt. II

After several days in Luquillo, we headed off to San Juan for our last night in Puerto Rico. We'd been to San Juan before, so weren't in a huge hurry. And we had heard that there was a highway in central Puerto Rico where you could get delicious pork, so we decided to take the scenic route, around the south-eastern end of the island, and then up the middle. After a few hair-raising turns, we found La Ruta de Lechon.

There are about a dozen lechonera in the main strip, with maybe five or six more scattered around. Since it was a Tuesday afternoon, there were very few if any people at any of them; however, in validation of our choice, Lechonera Los Pinos had a few customers. We both got a plate and dug into some of the best pork we've ever had. It was every bit as rich as the pig's head we had at Standard, but not nearly as greasy. The skin was beautiful, nice and crispy (though my wife disagreed, finding it a bit too hard). We ate every bite until we were stuffed.

That night, we went to Carli's, a jazz club in Old San Juan, and had a really good time. I had a half-rack of lamb, which was great. But what really made Carli's stand out was the ambiance. The jazz was great, and the waiter and bartender were as friendly as could be. Very great trip to Puerto Rico.

Tomato and Onion Stuffed Pork Chop

Occasionally, you're at the store, and you can't find what you're looking for. This time, I was at Harris Teeter trying to find a nice big juicy pork chop. They didn't have a nice big juicy pork chop. They did have small butterflied pork chops, which didn't look too bad, and my wife suggested we could stuff them with some of the heirloom tomatoes we got in our CSA. So we picked them up and took them home.

We poked around the internet, and found this recipe to use as a guide. So I chopped up one and a half tomatoes with an onion and a not insubstantial amount of garlic. I fried that in a tablespoon of butter and a roughly equivalent amount of olive oil. There was a lot of liquid floating around, and I was tempted to just wait until it had all boiled off. But I thought that would just mean the vegetables would end up stewed and tasteless. So I let it cook a while, and then used a slotted spoon to transfer the vegetables to a bowl, so it wasn't too liquidy. The vegetables then got mixed with some feta and some fresh oregano and basil. 

I ended up with a lot of filling, so I don't think I even used half of it to stuff the pork chops. Once stuffed, I put the pork chops in the oven at 400 degrees and let them cook for 30 minutes. The pork chops ended up a bit overcooked. 25 minutes would have been sufficient I think. The stuffing, however, was absolutely delicious. We covered our green beans with it, and it was just as good as the duck fat roasted potatoes, which is saying something!

Safeway Barbecue Battle

This past weekend, my wife and I finally made it down to the Safeway Barbecue Battle, 2012 edition. We're tempted to go every year, but it's usually beastly hot, and we've never been quite sure it's worth the price of admission. This year it was, again, beastly hot, but we figured we might as well go and see what all the hype was about. It's a pretty big festival, spanning Pennsylvania St. between 7th and 14th streets NW, with a bit of action on some of the side streets as well. There are several teams of barbecuers, being a battle and all, located in tents throughout the festival. For us, however, the main attraction was the food.

There were two ways to get fed here. You could depend on the free samples, or you could purchase some from a fairly substantial selection of vendors. We started off with the free samples. There was a pork table with a selection of four pork dishes to sample -- chop, tenderloin, burger, and I can't remember the fourth. It may have been another tenderloin. They were pretty good, and there wasn't a line, so it was a good start. Most of the samples, however, were in the Safeway Sample Tent, an amazingly bad idea. Putting them all in one place meant that instead of standing in several lines of moderate length, you had to stand in a single very long line. We waited an hour, and the line was even longer when we left the tent. The samples varied in quality. Most were pretty good, though not great, and some were pretty bad. The lamb was especially good, but overall, we felt that we spent more time in line than the samples were worth.

We weren't terribly hungry after the free samples, though, so we wandered around a bit more. Several of the booths had games like cornhole, which my wife enjoys more than I. PNC had a basketball court set up where you could play PIG. It was a good reminder of how bad I've gotten at basketball, but at least I beat my wife. Please don't take that out of context. I wanted to get some barbecue before we left, so we swung by one of the vendors to get some brisket. I think we picked the wrong one. The price was the same as the other vendors, but the serving size was not. Still, it was pretty good brisket, and I definitely wouldn't be heading down here again next year. Just remind me to avoid the free sample tent.

Pork Chops with 'Leeks' in Mustard Sauce

Photo by Jake Chessum.

One of the fun parts of joining a CSA is figuring out what to do with all the crazy vegetables you get. Sometimes, especially on weeks when you're going out of town, that's the frustrating part as well. This week, we found ourselves with extra thyme and spring onions, and I was feeling pork chops, so I pulled this recipe up off of Epicurious. It's supposed to use leeks, but the spring onions appeared similar enough that I figured I could get away with using them instead. My wife put the spice rub on the meat about three or four hours before I got home, and we were ready to go.

I followed the recipe pretty closely for the most part, though I rounded the cooking time up a little. I neglected to boil off the liquid at the end, before adding the mustard and the sour cream, but I let the sauce reduce a bit after that, without letting it boil, and was able to get a pretty good thickness to it. My wife made some mustard cabbage to go with the pork chops, which was a lot tastier than it sounds, and the chops themselves were excellent, juicy and tender.

Pork Tenderloin with Ginger-Rum Marinade

We bought some pork tenderloin earlier this week, with which my wife made a lovely meal, but there was too much for just one meal, so we froze half of it. Now that the weekend has arrived, it's time to grill, and I figured I'd try my hand at grilling this great cut of meat. Now, I also bought some rum a few days ago. After poking around the internet for a while, I found a great recipe for a Ginger-Rum Marinade.

I'm not sure what type of rum would be best in this recipe, but I just bought some Kraken dark spiced rum, so that's what went into it. Rum always has me thinking of the Carribean, and the pineapple juice just encourages those sorts of thoughts, so I added some Allspice to the marinade. I also added some smoked sea salt, just to help the marinade penetrate and maybe give it a bit more smokiness. My little grill could use all the help it can get! So I let it sit for a few hours, then got ready to grill.

Once the grill heated up, I put the tenderloin on for four minutes a side. I'd grill a steak of similar thickness for about 12 to 13 minutes, and pork should be cooked a bit longer than steak, so 16 minutes seems about right. I also made sure to baste it at regular intervals with the remainder of the marinade. It turned out perhaps a trifle overcooked, but was still really juicy. You could definitely taste the pineapple, but it was more refreshing than overpowering. A very good marinade. Recipe after the jump: