Grilled Pork Chops and Italian Plums: A smoky, seasonal taste of late summer

Brining pork chops with kosher salt, brown sugar, tarragon, garlic and wine makes them tender and flavorful, especially when grilled with Italian plums. Recipe below.

IN MY WORKING CLASS FAMILY, MEAT WAS STRICTLY THE CHEAP CUTS. When I was growing up, beef was chuck turned into burgers or meatloaf or spaghetti sauce—or the occasional pot roast, slow cooked so the fat melted into it and the toughness cooked out of it (as much as it does). Chicken was chicken, all of it relatively inexpensive back then, cooked and consumed with the skin on. And pork was most often chops, well marbled with fat before that was even a term used in households. Which probably explains why I like meat so much. Continue reading “Grilled Pork Chops and Italian Plums: A smoky, seasonal taste of late summer” →

Heat up flavors, not the kitchen: Spicy Grilled Pork Chops with Mango Cilantro Salsa

Grilled chops flavored with chili powder, cumin and cayenne pepper are topped with mango, cilantro, tomatoes, red onions and jalapeño pepper. Recipe below.

Harry S Truman famously said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” I took the 33rd president at his word last week, although probably not as he intended. When the temperatures finally (and temporarily) dropped below dangerous levels last Friday, but were still high enough that I didn’t want to heat up the kitchen, I fired up the grill instead. Continue reading “Heat up flavors, not the kitchen: Spicy Grilled Pork Chops with Mango Cilantro Salsa” →

Five cool grilling recipes for the long, hot summer

From tea-smoked chicken to lamb feta burgers and a classic Alabama white sauce, here are five great recipes to liven up your summer grilling.

For Americans everywhere, the 4th of July weekend is a time to declare independence from the kitchen stove and fire up the grill. For Marion and me, this weekend was more about the freedom of the road—some 700 miles of it, without a kitchen in sight. So this week, I’m serving up grilling recipes from the Blue Kitchen archives.

1. Grilled Lamb Feta Burgers with Light Rémoulade

This is a truly American burger, in that it happily borrows ingredients from other cultures and then reinvents them. Continue reading “Five cool grilling recipes for the long, hot summer” →

Asian improvisations on the grill: “Vietnamese” chops, sesame zucchini

A marinade seasoned with turmeric, ginger, garlic, Chinese five-spice powder and other spices gives Turmeric/Ginger Grilled Pork Chops big flavor with very little heat; Grilled Sesame Zucchini is delicious, smoky and impressive—and it’s easy to make. Recipes below.

asian-chops-sesame-zucchini

At times like this, I wish Blue Kitchen had a scratch and sniff mode. When I’d whisked together the ingredients for the marinade for the chops, it was so wonderfully aromatic that I wanted Marion to get a whiff of it before I added the meat and popped it in the fridge. I carried it to the study at the opposite end of the apartment where Marion was. She told me the big fragrance had preceded me.

The marinade is actually based on one used for a five-spice chicken dish in Mai Pham’s Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. Pham is chef/owner of Lemon Grass Restaurant in Sacramento, California. Here’s how she describes the dish’s olfactory pleasures: “The best five-spice chicken I have had in Vietnam was made by a street food vendor in the port town of Hoi An in the central region. The vendor used a spice mix of freshly toasted star anise and turmeric. When she grilled the chicken, the whole neighborhood was perfumed with the most enticing fragrance.” Other seasonings adding their big personalities to the marinade include fresh ginger and garlic—plenty of each—and Chinese five-spice powder.

You may have noticed the quotes around Vietnamese in the headline. It’s not that Pham’s marinade isn’t authentically Vietnamese; she was born in Vietnam and left there just days before the fall of Saigon in 1975. And the recipes in the book come from a trip she made home 20 years later to connect with her roots. It’s more the way certain ingredients freely cross borders, especially in Asia. Continue reading “Asian improvisations on the grill: “Vietnamese” chops, sesame zucchini” →