pork chops with garam masala

We’ve been away for a bit. There were some medical mysteries (all solved, and well), Danny started work again (a restaurant on the island where we live. we’ll tell you more about it soon), and the holidays. Didn’t everyone go quiet over the holidays, as we searched for presents and tried to make it through the mayhem alive? Anyway, we’ve been silent here and we don’t like it.

We’ve missed you.

We’re back now, with plenty of new suggestions, bizarre bacon stories, and recipes for you. Today, a quiet recipe, simple enough to cook in 10 minutes. A wonderful lunch.

* Take two bone-in pork chops.

* Dust them with a healthy pinch of garam masala powder, which is a pungent Indian spice mix. When garam masala is made in the home, it can be a different blend of seasonings and spices from region to region, house to house. But most commercial garam masala mixes (and that’s what we had in our kitchen) contain at least garlic, ginger, dried chiles, mustard seeds, turmeric, and coriander. Those all blend well with pork.

(If we had more time, we would have ground our own with a mortar and pestle. But we wanted pork chops, fast, so we used the pre-ground powder.)

* Season the chops with salt and pepper. Season from chest height, so you don’t over-salt the pork. Toss on a touch of finely chopped rosemary, if you want.

* Get a sauté pan hot. Screaming ass hot, as Danny likes to say. Pour in a bit of oil, just enough to coat the bottom of the pan. It should start running around right away.

* Lay the pork chops in the hot oil. Let them flash sauté until they are browned on the bottom, about 2 minutes. (These were thin pork chops. They cooked nearly right away.) Flip them (turn them away from you, not toward, so as to avoid the hot oil). Cook another 2 minutes until they are browned. No more. You don’t want them tough.

We ate these lovely pork chops with boiled potatoes with rosemary. This was just what we wanted to eat.  It was a simple little lunch in the afternoon, with our daughter, watching the sun tilt toward the west, on one of the last days of the year.