Where’s My Pork Chop?

Where’s My Pork Chop is Dan from Food Urchin‘s little side project.  He works nights and doesn’t often have time to prepare something decent to eat in the evening so wondered if he could convince fellow bloggers to swap a portion of something tasty from their kitchen for some wine or something similar.  I hate to think of anyone going hungry so was happy to get involved, when Dan said I could have something from his allotment or some of his sourdough starter I was even happier.

Stephen and I were out last night so didn’t have time to cook anything specifically but, as luck would have it, one of Dan’s requests was our bean chilli which we just so happened to have a portion of in the freezer.  I tucked that into a cool bag, stopped off to buy some bread (he didn’t have a toaster for pitta bread and I didn’t want to risk poisoning him with reheated rice in this weather so settled for a crusty roll) and some cheese to grate on top and began my journey.

Dan arrived shortly after me with a suspiciously large carrier bag which looked rather heavy.  It was indeed heavy because it contained a huge amount of potatoes, courgettes, courgette flowers and curly kale, all home grown and picked this morning.  I was beginning to feel really bad about the fact that I’d just plucked something from the freezer when he hit me with a jar of sourdough starter too.  I felt even worse then but also incredibly excited about the prospect of making my own sourdough at home.

When I got home, I set about cleaning up the vegetables and sorting out Velma (the sourdough starter, as named by Dan, daughter of the ‘mother’ Veronica) which sent me into a bit of a panic: I didn’t want to kill her on the first day.  Luckily, Dan came to the rescue with some very clear instructions so she’s been fed and watered and is sitting happily in the kitchen.

Having fed the newest member of the family, I started to think about what we were going to eat this evening.  I wanted to use some of the vegetables from Dan’s huge carrier bag while they were still so fresh so settled on a potato salad, some griddle courgettes and, rather aptly, some pork chops.

Before that, we had the beautiful courgette flowers to attend to.  We decided against stuffing them as, having never eaten them before, we wanted to taste as much as we could without masking the taste with other flavours.  I made up a straightforward batter and added just a little cheese to it and then Stephen did the scary deep-frying.  They tasted faintly of courgette but it wasn’t a strong flavour.  Dan’s suggestion of stuffing with mozarella and anchovies would have been very good but I’m glad we got to taste the flowers relatively au-naturel.

I kept the potato salad simple and just added some light olive oil, salt and pepper and some red onion that I’d steeped in lemon juice to sweeten.  These were the real star of the meal, the potatoes were firm with a sweet and earthy flavour and they tasted really potatoey.

The courgettes were also treated simply with just a brush of olive oil and a little seasoning once they came off the barbecue.  Like the potatoes, they were sweet with a pleasing bite in both taste and texture.

The pork chops were marinated for a couple of hours in our current favourite marinade of oil, lemon juice, salt, garlic and oregano before being grilled on the barbecue .

I’m not sure I’ve eaten vegetables as fresh as these before and you could certainly taste the difference.  I’ve never been able to smell potatoes when I’ve washed them before, as I did with these and, I have to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of courgettes usually but Dan’s might have just persuaded me otherwise.

I think we definitely got the better deal here: not only did we have a really tasty dinner this evening, I also realised that I like courgettes and we still have lots of lovely vegetables to keep us going through the week.  We owe you a drink next time we see you, Dan!