"Mojo" Pork Chops and Mango Slaw

Made these wonderful "mojo" pork chops on my cast iron pan, and served it with mango cole slaw. The best part is that Hannah loves porks chops, but doesn't like to eat off the bone, so she leaves her bone for me. Double the gnawing action for me!

Burger'wich

Work has been crazy recently so unfortunately I haven't been able to post in a while and I'm sure the same is with Greg. But I had time to quick an easy lunch today which inspired this post.

I think my grill pan is one of the most useful pans I have. Recently I have been making a lot of varying panini's/grilled sandwiches on it. Today I went ahead and cooked a burger on it and then used a couple pieces of left over sourdough bread to make a burger sandwich. A little swiss cheese and a couple slices of tomatoes and I had an absolutely delicious and simple lunch.

It beats McDonald's every time.

East to West Eats: Tacos

After reading Greg's post today and mentioning tortillas it left me craving tacos. Fortunately, I had to go downtown today and I knew just the red truck to stop at on my way home.

I ordered two tacos, one chorizo and the other carintas. I love this truck because of how quick it is and how delicious the tacos are. Generous portions of meat, delicious corn tortillas, lime and salsa picante take me back to the time I was in Mexico City and had the best tacos of my life off of the street.

It only took 10 minutes out of my day and $5 out of my pocket. No wonder I love this place.
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Greg Responds:

This reminds me! A few weeks back Hannah and I were in the Mission district of San Francisco for Carnaval. For lunch, we stopped into a busy tacqueria that had been along the parade route and ordered one of each of the following tacos: al pastor, pollo asado, lengua, and cabeza. It was the first time I've tried cabeza -- head meat -- and I expect that I'll be ordering it whenever I have the chance to in the future. Just imagine incredibly tender chunks of pork!

Quesadilla with the kitchen sink

Fresh food expires. As it idles in my fridge, its biological clock ticks down with the passing of every hour. So it's always my goal try to use any leftovers or open ingredients before they grow fuzz or rot.

Meanwhile, Hannah and I attended Oaklavia on Sunday, an open-street festival in downtown Oakland. There, we popped into a busy Mexican restaurant to check it out. While Hannah went to the counter to order some horchatta, I was attracted to the grocery in the back of the restaurant, which stocked fresh corn tortillas cooked in Oakland earlier in the day. They were still warm! $1 for a dozen and we were back in the street to enjoy the rest of the festival.

We had some tasty black bean tacos with the tortillas later that afternoon, but that's not what I'm getting at here. Yesterday for lunch, I rounded up what remained of an old block of cheddar, a few slice of salami, some chickpeas (from the can I opened for the pasta dish below), and some tomatoes. Then I constructed a quesadilla using the still-incredibly fresh tortillas and fried it in the cast iron pan with grapeseed oil. I salted the finished quesadilla and ate it with some plain yogurt. What needs to be said: the freshness of the tortillas made for a super crispy and flavorful meal. Not a bad use ingredients that were just waiting to go bad.

Quick Friday night dinner?

By Friday night, I usually have to get creative when it comes to feeding myself. I venture into the pantry trying my best to use up ingredients that have been sitting in the fridge all week. This past Friday was no exception.

I ended up falling back on a recent favorite quick meal which I have yet to have the chance to write about: pasta with garlic, bacon, and fried chickpeas.

Fried, whole, chickpeas (garbanzo beans, whatever) are a recent discovery of mine that I made on a whim a few weeks ago while search for some accompaniments to pasta. I didn't much care for the texture or flavor of the bean straight out of the can, so I figured I should just fry it up along with some garlic.

Wow! The chickpeas, fried in a combination of olive oil and bacon fat that had rendered from cooking the bacon, were crispy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside, and had a great beanie taste to them. This dish has quickly become a go-to dish when I have nothing sitting around but pasta, garlic, bacon, canned chickpeas, and some Parmesan cheese. When I made it last Friday, I served it with some steamed broccoli.

Beer-glazed black beans

So I would have posted Tuesday night's dinner of pork chops and polenta, but I forgot to take a picture. Then I thought my lunch yesterday of the leftovers would make a cool post about reheating food without a microwave. But a second look at that photo made me realize that polenta with corn doesn't photograph well on a Blackberry. Let's say it didn't look very appetizing.

So after the Gucci pork chop dinner, I went for a more economical meal centered on beans and rice. I thought I would make just a normal rice and beans sort of dish, but leafing through How To Cook Everything, I came across an interesting variation on that: beer-glazed black beans with bacon and tomatoes served over rice. I used canned beans, so it was a pretty quick meal, done in under an hour. Satisfying and hearty, too.

Mexican Eats

For the past week I haven't blogged as I was in Palenque, Mexico. The best meals I ate were those that were out of the hotel and at little spots in the town. This is one of those meals. We ordered a lot of food including chicken enchiladas with mole and a torta with steak milanesa. Also ordered were delicious tostadas, guacamole, and a friend plantain dish which made an amazing dessert.

The simplest, home-made style foods are often

the most delicious. There was nothing fancy about this meal and the food was great.