Pork Chop with Canned Chickpea Piperade

I thought I would be the efficient gourmet and cook by chickpeas and veggies in the pan with the pork chop fat and fond.  Here's the starting lineup

I started with veggie chopping because that takes longer than frying a pork chop.

Then pork chop frying

 I did my can opening before the last minute.  This lets me appreciate the beautiful chickpeas and tomatoes.  Those chickpeas are just 57 cents!

I love Furmano's tomatoes.  We had these back when I was a kid.  The color scheme on the label screams authentic Italian.  They are from Pennsylvania, which is a great place for growing tomatoes.  I can get these here in NC, but not in CA.

Next, the onions in the pan drippings.

next, is new move I invented.  Cut the fatty portion of the chop and chop and add to veggies

Next, add tomatoes and chickpeas, and then serve with pork.

Crackerjacks Bar

Here's how to make a crackerjacks bar.  Leave a box of crackerjacks in a warm house for the summer.  Return and remove the crackerjacks bar from the box.

It's pretty solid.

Easy and Good Refried Beans from a Can

Recently, I've developed a routine for a dish I'll call good and easy refried beans from a can.  It's just

cooked.

I chop and fry in oil

and then add some cumin.

Next, I add some water and stir the fond up off the surface of the pot and add a little hot chili powder.

Next, I add the can of refried beans

and stir.

That's it.  Remembering to get a photo looking more like a final product (maybe on a plate) would be good.

Bone-in Pork Rib Chop

Ok.  Summer's over and I shouldn't waste my time cooking, so I'm keeping it simple.  Found a single bone-in rib chop at the Harris Teeter.  Perfect!  The bone-in rib chop is by far my favorite pork chop.

I just season with salt, pepper, and granulated garlic and let sit on counter for at least 2 hours to come to room temperature.  I really think lots of time to really come up to room temperature is way better.  That way the cooking process has a smaller temperature change to produce, and you can get a wider span of the center to is cooked the perfect amount.  Here it is seasoned and sitting on the counter for 2 hours.

It looked the same for the full 2 hours, so I only need one photo.  Very efficient!

Next, I pan sear.  And I take photos.

Now, I let it rest for 5 minutes or so.  Which gives time for another photo and an appearance of my old hefty mac knife.

And then I slice ... and take another photo cuz that's really fun.

See.  I got the doneness in the center pretty good.  A lot of rosy pink cooked meat.

Hamburger Wins Summer

The best food education (maybe re-education) I got this summer was at the Diamondback Grill in Sonora, CA.  And the lesson was the hamburger.  It was this amazingly tasty big juicy hamburger at the most incredibly charming, low-key, down-to-earth wine bar.  It almost wasn't a wine bar.  It would be really hard to say that wine bar section was not a wine bar,  but the restaurant section was really just an awesome burger restaurant with great wine selection including a lot of really delicious, reasonably priced wine from eastern california.  Anyway, it put me on a strong burgers and california wine kick for the rest of the summer.  Here's a few photos of the aftermath of our awesome dinner.