Tag Archives: honey

Garlic Pork and Sweet Potato Hash

Recently I had a brief cleaning and purging frenzy, and I decided to sort through the stack of magazines in our living room and toss the majority of them. But not until I scanned them for recipes first, of course! I was driven by the fear that by blindly throwing them away, some amazing piece of culinary genius might end up in the trash instead of on my plate, and I would miss out without knowing what I was missing out on. (Is anyone else plagued by this fear when the purging of magazines is at hand?)

Anyway, weird magazine manias aside, I ended up with three recipes that I stuck on the fridge and plan on making in the weeks to come. This first one was from an issue of Better Homes and Gardens (Sept 2012), and it is incredible! There are a few separate steps–the garlic has too cook first, then be removed, the pork has to be cooked and then removed, etc–but it all happens in the same skillet, so it doesn’t create a pile of dishes.

This is some of the best pork I’ve eaten recently–tender and with perfectly balanced flavors. The sweet and salty syrup and the crunchy fried garlic are amazing together, and I can’t wait to make this again.

And what was Alice up to during all this cooking, you may ask? Well, snoozing her little head off.

There’s no better place to be in the evening than her dad’s arms. Especially after an exhausting day of cooing, fussing, napping, cooing, fussing, and napping. Oh, and contemplating the connection between her arm and her hand and the possibility of hitting that hanging toy that jingles.

And the arm bone’s connected to the . . . 

. . . hand bone, and the hand bone’s connected to the . . .

. . . hanging toy bone . . .

Yep. All of that is simply exhausting. And you can’t blame her–I mean, learning that your hand is your hand? And that you can use it to reach out and touch something?

That’s huge.

Anyway, with my adjustments, here’s the recipe. And if you happen to have a sleeping baby around as you cook, it enhances the experience like you wouldn’t believe.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

2 large sweet potatoes, scrubbed and chopped into small cubes
1 ½ lb pork tenderloin
8 cloves garlic, thinly sliced in rounds
3 TBS olive oil
2 green onions, minced
3 TBS soy sauce
3 TBS honey
3 TBS water
Salt and pepper, to taste

  1. Place chopped potatoes in a microwave-safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and cut 8 or so slits to ventilate. Microwave 8 minutes on high, stirring halfway through.
  2. Cut pork tenderloin into slices 1 inch thick. Butterfly the slices by cutting into them ¾ of the way (with the knife running parallel to the cutting board), opening and flattening them. Sprinkle with black pepper.
  3. Mix together the soy sauce, water and honey; brush the pork slices lightly with this mixture and reserve the rest.
  4. In a 12 inch nonstick skillet, heat the garlic and oil together over medium high heat. Cook the garlic until it is just turning a golden brown; remove and set aside.
  5. In the same skillet, cook the pork 2-3 minutes per side, until browned and about 160 F. Remove the pork to a platter and cover to keep warm.
  6. Add more oil to the skillet if necessary and let it reheat for a minute or two. When the oil is hot, add the sweet potato cubes and cook for 5-7 minutes, until brown and beginning to crisp, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.
  7. Stir the green onions into the sweet potatoes, remove and set aside.
  8. In the same skillet, pour in the soy sauce/water/honey mixture and whisk over medium high heat until bubbly (just about a minute). Remove the syrup from the heat.
  9. Serve each plate with a pile of sweet potatoes and some slices of pork topped with the syrup and fried garlic.

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Chicken with Coconut-Lime Peanut Sauce

I love coconut and I love peanut sauce, which is why this recipe first caught my eye. The recipe looked simple enough, with the bulk of the ingredients simply being whisked together into a sauce. And asparagus? Heck yeah–love that stuff too. After some tweaks and the addition of fresh green beans, here’s the recipe. If you like peanut sauce, chances are you’ll like this! If not, I’d say your chances are . . . well, slim to none.

Ingredients

(Serves 6)

For the sauce:

½ cup peanut butter
1 14.5 oz can coconut milk
1 TBS Thai red curry paste
1 TBS lime juice
1 TBS soy sauce
2 TBS fish sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
1-2 TBS honey (to taste)
1 pinch black pepper
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1 pinch cinnamon
1-2 tsp sriracha

For the chicken:

1 TBS coconut or vegetable oil
1 large onion
3 cloves garlic
1.25 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs
1 bunch asparagus
½ lb green beans
Optional garnishes: peanuts, sriracha, unsweetened coconut flakes, cilantro, green onions, etc.

At this point, it looks like too many ingredients for this to be anything akin to ‘easy.’ But don’t worry! We’re just going to pour and sprinkle and drump, and most of those ingredients can go straight back into the pantry.

That’s right–drump. I have decided that what started as a typo is now going to become a permanent part of my vocabulary. And I haven’t quite nailed down the technical definition, so I’m open to suggestions before I contact my friend Merriam Webster.

And by the way, what kind of a first name is “Merriam”? Is it a typo for “Miriam” that turned into a name in the same way that ‘dump’ turned into ‘drump’? Maybe Merriam and I are more connected than I ever imagined.

Oh, the questions I have on a daily basis.

So: whisk together all the ingredients for the sauce.

You can adjust the flavors to your liking—add more sriracha for spice, more honey for sweetness, more lime juice for acidity, etc.

It’s hard to judge what it may or may not need if you taste it now (like I did), but if you taste it later once it’s hot and in the pot, your taste buds will be able to direct you more clearly.

If the asparagus stalks are thick, halve them lengthwise:

If they’re thin, you can leave them be. While you’re at it, snap off the tough ends. Cut the asparagus and green beans into 2-inch lengths on the diagonal.

Chop the onion, mince the garlic . . .

. . . and cut the chicken into bite-sized cubes.

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large pot or Dutch oven. When hot, add the onion and garlic.

Cook until the onion is softened, stirring occasionally.

Add the chicken to the pot, and cook for about 8 minutes, until golden.

That chicken sure is a disturbing shade of mauve at this point. But that will soon be rectified, thanks to the discovery of fire made long, long ago by a hairy man named Uggl. Or Oogf. Or maybe it was a hairy woman–the hair makes things hard to distinguish, sort of thing.

Not that I was looking . . . and not that I was even there. Anyway.

Add the sauce to the pot . . .

. . . lower the heat, cover the pot, and simmer for about 8 minutes.

Thank you, Uggl. Your discovery sure is coming in handy today.

Stir in the green beans and asparagus . . .

(don’t be like me and add WAY too many green beans) . . . and cook for 5 or so minutes or until crisp-tender.

If the sauce seems too thick at this point, thin it out with more coconut milk or water. Also, don’t forget to taste and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Everyone is different. No two mouths are not on fire.

(Strongbad, anyone?)

All done!

Serve over rice, with as few or as many of the garnishes as you please.

Personally, I’m all about the extra peanuts and the coconut flakes, though I didn’t have the patience to toast mine.

On the downside, my veggies were kind of floppy the following day when I reheated the curry–so leave them on the crisp side of crisp-tender that first night if you know it’s going to become part of your leftovers stash.

But overall–très goodé!

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