January 26th - Pork Chops with Apple Gingere Chutney and Sweet Potatoe Puree

January 26th – Pork Chops with Apple Ginger Chutney and a Sweet Potato Puree
Even though I like a lot of fusion food, I can be a little iffy on some of it because I think that a lot of fusion food isn’t well thought out and combines flavors that don’t’ work well. Ming Tsai, the host of PBS’s Simply Ming and the owner of Blue Ginger, seems to know how to make East West fusion food work. Along with Jean Georges Vongerichten, Ming Tsai is probably my favorite fusion chef. I’ve been watching the Simply Ming episodes on DVD and decided to make a Ming-inspired meal. I was paging through one of his books and came upon his recipe for Apple Ginger chutney and his recipes that use it. I like fruit chutneys and make a fair amount of them when I’m doing more elaborate Indian inspired meals . His recipe was pretty basic: apples, ginger, red onion, rice vinegar, and apple juice. I didn’t have apples juice, so I substituted jiggery and a little water to get the sweetness the juice would have (OK, not the same thing, but sometimes you just work with what you have on hand and make things work.). The rest of the dish is easy. Roast some sweet potatoes until they’re tender, then cut them open and scoop out the flesh. Mash it with salt, pepper and a little maples syrup. Sauté the pork chops (after brining them). Pull the chops from the pan, add the chutney, some stock, and white wine and reduce it. Add the chops back in and turn them to coat them in the sauce. To plate them, mound some of the sweet potatoes on a plate. Lean the pork chop against it and put the sauce over it.
Ming is a big wine guy and has sensible wine choices in his books and on his show, but it was a beer night. I had an excellent Butte Creek Organic Porter while I was cooking (I’ve never had a bad beer from Butte Creeek). It’s a terrific porter. Nice malt sweetness, good hop balance, a little roast and wonderful dark chocolate note. With the meal I had a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, which has hops added to it continuously for 60 minutes. It has a distinct citrus note and although it has great hop flavors, only clocks in at 60 IBU’s (which is still pretty bitter). The malt is solid, but this is a beer about hops. There are citrus and pine notes and a little bit of citrus and orange notes.
Pork has an inherent sweetness, as do the sweet potatoes and the apples. The vinegar in the chutney is a decent foil, but with this many sweet components, it’s nice to have something bitter like IPA to counter it. It was a nice match that was all about contrasts of sweetness and bitterness.