February 1st - Pork Chops with Spicy Tomato Sauce and Roasted Potatoes

February 1st – Pork Cops With Spicy Tomato Sauce and Roasted Potatoes

I had more pork chops and wanted something vaguely Spanish for dinner, but also wanted something kind of quick. I brined the chops in salt water while I thought about what to make. My wife suggested romesco sauce, but I didn’t have any red bell peppers but thought I could a sort of similar sauce just using onions, tomatoes, garlic, almonds, pimenton, and crushed red pepper, but that wasn’t emulsified. I was envisioning something between romesco and the spicy tomato sauce that’s used for patatas bravas. With that in mind, I peeled some Yukon gold potatoes, tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and then roasted them in a cast iron skillet in the oven.

I browned the chops in olive oil in a pan and then pulled them out and left them on a plate. I added some finely diced onions and cooked them until they turned light brown and then added garlic, pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika), and almonds and let them cook for a few minutes. Then I deglazed the pan with fino sherry and added some tomatoes. I let it cook down for about 10 minutes and then pureed the sauce with an immersion blender to make a smoother sauce. (It had some small chunks for texture but nothing very large.) Then I added some more olive oil and whisked it in to enrich the sauce before turning it down and letting it simmer for a few minutes more. When the potatoes were almost done, I added the chops back to the pan with the sauce and let them finish cooking in the sauce.

I spooned some of the sauce onto plates, put a chop in the middle of the sauce, and added the potatoes to the side and then added a little more sauce on the side to use a s a condiment for the potatoes. Though it wasn’t a traditional Spanish dish, it had Spanish flavors. The sauce was wonderful and just spicy enough with the potatoes.

I’ve had a few bottles of Sierra Nevada’s ESB of late and really like it. It’s distinctly an American ESB but it’s a wonderful beer. It’s made with a combination of American and English hops and malts (see the website for the breakdown). It seems less hoppy than their pale ale, although their website states that it’s actually a little higher in IBU’s, but has a great hop aroma and subtle hop bite. There’s good malt to it with a slight caramel sweetness but it’s a well balanced beer that finishes very clean with a nice hop/malt balance. It’s a seasonal beer so it’s not around for too long but I’d encourage you to pick some up if your can find it. It was a great beer with this meal because it had enough body to stand up to all of the flavors but wasn’t so big that it tried to overwhelm the food. Although it clocks in at 5.9% alcohol, it has an easy drinking quality to it. Its balance makes it a great beer for food, but I could easily drink a few pints of it on its own as well.