Recipe below: Grilled Pork Chops with Caper Sage Salsa
I love a grilled pork chop. When it’s properly done the fat gets all crispy and there’s a slight pink at the bone. My nostalgia for grilled pork grows partly from childhood memories of my father’s boozy summer grill nights, when everything and everybody was amply toasted and things were not often properly done. It’s a mixed bag of recall, but it gives me mostly a good feeling.
Dick would start his grill nights with a “mart,” meaning a good-size glass of vodka on the rocks with a twist. He’d have a few of those and then move on to the big bottle of mouth-puckering Chianti. The pork went on a fire that never was given a chance to die down to suitable-for-cooking orange coal. Flames shot up, and the meat almost always emerged burnt on the outside and still cold in the middle. My mother would scream that everything was “completely blackened. Disgusting. And raw.” There was a lingering fear of trichinosis back in the late sixties and early seventies, so the “raw” question stirred panic in Italian American moms (maybe in all moms, but it seems the Italian ones were always especially prone to medical scares). We ate all the blackened raw pork anyway and sort of loved it. The few pork chops that were actually overcooked in addition to being blackened (no trichinosis there), were coveted. I actually preferred the rare ones. They were more like steak. I also thought I knew that trichinosis was a thing of the past. All the pork chops, in whatever stage, got topped with fire-roasted onions and peppers, and that was a good touch. I suppose our grill nights might possibly have been just as unruly without the booze, but I guess we’ll never know.
I still love grilled pork chops, especially soaked in a simple marinade. Here I prepare a marinade with a hint of the sea. When I “man” the grill now, I try to not get too bombed and actually pay attention to what I’m doing, which in a way seems like less fun than when my father was at the grill, but I guess it’s a tradeoff. I like my pork cooked juicy, with that little touch of pink. I try for that and usually more or less succeed.
Sage is a strange-smelling herb. I like it, but sometimes it stumps me. I search for new ways to use it, especially since I’ve got so much of it in a patch that comes back bigger every year. This sage and caper salsa was a surprise. I was expecting it to be kind of harsh, but the good olive oil, the capers, and the pine nuts seemed to bring out the sweetness in the herb. Sage is lovely on pork, classic, but also, I have discovered, on whole grilled trout. And try it on thick slices of roasted pumpkin or butternut squash, as the summer moves toward its end.
Happy summer grilling to you.
Grilled Pork Chops with Caper Sage Salsa
4 large bone-in pork loin chops
For the marinade:
2 teaspoons Thai fish sauce or Italian colatura
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 summer garlic cloves, crushed
Black pepper
1 tablespoon sweet vermouth
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
A little salt
For the salsa (makes about 1 ½ cups, probably a bit more than you’ll need, but it’ll keep for a day or two without losing too much flavor):
¾ cup fresh sage leaves
½ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
½ cup Sicilian capers, soaked for about 20 minutes, rinsed, and drained
½ cup really good extra-virgin olive oil (I used Olio Verde, a Sicilian brand)
A palmful of pine nuts (about 1½ tablespoons)
1 small fresh, summer garlic clove, lightly crushed
The grated zest from 1 small lemon, plus a squeeze of its juice
Salt
Black pepper
Dry off the pork chops and lay them out in a shallow pan. Mix all the ingredients for the marinade together and pour it over the meat, turning them over a few times so everything is nicely distributed. Let marinate in the refrigerator for about 2 hours.
To make the salsa: Set up a small pot of water and bring it to a boil. Add the sage and parsley leaves. Blanch them for a minute, and then pour them into a colander and let cold water run over them to set their good green color. Squeeze out as much water as possible.
Put the blanched herbs and all the other salsa ingredients in a food processor, and pulse about 6 times or so, until the mix has a loose but rough green pesto-like consistency. Don’t let it pulse so much that you wind up with a smooth purée. Scrape the salsa out into a small bowl.
Take the pork chops out of the refrigerator about a half hour before you want to cook them. While they’re coming to room temperature, set up your charcoal grill and let it burn down to orange coals (not my father’s impatient flame fire).
Rub oil on the grill surface. Take the pork chops from the marinade, letting excess marinade drip off, and place them on the grill. If it starts to flame up, lower its cover. Let the meat cook until you’ve got good grill marks and the chops move easily when you give them a nudge, about 4 minutes. Flip them, and grill their other side. If your fire is really hot you might want to move them slightly off to the side so they can cook without browning too much. Another 4 minutes is about right for cooked but with a touch of pink at the bone, but that really depends on your fire and the thickness of the meat, so it’s a personal judgment call.
When your chops are done, give them a final sprinkling of salt, and plate them. Top each serving with a big dollop of the salsa, and serve right away.
If find that these chops go really well with ratatouille and grilled country bread rubbed with summer garlic and brushed with good olive oil.