Lin cut up a colossal pork loin into more manageable chunks while I was
sleeping yesterday. When I woke up, I turned a couple of chops into dinner:

Gently heat olive oil in a big sauté pan. Add the pork chops and slowly warm
them to activate the cathepsin; add kosher salt and keep warm for about 10
minutes.

Meanwhile, chop an onion, slice 5 cloves of garlic (separating into two
piles: 2 cloves in one pile, 3 cloves in the other), mince a serrano chile,
zebra-peel, thickly slice an eggplant, and put salted water on to boil for
spaghetti. Salt both sides of the eggplant slices and allow to sit and
sweat. Remove meat from the pan and raise the temperature to medium-high.
When oil is hot, return meat to the pan and sear on one side. (The chops
were fairly thin: If they'd been thicker I'd have seared both sides, but
thin chops get too tough if you do that.) Remove meat from the pan again and
add onions.

When the onions are softened add the minced chile and three sliced cloves of
garlic and stir for about 30 seconds until the garlic's fragrance is
released. While this is going on, the onions should have released some
liquid; use that to scrape the brown bits that the meat put onto the pan
while searing. Add about a cup and a half of crushed tomatoes, lower the
heat, and stir to mix through. Return the meat to the pan, cover, move to a
back burner, and cook on low heat.

Add spaghetti to the now-boiling salted water.

Put the remaining two sliced garlic cloves into a wide nonstick skillet
along with a goodly amount of olive oil; heat over medium-high heat. Grate a
tablespoon of zest from an orange, then squeeze out its juice. When the
garlic in the skillet starts to brown, remove it from the oil. Put the
eggplant slices into the skillet in one layer and cook.

Add the orange juice to the pan with the pork. Grind black pepper, cut basil
into chiffonade, and mix both with the orange zest.

Remove eggplant slices from the pan, add more oil (because the eggplant will
have sucked up what you put in before), and return the eggplant slices to
the pan uncooked-side-down.

Add the basil-pepper-zest mixture to the pot with the pork.

When the eggplant skillet has returned to temperature, add red wine vinegar
and drizzle with honey.

The spaghetti should be just shy of al dente by this point, so drain it.

Remove the pork chops from their pan to one side of a platter. Add the
spaghetti to the remaining sauce in the pan and toss well until cooked. (I
reserved a cup of the pasta cooking water in case it was needed to bind the
pasta to the sauce, but it was not needed.)

Put the eggplant onto the other side of the platter with the pork chops. Put
the spaghetti into a serving dish and serve with grated cheese on the side.

Note that this is not intended to be served as a pasta course and a main
course: The eggplant is intended to be complemented by the pasta. The
eggplant's flavor profile is *almost* the typical agrodolce combination but
it lacks any spicy component. The serrano chile in the pasta provides that
component, and the eggplant goes well with both the pasta and the pork.

Bob

On Mon, 13 May 2013 04:15:52 -0700, "Bob Terwilliger"
> wrote:

> Lin cut up a colossal pork loin into more manageable chunks while I was
> sleeping yesterday. When I woke up, I turned a couple of chops into dinner:

<snipped for brevity> Sounds delicious! I guess my invitation was
lost in the email... well, that's okay. I went to my DD's and we
grilled pork Souvlaki.

--
Food is an important part of a balanced diet.