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I love making the pork with lemon and thyme, but I sense the family MAY be getting tired of it. So I tried something new.
8-10 pork loin steaks (trimmed of fat and cut into finger thick strips)
oil – something that can take the wok temperature. Macadamia nut oil, if you can find it, would work. I only had sunflower so while technically not perfect for slow-carb, it had to do
1 tbls each garlic and ginger
a whole mess 0′ green veg – I used a pack of thin green beans, a pack of mange tout, and 5 or 6 spring onions – chopped (the beans and pea pods in half, the onions diced)
4 tbls black bean sauce – without added sugar if you can find it.
can of Puy lentils (black beans would have been a good alternative, but I had lentils)
Heat the oil in the wok. Toss in the garlic and ginger and stir fry for a moment (do not let it burn)
I did the meat in batches as my wok is not great and we only have an electric stove, so I added the garlic and ginger in 1/3s, with each batch of meat. Stir fry until nearly cooked, 5-7 minutes should do it. Remove each batch to a side plate. When you add all the meat back in to the wok, add any juices as well.
Add the beans and onions and stir fry for a couple of minutes, then add the mange tout and the lentils or other beans, cover and let the veg steam a bit but not go limp. Stir in the black bean sauce, and serve.
I actually think this might have been good with spinach added, or maybe even over some lettuce for a hot-and-cold almost salad.
The black bean sauce I got was, I think, a little too salty, so I would try a few or use one you already know you like.
I am all about the cooking, usually, and try not to use a lot of pre-prepared stuff (although I do use a LOT of quick items like squeezy garlic and ginger!) but sometimes it’s all about the fast!
I don’t think DH has any idea how easy this one was – but he’ll know now.
Marinate the pork chops in an olive oil salad dressing. One with no added sugar. Just read the label and pick one you like. OR make a home made marinade like the rosemary and garlic with lemon. So long as it has some olive oil, some vinegar/citrus (lemon or lime juice is good with chicken, pork or fish, balsamic or plain old red wine vinegar is good with beef) and some herbs (I particularly like thyme, lemon thyme, rosemary or basil) and maybe garlic, it’ll work.
BBQ
Easy Peasy. I use the leftover marinade added to the Puy Lentils – so long as you cook them yo can tip in the marinade from the bag to flavour them, but make sure you heat them long enough, and a high enough temperature to kill any unfriendly bacteria. 10 minutes should do it on a medium heat, till the marinade boils.
A nice summer side is braised lettuce and peas.
I do this one quick:
roughly chop 4 baby gem lettuce heads, removing the tough stalk part
thaw a couple of cups of frozen peas
Saute some chopped onion, red onion, or leeks in butter
add the peas and a minute or two later, the lettuce.
salt and pepper well.
Serve it up!
I know I have not een adding recipes very often at the moment but we are keeping to the diet (more or less – a few cheats when we are out and about, like lunch at Jamie’s Italian on Bank Holiday Monday in Oxford – tsk, tsk) and doing a LOT of simple BBQ. Mostly a variation on this sort of dish – marinated meat, beans, veg. It’s all easy, and not really much to share. When summer hits fully I have a few salad-type dishes I’ll share but at the moment it’s all too simple to bore you with!
Some days, life just gets busy and taking time to do anything for lunch is hard. I don’t have the luxury of being able to eat two meals a day out, where all I have to do is order and eat. Those days I start looking in the fridge for something, anything, that I can be spooning up in under 5 minutes. Having said that, it has to be tasty – I am simply not prepared to “waste” calories on something that doesn’t satisfy on the way to my tummy!
So we BBQed some pork loin chops the other day, with the green pesto and lemon marinade. I chunked one of the leftover chops, stirred in another teaspoon of pesto and a 1/2 can of cannelli beans. In the microwave for 2 minutes on 50% power, more to take the chill off than to really COOK it, and dumped it over some torn lettuce leaves. I quite like warm topping on cold leaves, and this hit the spot. All in under 5 minutes.
This was simplicity itself and cooked up in less than 15 minutes – gotta love that.
2 small pork loin chops (boneless), pounded thin
1 tlbs olive oil plus 1 tsp butter
thyme
salt and pepper
juice of 1/2 a lemon
can of butter beans
Heat the oil and butter in a small frying pan. Strip the leaves from a few sprigs of fresh thyme and toss them in. Fry the chops on one side, then flip them over, salting and peppering the cooked side. Fry the pork loins till they are just done through, crispy on the outside but not dry on the inside – this is very quick, maybe 3 minutes a side (assuming you have pounded them very thin!) Squeeze over the lemon juice and remove the pork to a warmed plate.
Dump in your can of drained and rinsed butter beans. Stir them around in the pan juices until just warmed through – check your plate of pork and tip any juices that came out of the pork into the beans. Roughly mash them with the back of a fork. Add a bit more oil to give them a more creamy consistency, if they seem dry.
Plate up and eat – it looks like a lot but this is actually a small salad plate!
