Food & Nutrition Columns
The Domestic Diva
"For the Love of Pork"
BY JENNIFER DAWN ROGERS
I’d never cooked pork until last year.
No, I’m not Jewish. Nor am I a vegetarian. Rather, it all dates back to the day my mother converted to Judaism for her first husband. Despite the demise of both the union and her newly acquired faith (and her subsequent marriage to my gentile father), my mother continued to maintain one tenant of Judaism: Thou shalt not dine on swine. If your mother is anti-pork, that pretty much makes you anti-pork, too. For the whole of my childhood, through college, and beyond, I never ate a morsel of pork, let alone cooked up a meal of it.
As fate would have it, I also fell in love with a man of the Jewish persuasion, and as is often the case, while he would eagerly shovel down a plateful of bacon, he abstained from pork. This is pretty much like someone saying, “Yeah, I’m vegan, except I eat cow.” Both bacon and pork come from a pig and are equally prohibited, but bacon tastes so delicious that many less pious Jews still eat it. And so the tradition of pork avoidance continued.
Occasionally, I’d reassure myself by saying things like, “What’s the big deal about pork? It can’t taste better than steak, can it?” But there was always that hint of uncertainty clinging to my voice, reinforced every time Homer Simpson waxed poetic about that “magical animal” from whence came ham, bacon, and pork.
This all began to change when I started to delve into cooking, taking on all manner of culinary challenges from risotto to braised short ribs and roast chicken. As I progressed, pork began to take on an almost holy quality—it was the final culinary frontier.
On a crisp fall day, and at the urging of my youngest brother, a chef who regularly butchers whole pigs with a chainsaw at Picco, his restaurant in Larkspur, California, I decided the time had finally come. I picked up two huge, organic, bone-in pork chops from my local Whole Foods, fried them up in a pan, and topped them with a simple sherry-shallot vinaigrette. I proffered a plate to my boyfriend, who had agreed to take this giant culinary leap with me, and we each took a tentative first bite.
“Oh my god!” I moaned as a pork orgasm went off in my mouth. “It’s like the fifth dimension of food.”
“How can pork be so wrong when it tastes so right?” murmured my boyfriend, huskily.
We both immediately dove back in for seconds—and then for thirds and fourths. Sure, it felt sinful and dirty but also exhilarating and astonishing, like the first time you raided your father’s liquor cabinet or slept with a Republican. We decided right then and there that if hell was filled with pork, then that was where we wanted to go. There was no turning back. Pork was to be on the menu. Permanently.
I have learned over the years that the key to guilt-free meat consumption is ensuring that you buy sustainable, quality product from a reliable source. I now procure milk-fed Heritage pork from Healthy Family Farms, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which is a group of local family-run farms supported by their local community. Not only are CSAs better for the animals, the farm workers, your health, and the health of the planet, they’re also a great way to support local businesses. To find a CSA near you, visit Local Harvest (www.localharvest.org/csa/) where you can search by your zip code.
While I’ve experimented with many pork recipes over the past year, “Organic Bone-In Pork Chops with Apple-Bacon ‘Slaw’” has got to be my favorite. Not only are apples and pork a classic pairing, but the addition of the bacon, which hearkens from that same “magical animal,” adds a wonderfully smoky, salty, fatty component to the dish. Have one taste, and I promise you’ll never abstain from pork again.
Organic Bone-In Pork Chops with Apple-Bacon “Slaw”
Serves 2 people
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Ingredients
for the pork chops:
2 organic bone-in pork chops
1 tablespoon fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme)
1 tablespoon organic olive oil
2 tablespoons organic grapeseed or canola oil
salt & pepper
for apple-bacon slaw:
1 granny smith apple, peeled and julienned
4 slices nitrate-free bacon, chopped
1 shallot, peeled and diced
1 teaspoon sherry vinegar
salt & pepper
Directions
To make the apple-bacon slaw, heat a pan over medium heat. Add the bacon and sauté for one minute. Then add the shallots and cook for another minute. Next, add the apple and cook until it begins to caramelize and the bacon is cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Add the sherry vinegar and season to taste with salt and pepper.Next, prepare the pork chops by rinsing them with cool water and patting them dry with paper towels. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper and rub them with the olive oil and thyme. Heat the grapeseed or canola oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat until it’s almost smoking. Add the pork chops, reduce the heat to medium, and cook, turning once, until they’re cooked through (a few minutes on each side). Remove from the pan and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.
To plate, place a pork chop on a plate and top with a generous portion of the apple-bacon slaw. Enjoy!
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
When buying meat, opt for local, organic product that’s both hormone and antibiotic free. This will reduce your exposure to harmful additives; help prevent the overuse of antibiotics in livestock, which contributes to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA (a.k.a. staph infection); and support local businesses.When buying bacon, look for nitrate-free bacon. Nitrates, which are used as a preservative in processed meats like hotdogs, sausages, and bacon, have been linked to an increased risk of cancer.
A final health hint? Cook with oils high in monounsaturated fat, the “healthy fat” that has been shown to improve good cholesterol and lower your risk of a heart attack. Some of these “healthy fats” include olive oil, canola oil, and grapeseed oil (the latter is my preference particularly for high-heat cooking).
................................JENNIFER DAWN ROGERS
A graduate of Harvard University and a former film-development executive, Jennifer cooks and writes in Los Angeles. In 2009, she launched her blog Domestic Divas, which focuses on local, organic cooking, and wine reviews. She is currently writing her first novel. e-mail: domesticdivasblog@gmail.com, blog: www.domesticdivasblog.com
Hee vs. Diva
"Kale Is the New Bacon"
BY JENNIFER MELEANA HEE
When our very own Domestic Diva submitted recipe options for Issue 2, I high-fived her double-pork recipe. Something about how it used two completely distinct forms of pig seemed really dirty and wrong, and I love dirty and wrong like Amish love clean linens. Let’s run the double pork, I said, but we’ll need to balance out the decomposing dead meat times two with something vibrant and soulless, like kale. I was kidding, but our Managing Editor hasn’t gotten the hang out my sense of humor yet, so here we are.
Much like the diva and her pork, my love affair with kale began recently. A few years ago, I heard that you could put greens such as kale, beet greens, and spinach in a smoothie and drink them, but as much of a health freak as I am, that seemed about as appealing to me as a SPAM smoothie. My sister, already a convert to the cult of the blended green, even bought me the book Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko, the green-smoothie bible, but when I opened the book, it read, “To my beloved husband Igor,” and thusly I let it sit at the bottom of my bookshelf for two years. Much like watching The Passion of the Christ while on Quaaludes or baking to Michael Buble, I didn’t know what I was missing. But as fate and a bad economy would have it, I began working for a natural-foods market and had to develop a menu for a detox program because the recession was making us all want a good cleanse, hoping a clean colon would give us a fresh start on life. Or at least a clean colon.
Forced to create kale smoothies—experimenting and sampling as I finalized recipes—I finally came to understand what all the hype was about, and I began to fanatically pour green smoothies down the throats of everyone who ever trusted me:
Mom on Kale Smoothie: It smells like the lawn.
Nephew on Kale Smoothie: Did this come out of your butt?
Boyfriend, lover of double pork, on Kale Smoothie: It’s like the Holy Spirit wearing a fruit roll-up thong and break dancing in your mouth.
Friends on Kale Smoothie: So fresh and so green, green!
Green-smoothie breakfast, green-smoothie happy hour, postdinner green-smoothie dessert—welcome the kale smoothie into your life, and soon you will be singing my praises. Preferably to the tune of a Lady Gaga and Mozart mashup.
Let’s talk ingredients:
Kale: A superfood with super anti-inflammatory and antioxidant power, containing phytonutrients that help protect against cancer. According to The World’s Healthiest Foods website (whfoods.org), kale’s phytonutrients also “initiate an intricate dance inside our cells in which gene response elements direct and balance the steps among dozens of detoxification enzyme partners, each performing its own protective role in perfect balance with the other dancers.” I don’t know about you, but I want this to happen inside my body. Studies show you only need less than one cup of kale a day to benefit from its anticancer effects. Drink a green smoothie a day and that one cup of kale goes down smooth like a shot of Patrón. With kale in it. Kale is also loaded with calcium, fiber, vitamins K, A, C, E, and vitamin awesome.
Almond Butter: Contains vitamin E, magnesium, fiber, and protein—the last being key for us non-pig eaters out there.
Blueberries: Two superfoods, one smoothie. Don’t ever tell us HWJ didn’t try to improve your mind and body. Blueberries, according to Web MD’s superfood list, help lower your risk of heart disease and cancer.
Agave Nectar or Local Honey: You only need a touch of one of these sweeteners and you can even do without, provided that your banana and blueberries are superripe. Local honey is always an ecofriendly alternative to refined sugar. Agave nectar is low on the glycemic index, which means it won’t cause a sugar high or crash. Recent health food buzz is that agave is evil, but until I hear from Oprah that it’s not one of her favorite things, then I’m still down with agave.
If you don’t own a Vitamix, don’t be ashamed. We can’t all be highly evolved and/or work in a natural-foods deli. However, if you have a blender that couldn’t puree a super ripe banana, consider not making green smoothies (or anything involving a blender) until you purchase a better one. And if you have to spend the money on a new blender, why not get one that could pulverize a femur in less than ten seconds? While a Vitamix turns kale into drinkable manna in seconds, crappy blenders will just chop and swirl it around and you’ll be stuck chewing on cud-like nastiness. If you own a semidecent blender, first add the juice and kale and blend that shit together until the kale is as pulverized as possible before adding the remaining ingredients. If you are a superior person and own a Vitamix, just throw everything in that bad girl, blend, and enjoy.
HWJ’s Morning-After-Double-Pork-Injection Smoothie
1 cup fruit juice (I use Mixed Berry or Concord Grape)
1 frozen banana
1 cup frozen organic blueberries
As much kale as you can handle (I use 2–3 huge leaves with the thickest part of the stem removed)
A gentle squirt of agave nectar or local honey
1 tablespoon almond butter
2 handfuls of iceFive Tips on How to Go from Smoothie Amateur to Smoothie Badass:
................................JENNIFER MELEANA HEE
Jennifer Meleana Hee is the editor of the Hawaii Women’s Journal, travel columnist for Chromatic Magazine, and has been published in Worldview Magazine and innov8. She is an avid rock climber, former Peace Corps Volunteer, vegan baker and chef extraordinaire at Kale's Natural Foods, and the proud owner of the only Bulgarian street dog in Hawaii. After graduating with a degree in Psychology from Harvard University, Jennifer spent two terms in Bulgaria in the Peace Corps working with Roma orphans. Upon returning to the United States, she continued her passion for writing on various blogs and publications. She currently resides in Honolulu, Hawaii. www.jennmeleana.com
