Pork and Black Beans

This is the blah time of year, here in New York…  Winter is dragging on, there are a few buds and shoots promising Spring, but nothing has actually bloomed yet, and we’re tired of being cold.

And if you like local vegetables, as I do, we’re running out. Greens are long gone, even the root vegetables are fading, and we’re really ready for the spring greens – which we won’t see here for another month!

Running out was the operative phrase. I was running out of everything, the other day – for various reasons I hadn’t gotten to the supermarket when I planned to. I checked the freezer, and picked up a cabbage at the convenience store, and… put dinner together.

I’m even out of my frozen hot peppers… but I have a jar of chili garlic sauce. There are several commercial versions, one by the same company which makes the currently better known sriracha. (I was confused when sriracha became trendy, because I also had a jar, not bottle, with the rooster, but the description seemed different… this is hotter, and not sweet at all. I prefer it.) I first found it in a Korean market in Jersey City, and have been using it to add spark to sautes and sauces ever since – I just scoop a little into the oil in the pan when I saute onion. 

I had a boneless loin pork chop, and a container of black beans I’d already cooked. And onions, and the cabbage.

I chopped half an onion, sauteed it, added a dab of the chili garlic sauce. Meanwhile, I trimmed and cut up the pork chop. Once the onion was golden, I added the pork, and stirred it around to brown it lightly. Then I chopped the cabbage, and added it. Once everything was stirred around, I poured in about half a cup of chicken broth – could use water, could use any other broth…  I let that come to a boil, reduced it to a simmer, and covered it – let it cook about 5 minutes, until the cabbage was softening.

Then I added the black beans. I’d cooked a whole pound of them in the slow cooker earlier in the week, used some, put the rest in the fridge for later use. Used about 2 cups, here. Let everything simmer another 5-10 minutes (I confess, I didn’t note the time, I was getting everything else ready) and served the whole mixture over cooked brown rice.

Fast, basic, simple… The ingredients aren’t exciting, but they are good themselves, and they’re easy to have on hand. The meal was good. No real recipe – it isn’t so much a recipe as a pattern for the sort of meal I pull together.