Daily Dinner Review - Pork Chops with Roasted Beet Medley

Not something that I'm going to do everyday, but I thought it would be good to reflect on the day's cooking once in a while!

Today was based around marinated pork chops done on the BBQ. Marinating pork is a bit of a misnomer though - most pork is tender enough without a marinade, and cooks too quickly to braise. A spice rub is usually much more common when it comes to bigger piece of the meat. Every one in a while it's good to add flavour to pork chops though, and whether baking, frying, or grilling , a quick marinade will serve that purpose well as long as you don't leave the chops in it too long.

Anyway, today's marinade was completely freestyle, based in part on previous flavour combinations I've used, and ingredients I think go together. It was a little Asian inspired, so I went with oyster sauce (possibly a bit too much, soy sauce (VH Soy in this case - nice and thick and perfect for the grill, especially my Yakitori recipe), lime zest (but no pith - too bitter), lime juice, and ground ginger. It ended up being fairly balanced and had a nice sweetness after being on the grill.

I sauteed some left over button mushrooms in butter to add an accent to the pork chops.

The main side dish was a roasted beet medley. This is something based on a Michael Smith idea that I've done before with just beets, as well as a full roasted veggie medley. Tonight it ended up being a Spanish onion, red beets, and golden beets in olive oil. Finished, of course, with feta cheese after it comes out of the oven. This has always been a favourite of ours, and provides a nicely balanced way of eating beets that doesn't involve too much prep work either.

The Golden beets were actually a really nice surprise. I'm sure I've used golden beets before, but it's been years so I wasn't sure what I was getting when I picked them up from the market the other today. This afternoon I cut into them, revealing gorgeous yellow flesh with redish tinges around the skin - very reminscient of a (firm) but ripe mango. They still had the characteristic swirls and whorls of a beet, but in a sunny, warm flesh. Unfortunately, they ended up greening/blackening in the oven...but were still very tasty!