Are you a huge fan of hoisin sauce? If you’ve ever eaten Peking Duck or Moo Shu Pork, it’s that delicious dark sauce that gets painted onto the pancakes.
I’ve always been a big fan–Frank and I often make pork roasts smothered in some mix of hoisin and whatever looks Asian in the fridge. So when bon appétit ran this recipe for pork chops with hoisin sauce that you make yourself, I was skeptical at first—why make it when the stuff in the jar is just delicious? But then I saw how easy it was and became interested.
DIY Hoisin Sauce
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- ⅓ cup soy sauce
- 3 tablespoons honey
- 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
- 2 tablespoons tahini
- 2 teaspoons Sriracha
- Salt to taste
Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Cook garlic, stirring often, until golden brown, about 2 minutes. Add soy sauce, honey, vinegar, tahini, and Sriracha and whisk until smooth. Cook, whisking occasionally, until mixture is thick and smooth, about 5 minutes. Taste and season with salt and pepper and let it cool. The sauce will keep about 4 days, covered, in the refrigerator (if you don’t eat it all first).
I used half the hoisin to marinate the pork chops overnight, but if you’re impatient, you can do them for as little as an hour. The way I’ve been cooking pork chops recently is really simple, it just requires “standing over a hot stove” but you can catch up on email etc… Click here for the recipe.
My verdict: We were both really surprised at the addition of tahini which I’ve never thought of as Chinese, but hey, they travelled.
This was really good and the hardest part was coaxing the honey from the container. They just don’t make those bears like they used to!
I’m about to make another batch to coat a pork loin that will get roasted (unless the weather warms up and we can grill). I forgot to do a taste test with our old standby, but there will be other chances. What do you think the results will be?
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We had some beautiful bok choy from the first CSA pickup of the season and a recipe from the 
Trim bok choy and separate dark green tops from white stems; thinly slice stems and slice tops into 2” strips.
My verdict: This was so good, Frank picked up another bunch of bok choy the week after! It’s a recipe that you can easily do variations of. The original recipe called for it to be served with rice noodles, which is probably great, but we had rice in the house so used that. In my quest to eat down the contents of the freezer (yes, again) I had some red curry lamb sausage that I removed from the casing and crumbled up instead of the ground pork. Hot Italian sausage would work well too.
While it’s still warm enough out to keep the grill going, you owe it to yourself to make these pork skewers. They’re easy to toss together and just require a little marinating time.
My verdict: 
Doesn’t everyone look forward to a new restaurant opening?
We started out sharing the house-smoked salmon with a big potato pancake (described on the menu as “hash brown”), a dollop of crème fraîche, a few fried capers and some micro-greens for décor. The salmon was delicious, silky with a nice punch of smoke and the hash brown was nicely crisped on the edges and creamy inside.
The house sent over a plate of rabbit pâté with bourbon-soaked cherries. It was terrific and the trio of pickled fennel, shallots and pickles were fun to mix and match with it (note to the squeamish, I can guarantee that you would never guess it was rabbit, so just order it and enjoy).
I’m a sucker for gnocchi, so I had to try the farmer’s cheese gnocchi with mushrooms, asparagus and a nettle pesto. It was a big, hearty serving of tender gnocchi. I’m not sure exactly what a nettle is supposed to taste like but the pesto was good and worked well with the mushrooms and asparagus.
Janet went with the pork chop special. It was a great tasting chop, perfectly seasoned and cooked and according to her “the best pork chop I ever ate!” The chickpea tart that came with it was interesting and unexpected. The only downside was that as much as pork fat is great, this particular chop was incredibly fatty, making the serving only about 6 meaty bites (and we wanted more—a good thing).
The service is young and friendly and if you’re there on a Friday night like we were, the crowd is eclectic with a lot of people looking like they just escaped BK. For summer, the restaurant opened up the outside space, so you can dine under the stars and toss a few boules in the court between courses.
