Pork ‘n Beans

My labmate, Danielle, and I are really good at wasting time by talking about completely random crap. One of our favorite topics, by far, is food. Like me, she will eat the hell out of anything involving cheese, which is undoubtedly the world’s most magical food. Now that we’re both trying to eat healthy(er) – or at least most of the time – cheese is a little less prevalent in our conversations. The other day she was telling me about a delicious dish that I just HAD to try – escarole and white beans. Since her recipe only instructed me to use “a shit-ton of garlic”, some kind of wilty green vegetable, and white beans, I made my own variation. I served this with a grilled, bone-in pork chop and sweet potato fries dusted with chipotle powder (not homemade) for one helluva meal.

What You’ll Need:

Wilty Green Vegetable and White Beans

• 1 bag or 1 large bunch of fresh escarole or spinach – traditionally this is made with escarole, but I’m contrary and I like spinach better
• 1 can cannellini (white) beans, NOT drained
• A shit-ton of garlic (about 12 cloves), peeled and roughly chopped
• Copious amounts of black  pepper
• Pinch of kosher salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Grilled Pork Chop

• 2 large, bone-in pork chops (appx. 5 oz. each)
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Kosher salt
• A pinch of the following spices:
  • Chipotle powder
  • Cayenne pepper
  • Smoked paprika
  • Garlic powder

What To Do:

Heat your grill until is is nice and smoking hot.

While it’s preheating, lightly dust both sides of your pork chop with the chipotle powder, paprika, cayenne, and garlic powder. Generously cover both sides with salt and pepper. Grill the pork chop for about 5 minutes per side. Don’t make the mistake of repeatedly flipping it – you want to get a nice sear on both sides!

After flipping your pork chops to cook on the second side, heat a large sauté pan and the olive oil on medium heat until the oil gets hot. Add your shit-ton of garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes, or until the garlic starts to turn golden brown. My shit-ton of garlic was approximately this much, and in this case “roughly chopped” meant hacked into large hunks:

While the garlic is simmering away, thoroughly rinse and drain your spinach, escarole, kale, collard greens, or whatever wilty vegetable you have chosen. After shaking off most of the water, dump the contents into the pan and cover.

After a minute or two, stir the vegetables so that the already wilted leaves get moved to the top of the pan.

By now, the pork chops should be cooked. Remove them from the grill when they are just barely pink on the inside, and let them rest while the veggies finish cooking. This will ensure they are fully cooked by the time you sit down to eat, but will remain most and avoid that dried cardboard texture poorly cooked pork chops can have.

Once most of the leaves are wilted, dump in the entire can of cannellini beans, goo and all. Cook for another 2-3 minutes, or until the beans get hot. By this point, all of the veggies will be cooked down and the bean goo will have condensed into a nice thick sauce that coats the leaves.

Liberally douse the entire pan with freshly ground black pepper; mix, then repeat the step. It may seem like a lot of pepper, but it helps jazz up what could otherwise be fairly bland.

Side Note: At this point, the pork chops have rested for a few minutes and are perfectly cooked. Even though the USDA just changed their guidelines on how to properly cook pork, I still prefer my pig to be a uniform white color without any hints of pink (blame it on my many, many hours spent working with foodborne pathogenic bacteria).

Like I said earlier, this is one helluva meal. The sweet potato fries with chipotle seasoning are from the Alexia brand, which I think are the best prepackaged french fry option out there, both in terms of healthfulness and flavor. As for the home cooked items, the pork literally exploded with flavor. I know a lot of people think pork can be boring and tasteless, but this was tender, juicy, and absolutely delicious. The cayenne and chipotle blended well for a punch of heat that was by no means overpowering, but was definitely addictive. I kept wishing there was more meat left for me to eat. The veggies were, in a word, amazeballs. Even though they are so incredibly simple to make, I couldn’t get enough of them. The addition of the white beans plus the ridiculously huge amount of garlic is enough to make any spinach hater happy, but I thought they only helped to make the spinach shine. I seriously could have eaten the entire batch of veggies alone for my meal and been perfectly happy, but then again, I am the kid who announced to her sixth grade class that my favorite food was broccoli. (Yes, that was met with the jeers and derision you would expect.) I can’t recommend this entire meal highly enough – it’s fast, super easy, and it tastes like you put so much more effort into it than you really did! And just to top it all off – it will get you pretty darned close to what the new “healthy meal” is supposed to look like. Enjoy!