Pork and pineapple with chiles, garlic, and ginger

This dish was much more colorful
than this photo shows :-/

Double posting — Two articles in one day. I just wanted to get the bad taste of that last article out of your mouth and put this good taste in.

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Necessity is the mother of invention. I had two beautiful, thick, boneless pork chops. I had planned to make baked pork chops with scalloped potatoes, which is one of El Jefe's favorite gringo ways to prepare pork chops. But when I went to the fridge, I discovered that I only had three tiny little potatoes — not enough.

Looking around, I had chiles galore, half an onion, .... oh, and those beautiful piñas that were given to us in El Gancho, Honduras, along with some cocos and cacaos.

(More on this story later)

I love pineapple with pork and so does El Jefe so that decided it. Pork and pineapple with chiles, garlic, and homegrown fresh ginger. Yum, yum, yum! The pineapple was absolutely outstanding.

Playing it by ear, I used 1 1/2 large chiles, 1 carrot, 1/2 onion, and initially, half of the pineapple, cut into chunks.

I trimmed off as much fat from the pork chops as I could and then sliced them thinly. Truth be told, one pork chop would have been enough, but I already had sliced them both, and El Jefe never complains about an excess of meat.

I cooked the onion and carrot until the onion was tender, then pushed it to the sides of the large pan while I browned the thin slices of pork, half at a time, along with the minced garlic and ginger.

I only used a bit of salt on the pork and none on the veggies, because the soy sauce I planned to use is so salty.

When the pork was almost ready, I added the chiles, because we like them on the crunchy side. At the very end, I threw in the pineapple pieces just long enough to heat.

El Jefe came along as I was cooking, saying, "Oh, boy! That looks good! I can smell it all the way upstairs. But it doesn't look like enough pineapple." We stuffed delicious Honduran pineapple pieces into our mouths as we discussed how much pineapple to use and then ended up just dumping the whole bowlful in. It was a smallish pineapple.

For the sauce, I used 1/2 cup of homemade chicken broth (from my stash in the freezer), 1/4 cup of water, a big spoonful of cornstarch, a couple of big glugs of soy sauce, the pineapple juice that had accumulated, and a couple of heaping tablespoons of hoisin sauce. I poured the sauce over the meat and veggie concoction and cooked it until thickened. Served over Basmati rice, it made about 4 servings.

It's a keeper.