Tonight I had a delicious creative adventure in my kitchen. To be honest, that’s where most of my creativity is manifesting itself these days (hmm, is someone trying to tell me something here?). So far though I’m no chef, and I know my techniques would get me laughed out of most of my favorite kitchens. Seriously, I am constantly having aha moments when I watch foodie videos. I recently watched a video that showed how to quickly strip kale off the stalk by sliding your hand down it and thought wow, why couldn’t I think of that instead of wasting my precious free time meticulously hand plucking each leaf? I know I have much to learn in the kitchen, but I enjoy coming up with new flavorful dishes. Lately I’ve been playing around with mangoes, having been inspired by this brilliant recipe for Mango Blueberry Quinoa Salad.
Since it’s a little early for basil to be growing in my backyard, I ended up buying a big bag of the herb that needed to be used up and I loved the mango/basil flavor combo. Thus the Mango Basil Pork dish was created!
I’m a fly by the seat of my pants kinda cook in the kitchen, which means when I make up a new dish, sometimes it will never be the same again. I’ve decided I need to get better about writing things down while my path to creation is still fresh in my mind. I’ll just say that if you’re the kind of cook who craves exact measurements from your recipes, you should probably look elsewhere.
Ingredients:
-1 pound of pork stew meet
-1 meyer lemon + zest of 1 half of lemon
-mango nectar (I used Trader Joe’s)
-1 garlic clove, diced
-About 10 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
-salt & pepper to taste
-1 or 2 dribbles of extra virgin olive oil
-1 small red onion
-2 T tapioca flour
-Half a bag of frozen mango chunks (Trader Joe’s)
Marinate 1 pound of pork stew meat in the following (I let this sit for about 5 hours):
-Juice of 1 meyer lemon + zest of half
-Mango Nectar, eyeballing it I’d say I had about a half and half lemon/mango mix
-garlic
-fresh basil
-salt & pepper to taste (I should note here that my pepper grinder has lavender mixed in with the pepper, so I got a bit of lavender in there as well)
-a dribble or two of olive oil
-Pinch of Cumin
-1-2 dashes of chili powder
(Add sautéed chili peppers, habaneros or Thai hot peppers, depending on your spiciness threshold and taste for peppers)
Once the pork is sufficiently marinated, begin cooking. If one of the ingredients is done before the others, that’s fine, just cover to keep warm. You’ll be combining everything in the end anyway.
-First take the small red onion and cut lengthwise into about 1 inch strips, caramelize these in a separate pan
-Next, heat some more olive oil in pan and place pieces of pork in, browning on all sides
-Place marinade only in separate sauce pan, and heat up (here I added in the rest of my Mango Nectar from the bottle (I’m guessing it was about 1/2 – 3/4 of a cup). Once this is simmering, gradually whisk in about 2 tablespoons of tapioca flour to thicken. Next add in half a bag of frozen mango from Trader Joe’s.
Once pork is cooked, add onions and mango sauce all together over low heat. At this point I tasted to see what might be needed. My conclusion was it needed some spiciness to it and then I knew I should have trusted my previous instincts in the grocery store to get some chili peppers (and maybe even some habaneros!). I shied away from my instincts. Never shy away! So I ended up adding a pinch of cumin and a couple dashes of chili powder instead. Next time I will be spicin’ it up big time!































