one filipino dish a week

Friday night is a moment to celebrate every week. The Girl and I take a moment each Friday to celebrate and reflect on the triumphs and challenges of the week over a meal either at home or at a restaurant. It doesn’t have to be anything grand just a meal together to savor the moments of the past week and to just enjoy each other’s company. This week was dinner in and it was my turn to make dinner. Being the busy bees that we are there isn’t much time to make dinner even on a Friday. This meal that I whipped up doesn’t take much time at all.

Pork Chop
2-4 center cut pork chops (about 0.5 to 1 inch thick)
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup white sugar
3 tbsp brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp olive oil

In a 1 gallon ziploc plastic bag fill it 3/4 with water and dissolve the kosher salt and white sugar. Add the pork chops and brine for 1 hour. Brining the pork chops make a tremendous difference and makes the pork chops juicy. Pork in the US has gotten leaner over the last 20 years and with less fat it makes tougher pork.

After brining, pat dry each of the pork chops with a paper towel. On one side of each of the pork chops, coat with brown sugar. With the sugar side down, place the chops in a cold pan. Drizzle a little olive oil over the chops. Heat up the pan and within a couple of minutes the pork chops should start to sizzle. Once browned (about 5-7 minutes) turn the chops over and put the heat on low and cover. Cook the chops until it reads 150 degrees in an instant read thermometer. Let it rest covered for about 5 minutes before serving.

Garlic Fried Rice
lots of garlic minced
1 scallion chopped 1 inch long
left over white rice
salt to taste

Garlic fried rice is the perfect way to jazz up leftover rice. The key is to have a generous amount of garlic. Simply saute the garlic until light brown add the rice. Salt to taste. Don’t forget to salt! I’ve had lots of garlic rice that just lacks seasoning. Garnish with scallions.

What’s a meal without a drink? To round out this Friday night affair we had a bottle of Albarino, which is a white wine from Spain. I’ve become big fan of Albarino all thanks to Gary Vaynerchuk. I just like how this wine pairs up with a lot of different food and not to mention Filipino food. Lastly, Albarino is pretty reasonably priced so I can’t complain about that.

All in all it was another successful Friday night dinner. And I hope you take some time this week to spend a few minutes with someone you love over a good meal.

Eat Filipino Food!