Sweet, savory, quick, delicious: Sweet Potato Sage Pasta with Chicken

A handful of fresh ingredients—sweet potato, sage, onion, garlic and chicken—make a sweet/savory pasta dish that’s weeknight quick. Recipe below.

With holiday excesses behind us, it’s good to get back to quick, simple, everyday cooking. This dish is one of my favorite examples of that kind of cooking, in that involves fresh ingredients, using up leftovers and unexpected synapses firing.

One thing I’ve noticed in writing about food for the past five years or so is that it makes me think about food, a lot. Sometimes it seems that everything I see or read or hear or smell or taste has the potential to inspire some cooking idea. Continue reading “Sweet, savory, quick, delicious: Sweet Potato Sage Pasta with Chicken”

Making the most of a great year for peaches: Spicy pork chops with balsamic peaches

Heat is optional, big flavor isn’t, when sweet, savory and a host of spices get together in Pork Chops with Balsamic Peaches. Recipe below, with some variations on the theme.

balsamic-peach-pork

Summer has barely begun and we’ve already had some stellar peaches. Fragrant, sweet, delicious, juice-dribbling-down-your-chin peaches. Nothing local yet, but just picked up at random supermarkets. To me, that’s a sign of more great peaches to come this season.

So when Hannah mentioned balsamic peach pickles in her comment on last week’s wedding food memories post, we were immediately looking for recipes. Not so much for making pickles from peaches [they do sound wonderful, thought, don’t they?], but for tempering the natural sweetness of peaches with balsamic vinegar’s tartness. And when Marion turned up a pork recipe, my search narrowed considerably.

There’s something about the natural savory/sweetness of pork that plays beautifully with fruit. And I’ve certainly exploited it here, making everything from roast pork tenderloin with cherries or with pears and onions to pork chops with dried plums and even bacon marmalade sandwiches on pumpernickel.

These quick and easy pork chops not only make use of pork’s affinity for sweet flavors—they also take advantage of how well it works with big-flavored spices. In this case, chili powder, cumin and cayenne pepper. Continue reading “Making the most of a great year for peaches: Spicy pork chops with balsamic peaches”