Pork Chops

My favorite foodie type show is Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservation. I really like it when he travels to other countries and tries there “fast food”. Places like the food court in Singapore, Mexico, or Vietnam where one cook makes one dish. I started thinking about Dallas and its diversity. So I want to start my own little tour of my city and all it has to offer. My operating budget is a little smaller so I started at a place I eat almost every week. Saint Peter Catholic church in Dallas is an all Vietnamese parish. Every week volunteers make a small three item menu and it is delicious. I have volunteered to man the grill from 7 to 9 am. They usually serve one soup and the staple of grilled pork chops and rice. I learned a valuable cooking lesson on that grill.

The first morning it was manned by an elderly man and he was grilling up a storm. There must have been over 200 pork chops he had to get through and welcomed a new set of hands. His main concern was making sure the chop was thoroughly cooked and no one would die from his grilling. He kept muttering “got to make sure it is cooked through.” I for one hate dried pork chops so I kept sneaking some of the not so overcooked ones out to the done tray. He would catch me and mutter it was not done and put it back on the grill. I started feeling like Oscar Schindler trying to save as many pork chops as I could. I forgot to mention that these were really thin pork chops with a liberal dose of marinade. He was a good host though telling me stories of when he was a government official in Saigon and the time he spent in a reeducation camp. The grill is outside the kitchen and he told me stories of other “helpers” that could not handle the heat or cold depending on the weather. We had a good time and I asked him why he was so worried about it being cooked and then I got my answer. The door from the kitchen opened and a stern looking woman came out to the grill area. Not a word to the man or myself she just looked at the chops picked a small piece off one nodded her head and walked back to the kitchen. From then on I made sure every pork chop was cooked thoroughly.

By the way the chops tasted great when I had them after Mass. I think what I forgot is that because it was a thin chop, the marinade was really important. The marinade of garlic, oyster sauce, onions, and fish sauce really brought a great flavor to the chops. The garnishes on the plate also enhanced the humble thin chop, rice with sweet fish sauce, cucumbers, tomatoes, julienne carrots and peppers. This recipe was developed on the streets of Vietnam with just a charcoal grill and rice in a bamboo steamer as the kitchen. The fresh vegetables were prepped just before serving. Patrons ate on small stools near the portable restaurant. There was no refrigeration the owners sold till there was nothing left. The dryness was the right texture to the dish with a smoky flavor from the fat dripping on to the charcoal. This dish was perfectly recreated thousands of miles away for kids who could taste a little bit of the country their parents loved and left.