Spicy Ponzu Pork Chops in Blood Orange Sauce with Sunchoke Gratin

Looking like a brutal month at work so taking the opportunity to cook is a luxury mostly for the weekends right now. Anyway, decided to play with some flavors tonight. So I ran across some ponzu while grocery shopping, and some blood oranges, and the thought of something pungent, crisp and sweet began to take shape. I marinated some very thick pork chops for about 8 hours in the ponzu along with a couple crushed cloves of garlic, some powdered chinese ginger, and a half dozen sliced serrano chiles.

While shopping I also ran across some beautiful sunchokes. What a coup for shopping in land-locked Denver, which is semi-arid and has a short growing season so you really appreciate good produce ... wow, sunchokes and blood oranges on the same day! Granted I had to hit 3 different stores, but all in a days work.

I boiled the sunchokes for about 10 minutes and then let them cool. Meanwhile I squeezed and strained the juice from the blood oranges and added this to a simple syrup along with a little salt (3:2 juice to syrup). Then I buttered a small glass casserole, sliced the sunchokes about 1/8-1/4 inch thick, added a couple tablespoons butter and covered generously with parmigiano reggiano. The casserole then went into a 450F oven for 20 minutes (until the cheese is partially browned and crunchily encasing the mounds of sunchokes). The pork chops then went into a hot cast iron skillet with a generous amount of grapeseed oil to quickly sear them to a medium brown, then reducing the heat to medium low (cooking to a medium doneness). Finally, I broiled some whole organic scallions with a little olive oil, salt and fresh ground pepper for about 10 minutes (until starting to crisp). Plating the pork chops, I made an arc around these with a couple scallions to keep the blood orange glaze from going wayward on the plate.

All the flavors worked very well together for something I dreamed up while pushing a shopping cart around. The tart ponzu married well with the sweetness of the blood orange sauce, with a hint of heat from the serranos. The gratin was incredible, subtle, unique, very much enhancing while not altering the flavor of the sunchoke. And the crisp and moist scallions added some texture and herbaciousness to the meal, besides helping me keep the gratin dry on the plate. But the star of the meal was the sunchoke, were it not for the the other things drawing us in to eat a proper meal, I think my wife and I would have been gluttonously eating a bowl full of the succulent little buggers.