It's All Greek-ish to Me

     The horrible truth is that I hadn't even finished washing all of the dishes from yesterday's Yucatán barbecue when my daughter and I began preparing tonight's dinner. I realized that a big part of my dirty dish issue is that I don't ask for help. To remedy that, I asked my 13-year-old son to hand wash some of the remaining dirty dishes while my daughter and I started cooking.
     Earlier in the day, I showed my 10-year-old daughter several barbecue dinner ideas but she chose the first entree I showed her and never wavered: Peach-Mustard Pork Chops from the June issue of Food Network Magazine (this is definitely turning out to be a Food Network weekend).

As I scanned through some possible salad recipe, I decided that a Greek Salad (in this case, one from Ina Garten that I found on www.foodnetwork.com) would pair nicely with the pork chops.

Even though the pork recipe wasn't Greek, I decided to stick with the Greek theme for the rest of the meal and settled on grilled pita triangles served with tzatziki for dipping as our side/bread dish.
     Just as my daughter and I were about to head out and run an errand at 3:00pm, I (thankfully!) decided that I'd better look over my recipes more closely. Phew! Disaster averted. The pork chops needed to marinate in a spice rub for at least four hours before grilling. We quickly threw together a mixture of light brown sugar, paprika, coriander, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. My daughter then, per the recipe, pricked the pork chops several times, on both sides, with a knife. She really enjoyed this particular task!

Instead of laying the bone-in pork chops in a baking dish with the rub, I chose to put them in one of my favorite gallon Ziploc freezer bags along with the rub.

Not only does this save me from cleaning yet another dish, it also frees up much-needed room in my fridge and works really well. It is very easy to press the rub into both sides of each pork chop in this fashion.
     Fast forward four hours later: We took the meat out of the fridge 30 minutes before they were to be grilled. As my daughter prepared the ingredients for the Greek Salad, I began making the peach-mustard sauce for the pork. I was amazed by her slicing and dicing skills.

My daughter chopped up a cucumber, a red bell pepper, and a yellow bell pepper. She sliced an onion and cut an entire pint of grape tomatoes into halves. She added a 1/2 pound of feta cheese to the vegetables and then got to work on the vinaigrette.

For the vinaigrette, my daughter only needed some help mincing the garlic. By herself, she poured in the oregano, dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, olive oil, kosher salt, and freshly ground black pepper. I was impressed!
     The peach-mustard sauce, to be used in basting the pork chops as well as a sauce to be served with them when they were finished grilling, was fairly simple: I put apple cider vinegar, peach preserves, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard powder in a saucepan. I then added several cloves of "smashed" garlic. I smashed the garlic with the side of my kitchen knife - something I've seen done on TV (!) - but I'm sure if that was the correct thing to do for this recipe.

The recipe did not mention straining out the garlic before using the sauce but it didn't make sense to serve giant blobs of smashed garlic up to my family, either. And if they were in the basting sauce, the blobs would just fall through the grate. In the end, I threw them out (compost!) before using the sauce.
     The crowning touch on the entree were the grilled peaches. I simply cut them in half and pitted them and my daughter brushed them with some vegetable oil.
     My husband began his part in this meal by quickly grilling the pita bread triangles. When they were finished, we enjoyed dipping the warm bread in a pre-made tzatziki sauce purchased from and made by our local gourmet grocery store as the meat was being cooked.

My husband then began grilling the pork chops. This was a bit of a process as it involved grilling the meat for short periods of time before flipping it, basting it with the sauce, closing the grill lid, opening the grill lid, flipping the meat, basting it some more, and so forth. Once the meat was finished, my husband set it on a platter to rest for five minutes while he grilled the peaches on both sides. My daughter and I tossed the salad (note: of course, as a Greek salad, it should have had black olives. However, the only person in my family who likes olives is my husband so we left them out) and she brought it to our outside dining table.

My husband brought over the platter of pork chops and the peaches. I brought out two bowls of peach-mustard sauce: one with red pepper flakes added for my husband to use.

     The warm pita bread was too delicious so my kids front-loaded on a lot of it and didn't leave a lot of room left for the rest of the meal. All of us loved the pork chops, although my son did not use the sauce on his. My daughter had trouble cutting the pork around the bone so I had to help her (something I had not had to do in quite some time!). My son, as usual, did not eat the salad but my husband thought it was amazing.

The meal was served on blue plates and platters to go with my Greek-ish theme. The incredible, warm evening completed the feeling of being on a Greek-ish island.

     Dirty Dish Count: Three measuring spoons, three measuring cups, one large mixing bowl, one saucepan, one garlic peeling tube-thingy, one garlic mincer, two cutting boards, one kitchen knife, two small bowls, one whisk, one bread knife, one spoon, one small plate, one platter, and one basting brush.
     Although I have not loved having so many dishes to clean these past two nights, I have really enjoyed our grilled food as well as eating it outside in our backyard. I need to work on incorporating more grilled dishes into our weekday meals as well. Wish me luck!