Roasted Pork Chops and Rioja

I love pork, this should come as no surprise to anyone with even a passing interest in the blog, I love it cured, I love it slow cooked, I love it just about every way there is. As a child I used to look forward to dinner if Mom was pan frying pork chops, the chops would end up crispy on the outside and sweet and juicy inside with just the right fat quotient to make you want to lick your lips after finishing off the chops.

Sadly in the 1990s the agro industry decided that pork was too fat and had to be leaner and healthier, which was all well and good except that it no longer tasted like pork, it became sort of tougher chicken breast. The modern home cook has to either take out a second mortgage to buy "heirloom" pork or brine their chops to give them a fighting chance .

Brining adds moisture and allows you to cook leaner cuts at high heat without drying out the meat and is simply marinating the meat in a salt water and sugar solution for a period of time. The simplest brine uses 1/2 cup of kosher salt, 1/2 cup of sugar and a litre of hot water, dissolve the sugar and salt in the water, cool the brine and then place the chops in a large freezer bag, pour the brine over, seal and refrigerate . The longer you brine the more moisture the meat will absorb, I generally try to brine pork chops for six to eight hours, once you take the chops out of the brine wipe them dry and throw out the brining liquid. The brining liquid will  contain blood and proteins from the meat and is not safe to reuse . The only downside to brining is that if you have a low tolerance to salt then brining is not for you.

Once we have our brined chops, I prefer bone in loin chops, ready its time for seasoning, on Monday night I just used salt, not much as they absorb salt from the brine, pepper, garlic and fresh rosemary. Sear the chops at high heat for a minute or so on each side in olive oil/butter mix for colour and then pop them in a 400 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes, the cooking time is going to vary depending on the thickness of the chops and how you like your chops done. I prefer medium so I check them at the 15 minute mark with an instant read meat thermometer, once the chops are 145 degrees they can come out of the oven and rest for 3-5 minutes while you deglaze the pan with some stock, or white wine, "montee au beurre" and then pour the reduction over the chops. Served with "smashed potatoes" and green veg it was as close as I can get to those lip smacking chops of my youth, it would have been even better had I remembered to saute the fresh cremini mushrooms I bought and add them to the pan sauce but they were delicious nonetheless.

With the chops I served a lovely Rioja that, for some bizarre reason, the BCLDB had discounted. I was out at the Mother Store on Sunday and spotted a price reduction tag on a few notable wines, not just the $1 or $2 discounts that happen monthly but the 30% off we want to get this off the shelves reductions that happen rarely. These reductions are always a crap shoot as often the wines are too old, or were just purchasing mistakes to begin with but on Sunday I noticed that the 2008 Crianza Glorioso from Bodegas Palacios in the Rioja was discounted from $17.99 down to $12.59. I am familiar with this wine, it was a staple on many of the wine lists I used to write, and since it was only 2008 and thus unlikely to be over the hill I grabbed the five bottles on the shelf, along with some other sundry bargains and headed home.

By definition a crianza wine will have spent one year in oak, in Glorioso's case new French oak, and the result is a smooth polished wine with lots of finesse. This wine is made in a more New World fruit forward style but still has lots of spice box, tar and tannins to balance the black currant, raspberry fruit flavours, the new oak gives a touch of vanilla and while the finish was not quite as long as it could have been overall the wine would have been good value at the original price and was an absolute steal at $12.50. I only wish I'd been able to find more but searches of three other stores on Tuesday were fruitless, still it was nice to enjoy a very good wine for a very reasonable price, we'll drink up the others in short notice as well I'm sure.

Parson's Paddock Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 - another disappointing Australian Red

I really should know better by now, after being almost consistently disappointed in "entry level" Australian red wines for the past five years I have pretty much stopped trying but hope springs eternal so last week I grabbed a bottle of Parson's Paddock Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 to give it a go with some flank steak. My rationale was that the spice and aromatics in the flank rub would marry well with what I assumed would be a fruity, full flavoured red wine and maybe get the Ausssies off the schneid in the under $15 wine value category that they used to dominate.

For over a decade from the early 1990s on Australia could be counted on for full throttle, big fruit, big flavour reds that could be had in the $11-$13 range, it was easy but then the Aussies started to have too much juice on their hands and the wine world began to be corrupted by the "all fruit all the time" palate of Robert Parker and the penny dropped in Oz. All of a sudden we were deluged with sweet fruit, no acid, unmatchable with food wines often named after animals, a pretty sure method for not selecting a wine I might add . At the same time the vignerons in Chile started to pick up their game and add some complexity to their inexpensive reds. The Argentinians started stocking the international shelves with muscular Malbecs that kicked the crap out of the Aussie fruit bombs, toss in a welcome modernization of the Spanish wine industry and I pretty much stopped buying Australian reds in the $15 range, a policy I'm probably going back to after this most recent disappointment.

The Parson's Paddock is dark purple in colour, with just a hint of crimson around the rim, the nose is full of blackfruits, sweet vanilla and mocha and the mocha-berry combo continues in the taste, which is fine for Cabernet but then it just stops. There is virtually no acidity to balance the wine and so the overall sensation is one of sweet fruit with no counterpoint, so the wine has no chance against the bold flavour of grilled meat, which should be the perfect foil for young Cabernet Sauvignon.

The bottom line is a generic Australian red, with lots of fruit but virtually nothing else to recommend it, there are much better alternatives from Spain, Argentina and Chile in this price range, or lower, so I simply cannot recommend this wine.

Some Sports Observations

I know some of my readers don't care about the "sports" posts but it's my blog so they are going to keep happening once in a while.

This is the best time of the year for me sports wise, MLB is heading into the playoffs, the NFL and US college football are getting underway and, normally, the NHL would be just around the corner . Of course the likelihood of the NHL returning any day son isn't looking good with the owners having decided that giving the talent 57% of the revenue is a bad business model, even though they made it up themselves, and the players, like most people, aren't willing to relinquish things they already have so I think this one is going to drag on for awhile. I don't think the entire season will be lost, as happened in 2004-05, but a shortened season ala the 1994-95 lockout is a pretty likely scenario.

In the NFL the season opened this week, after avoiding their own potential work stoppage in 2011, and my beloved Redskins posted a marvelous first week result behind their wonderkind rookie QB Robert Griffin III, or RG3 as he is known. Griffin cost Washington three first round picks, and a second round pick, to end their quarterback carousel and at least yesterday he was worth it leading the 'Skins past the Saints, in New Orleans, and putting 40 points on the board. Only time will tell but right now it looks like the Washington quarterback situation is solved, now about that pass defense.

The NFL labour struggles aren't over however, while the teams and players have worked out their differences the league has not come to terms with the officials leading to week one games being refereed by replacement officials who apparently weren't as bad as expected. The situation did lead to the sports quote of the week however as after the opening game NY Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka was quoted as saying : "I haven't been held this much since I was a baby"

In baseball the pennant race in the American League East is as tight as Uncle Donnie's wallet when it's time to buy a round of drinks, with the Evil Empire holding a slim one game lead on the over achieving Baltimore Orioles. Baltimore are defying all odds in that they are 16 games over .500 while having scored less runs than their opposition, no other team in MLB with a negative run differential is above .500 yet there are the O's at 78-62 making life extremely uncomfortable for the suddenly struggling Yankees. I grew up a Yankees fan, and will likely always be one, but I have a bad feeling about this year, oh well it could be worse, I could be cheering for the last place Boston Red Sox (man it feels good to write that) .

The other positive I have as a Yankees fan is watching their captain, #2, Derek Sanderson Jeter play. Jeter  might possibly manage to be the most under rated and most over rated player of all time. You will still find people argue that Jeter is not a Hall of Famer despite that fact that, barring a season ending injury or a meteor hitting earth, sometime this week Jeter will pass Willie Mays in career hits. Just roll that around in your head, Mays is generally regarded as one of the ten greatest players ever to play the game and yet Jeter trails him by only four hits. In fact at age 38 Jeter currently leads the American League in hits and will move into the top 10 all time early next season, yet you will still find people who think he's not a Hall of Famer, of course most of them are Massholes but still . On the other hand Jeter has no good reason to have five Gold Glove Awards in his trophy case, but after getting jobbed in the 2006 MVP voting I'm guessing Jeter figures he might as well keep the Gold Gloves .

Anyway, I hope the Yankees make the post season. I hope the Redskins continue to play well. I hope the Red Sox continue to lose until the end of time and I really hope the NHL owners and players come to their senses and realize that another work stoppage will be the end of the league .