Pork, pineapple, and the weekend the weather turned
It was the weekend at the cottage when the weather finally turned.
Daylesford had been doing its autumn thing — the maples still going vivid red, the afternoons still warm enough for a jacket and not a coat. Then sometime a few weeks after Easter, the colour dulled in the trees and the wind started doing something different. You could feel winter sitting behind it.
It was the right weekend to cook something with chipotle heat.
I'd had Weber's chipotle pork and grilled pineapple tacos on my "to cook" list for months. The chicken quesadillas from the same recipe site had earned permanent rotation a while back — that was the never-fail crowd-pleaser. This one I wasn't sure about. Pork chops from Coles, fresh pineapple, eight minutes on the Q. Could it really be that simple?
It could. And it's a different beast to the quesadillas — a bit more grown-up, a bit more heat, a bit more for-the-two-of-you on a Saturday night.
The hero is the marinade and the char on the pineapple. Fifteen minutes for the pork to soak while the Q preheats. Four minutes a side for the chops, four minutes a side for the pineapple rings, all on at the same time. The whole cook is under half an hour from cold grill to plate.
It's now on the fortnightly rotation. Sometimes as the full taco production with the corn tortillas and the purple cabbage and the sour cream. More often, on a weeknight, just the pork and pineapple with rice and broccoli — same flavour, less assembly. The chipotle and the char carry it either way.
The one thing I'd do differently next time: bring fresh red chilli (which I left at home...). The marinade's got plenty of warmth, but a few thin slices of fresh would lift the whole plate.
I wrote up the full cook this week — the marinade timing, the four-by-four method, the supermarket-vs-butcher question, and why I think this one's earned its spot.
See you next Friday.
— Robert