Strawberry-Cardamom Pork Chop and Accompaniments

I returned home from Saturday’s trip to the the Portland Farmer’s Market with a bounty of vegetables and a whole flat of strawberries to work with. My cooking style is based on mixing local seasonal ingredients with Indian flavors and spices and the strawberries definitely posed a challenge.  There’s a passage  in the excellent book The Flavor Bible about not using strawberries to thicken a curry that I wholeheartedly agree with but I felt like there must still be someway to blend spices with the  strawberries that would complement their flavor without overpowering it. My initial thought was ginger and lemon grass which I ended up not going with but still want to play with in the form form of a strawberry chutney.  According to The Flavor Bible, cardamom pairs well with strawberries so I decided to go with this. My other market ingredients on hand were some Romano beans and turnips and to this I added a few Carlton Farms pork chops from my local grocer.

The strawberries where blended together with some whole milk yogurt and a bit of cardamom in which I marinated the pork chops for a day. These were then pan fried in some oil until tender and the marinade was reduced down to a very thick sauce that was dolloped onto the plate to dip the pork into as it was eaten. The turnips were first boiled and mashed. While they drained (they have a high moisture content), I fried  some fennel seeds and cinnamon in a bit of butter to which I then added the mashed turnips and a bit of cream to finish them off. For the Romano beans I first fried some minced ginger in a bit of oil and then added the beans and some water for braising them until tender but still having a bite. I set the beans aside and added some lemon to the braising liquid and let this reduce down to a nice thick ginger-lemon sauce that mixed back with the beans.

The flavor and texture combinations were  delectable though I do think I overdid it a bit on the cardamom.  As a whole plated meal, this dish contains a number of spices that would usually mixed together into a masala of some sort that would be used to flavor a curry dish, giving it a deep flavor and heaviness. Given that it is currently summer and rather hot, I am getting away from heavy dishes and leaning towards lighter flavors that pop in the mouth and these dishes each do that  individually, in some manner deconstructing the curry flavors back into individual spices that can be enjoyed without overpowering the palate.