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Greetings Sunday Gravy heads! Welcome back.

Can you just feel something a little different in the air? A little approaching anticipation? Our long national nightmare – well one of them anyway – is damn near over. It’s almost FOOTBALL TIME!

Fuck yes! Just one more week of (really) crappy preseason games and then this shit gets REAL. Just to prolong the agony for me personally I have to wait an additional day for the season to open since my boys don’t play until Monday night. Did I take the day off from work that day to make it two consecutive 3 day weekends? Bet your ass I did!

One thing that hasn’t changed though, it’s still fucking summertime. Summer decided to be an asshole again, hopefully for the last time, this weekend where we have forecast highs of 90 plus 80% humidity! Wee! On the beach yet!

Fuck that shit!

Guess I’m gonna crank up the AC for one last stretch. I’m also not turning on the fucking stove.

Hell no! It’s grilling time!

You regular readers know that I am no stranger to grilling things. Many things. Grilling was the very first cooking technique that I learned. My parents would both let me man the grill back when I was just a teenager. I’m pretty sure I was around 14 when I started grilling and I haven’t stopped since. That means that I’ve been grilling for over…

A really fucking long time.

Rather than link to the many many grilled items I’ve covered in the past I’ll just link to my critically acclaimed 4th of July post since I already linked to those recipes there.

You regulars also know that I love pork chops. Goddamn do I love me some pig.

Remember this baby?

That’s the braised country style ribs from around Easter. Those gratin potatoes will be made about 6 times during the NFL season. Fuck this was tasty.

These are my world famous cumin rubbed pork chops.

Instructions and recipe here.

And if you go way, way, way the fuck back to my 5th Sunday Gravy post ever, July of 2015, you will find these two beauties.

That’s a brined, barbecue chop and a spicy Korean style grilled pork chop with gochujang.

So yeah. Give me the chance and I will come up with a new recipe for some delicious, delicious pork chops.

So I did.

We talk a lot about inspiration here at Sunday Gravy headquarters and the inspiration for this one was right there staring me in the face.

That’s my herb garden. The empty spot on the left was where my oregano grew – and did it’s purpose well – next to that are fresh chives, my exploding basil plant and then the rosemary plant. As I watered these I thought “Goddamn. That’s a lot of basil. I should cook something with that.”

And inspiration struck.

Now what uses a shitload of basil, has just a few ingredients, is super easy to make and is super magically fucking delicious?

PESTO!

You know we’ve messed around with pesto in this space before. Here’s one of my favorite Sunday Gravy meals ever. No shit, this was spectacular. Homemade pesto and gnocchi.

Oh my goodness!

For today’s recipe I figured we would focus on a couple of easy cooking recipe disciplines that can be used in numerous applications and ways. Pesto is the first and we’re also going to roast some garlic to make roasted garlic mashed potatoes. Then the grilling thing.

Grilled pesto marinated pork chops and roasted garlic mashed potatoes!

Pesto first. Here’s what you need. Besides a food processor, you will want to use that.

That’s clockwise from top olive oil (2/3 cup), black pepper (some grinds to taste), 2-3 cloves of garlic, 1/3 cup of toasted pine nuts, 1-2 (tightly packed) cups of fresh basil and that’s a half cup of fresh parmigiano-reggiano cheese in the middle.

Take out your trusty food processor – you can do this in a blender too it just takes a little longer – and add in the basil, the garlic and the pine nuts. Pulse a few times to mix. Scrape down the sides of the processor work bowl and put that slow-drizzle oil trickle thingy on the feed tube. Turn the food processor onto the low setting, and add the olive oil into the feed tube. Let it mix for a minute or so until everything is incorporated.

Scrape the pesto out of the food processor and season with salt and pepper. Finally add in the grated cheese and mix with a spoon.

You’ve got pesto!

Next we are going to get a trusty one gallon ziptop bag and place the pork chops into it. I also marinated a couple of chicken breasts too. Add in most of the pesto reserving some to baste while grilling.

Refrigerate overnight.

Now let’s roast us some garlic. Ever had roasted garlic? Why not? It’s easy as shit to make and is goddamn glorious to use. I’ve used roasted garlic to simply spread on some crusty bread. Mix with some mayo and create an aioli out of it. Put it in soups or stews or just pop one of those roasted garlic cloves directly in your mouth. I ain’t kidding! It also goes famously in our side dish.

Roasted garlic mashed potatoes!

1 head of garlic.

2 pounds of russet potatoes, peeled and cubed.

3 tablespoons of butter.

Splash of milk or cream if needed.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Take the head of garlic and slice the top off so that all the cloves are left partially exposed.

Preheat your oven to 400-425. Drizzle the top of the garlic with a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Wrap the garlic up in some foil, place on a small baking dish or tin and then cook in the heated oven for about 35 minutes or until the cloves have roasted and softened. These will be really easy to use since the garlic just squeezes right out of it’s skin.

Peel, cut and cube the potatoes and bring a pot of water to a boil. When the water is boiling, add the potatoes and cook until tender. About 10 minutes or so. Put the potatoes, the garlic, (yes I used the whole head of roasted garlic) the butter and salt and pepper into a mixer and mix until reaching your desired consistency. If needed add the cream or milk to thin to your preferred texture. Salt and pepper to taste and you’ve got it.

Just a note here, the garlic is substantially mellowed by the roasting process and rather than having the “heat” of raw garlic it has more of an earthy, soft-as-butter, almost caramelized taste. Just awesome. Use this recipe for your holiday mashed potatoes. Level up Grandma’s boring ass mashed potatoes. Tell your guests “We’re refined and shit!” Fuck tradition if this tastes better.

Guess we should fire up that grill, don’t ya think?

Get the grill started and take the meat out of the refrigerator to get it close to room temperature. For reference sake I was actually cooking the garlic and the potatoes while the charcoal was heating up.

When the coals are ready slap that meat on the grill!

FIRE ACTION SHOT!

I used center cut sirloin chops for this. Those are the chops that have that little triangle bone in them. You want that bone in these chops. You NEED that bone in these chops. The fucked up thing about today’s chops was they were substantially different in size. This really tests the old grilling acumen when the chops cook at different speeds. Use the grill cover as needed to make sure the larger chops are cooked in the center.

These are looking pretty tasty so let’s go ahead and flip them over.

You may notice that the smaller chop that was on the left in the previous photo has been removed from the grill. That little fucker was done but I still needed to finish these bigger bastards. Baste the tops with a little of the reserved pesto.

Once the chops have cooked it’s time to plate these little piggies up!

Grab a plate and spoon on some of those roasted garlic mashed potatoes. Set one of those chops directly on top.

You will notice that I’m in serious “tinkering around” mode with the food photos. I served this along with a side spinach salad.

Here’s my previous standard food photo shot.

Now compare it to the one just above.

I was banking on the idea that the banner photo would be enough to draw you in, because that is one sexy fucking food photo.

Another photo effort in progress was this one from the eclipse!

Yeah, that’s a pretty shitty fucking eclipse photo.

Anyway.

This dish has the glorious flame-grilled element, the herbey, garlicky, basil bite of the pesto and the satisfying, Autumnal roasted garlic deliciousness. Straight out fucking tasty.

I want to level with you here. As delicious as this meal was, and it was GODDAMN delicious, I had the chance to elevate it a bit myself but missed the opportunity. This would have been life-alteringly good if I added a mushroom duxell reduction over the top. That’s where you saute some onion and garlic in a sauce pan for a few minutes, throw in some mushrooms and salt and pepper and cook for about 15-20 minutes, then add in some wine, some balsamic vinegar maybe a little soy sauce and reduce another 5 minutes or so. Drizzled over the top that would have made the angels fucking sing.

No big deal, just thinking out loud here.

There we go! Another method or 3 to prepare grilled pork chops.

If you made it this far you’ve added a couple of cooking skills to your quiver. The pesto and the roasted garlic can both be used in a multitude of applications and will most definitely take your skillset up a fucking notch.

Thanks for tuning in folks and be sure to tune in next week for the season finale of Sunday Gravy! Because the week after that?

FOOOOTTTTBBBAAAALLLL!

PEACE!