Pomegranate and Parsley Pork with Spicy Eggplant

Sometimes an entire dinner comes together to participate in my no-ingredient-left-behind policy.

There are two main ways I've found to stop ingredient-wasting pitfalls and both of them play a role in this evening's dinner.

First: keep track of what's in the fridge. I try to keep tabs on "investment" ingredients (condiments, sauces, salty/pickley treats) and cycle them through now and again, in different permutations to keep it interesting. Pomegranate molasses, I'm looking at you.

Second: Make friends with the freezer. Find a great deal on meat but don't want to eat the same chicken breasts all week long? Freeze it. Family packs are great for this, especially when you don't have a family.

So here's how this meal is a waste-saver: I'm using the pomegranate molasses dish-by-dish, I'm freezing the half of the pork loin chop family pack I didn't cook, and all the veggies come from the CSA vegetable dump, which is getting so big as summer comes to a close that I'm going to start freezing some items we don't get to each week.

Pomegranate and Parsley Pork

3-4 lean boneless pork loin chops

1 heaping Tablespoon pomegranate molasses

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1/2 c. parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper

In a shallow bowl, mix the pomegranate molasses, olive oil and parsley. Add salt and ground black pepper. Slide the pork loin chops in and turn until well-covered with the marinade. Set aside for 10 minutes. Heat a nonstick pan with a little olive oil over high heat. (You can try it without the olive oil, too, but I just find my pan needs a little help to prevent sticking.) Cook pork on both sides. These were thin cuts so they cooked about 3 minutes a side.

Spicy Eggplant

1 medium-size Japanese eggplant

1 teaspoon Ras el Hanout

2-3 scallions, chopped

olive oil

Slice off the ends of the eggplant and cut in half. I cut 1-inch slices, but if you are short on time, go smaller. In a bowl mix the eggplant with the Ras el Hanout. Set aside.

Heat some olive oil (about 1 Tablespoon) in a saute pan over high heat. Chop the scallions and start to saute in the pan. Then add the eggplant on top and cook, stirring, until the eggplant has turned darker and is soft. The scallions will get crispy and the eggplant will be nice and tender.

Salad: lettuce leaves + juice of 1 lemon + olive oil drizzled + sea salt

Tally:

Standard veggies and lean protein take a trip to Morocco

Pantry items find new ways to the table

Pork family pack's $5 split over two nights = thrifty

Persian Pomegranate Walnut Wonder

I recently had a project that took up some serious time, meaning the thrifty cooking efforts were at risk of falling by the wayside.

But rather than reach for the take out menus, I reached for my stash of frozen goodies. What goodies do I speak of? Well, I'll tell you.

A couple weeks before I'd found my winter-long chicken stock supply had finally been tapped out. To my great good fortune (yes, I do actually get this excited about this stuff), the local supermarket had a good deal on bone-in chicken breasts. I'd poached them with the usual stock subjects (carrot, onion, salt, pepper, parsley), pulling out the chicken when the meat was still tender and pulling it off the bone, then returning the bones to the stockpot to bubble and boil some more.

Which is all to say, I had some frozen cooked chicken. Yay! I had some frozen chicken stock. Double yay!

The aforementioned project included some Persian poetry which got me thinking about my favorite use for pomegranate molasses (another already there pantry item from a cocktail experiment that went, well, wrong.)

This is quick to throw together, kinda healthy (pomegranates are loaded with antioxidants, walnuts with omega-3's), and pretty inexpensive due to buying protein on sale and the occasional but long-lasting pantry investment. Tangy and satisfying, I'll make an authentic version of this someday...but for now, I'm happy with this concoction.

Persian Pomegranate-Walnut Chicken

2 cups (2 breasts) poached chicken (I had frozen mine)

1/3 cup pomegranate molasses

1/4 cup whole walnuts

A olive oil, 1-2 glugs, if the chicken sticks

In a non stick pan toast walnuts and re-heat shredded poached chicken. If you don't have cooked chicken, you could poach 2 breasts or cut them into small pieces first and saute in olive oil. Personally, since this is a 'fudged' recipe already, I like to maintain the texture of the soft, shredded meat as it allows the sauce to reach more chicken nooks and crannies.

Remove the walnuts when they start to smell and are toasted. Mine got a tiny bit of color on them (oops, the risks of multitasking!) and they were fine.

Add the pomegranate molasses and combine thoroughly with the chicken. Turn the heat back so that the chicken simmers in the sauce. Add the walnuts, broken up, back in.

While it's simmering, make some couscous and a green salad.

Speedy Dinner...Done.

This is pretty tangy, so if you don't like your proteins candied (if you don't, we can't be friends), add some chicken broth to mellow the molasses.

Tally:

Chicken on sale turns into ready-to-serve dinner

Pomegranates and walnuts are healthy, Fat-Resistance friendly

This goes so fast you need to start making the salad first

A strong flavor from the pantry saves the day