San Francisco Pork Chops

June. Summer without structure, which for the Holloway household means summer with garden structure, because Jack has imposed an agricultural schedule on the family that is more rigorous than any school calendar. Morning: water. Mid-morning: weed. Afternoon: observe and document. Evening: harvest what's ready. The garden journal is updated daily. The grow charts are maintained. The watermelon is measured weekly. The boy runs a farm in a suburban backyard with the efficiency of someone who has read every agricultural manual and disagreed with half of them.

Noah has retreated into music — summer saxophone, the lazy kind, the kind where he plays on the deck in the evening with no sheet music and no audience and the notes drift across the neighborhood like smoke from a bonfire nobody lit. He plays jazz standards — "Summertime," naturally, because the song wrote itself for this moment, and "Take Five" and "Blue in Green" and things I don't know the names of that sound like what I feel when I stand in the kitchen and listen to my son play music in the dusk. He's fourteen this August. Fourteen and playing Coltrane on a suburban deck during a pandemic. The world is broken and the music is beautiful and both things are true.

Emma discovered cooking. Not my kind of cooking — not Midwestern, not Marlene, not the sturdy casseroles and the practical soups. Emma's cooking is YouTube cooking: Japanese souffle pancakes, Korean fire noodles, something called a "cloud egg" that involves whipping egg whites and baking them like meringue with the yolk in the center. The kitchen after Emma cooks looks like a crime scene committed by someone with excellent taste. She uses every bowl. She uses every whisk. She leaves flour on surfaces I didn't know had surfaces. But the food is good. The food is different. The food is twelve-year-old discovering that the kitchen is not just her mother's place but a place where she can make things she found on a screen and eat them in real life.

I made pork tenderloin sandwiches on the deck — no family visiting this year, no Roger and Marlene, just us five and the grill and the garden. The tenderloin was breaded and fried and bigger than the bun, because some things don't change for pandemics. Some things are constitutional. Some things are Iowa.

That summer, with no extended family around and the five of us figuring out what our own rhythms looked like without the usual calendar filling in the blanks, I kept coming back to the grill — to the simplicity of it, the ritual of it, the way the smell alone tells everyone that dinner is happening and it is going to be fine. The Iowa pork tenderloin sandwiches were one night, but these San Francisco pork chops became our weeknight anchor: a little sweet, a little savory, a little outside what Marlene would have made, and exactly right for a season when everything felt like it was asking us to try something slightly new.

Prep Time: 15 min (plus 30 min marinating) | Cook Time: 18 min | Total Time: 33 min + marinating | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 boneless pork loin chops (about 1 inch thick, 6 oz each)
1/3 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, for the pan or grill
2 green onions, thinly sliced, for garnish
1 teaspoon sesame seeds, for garnish

Instructions

Make the marinade. In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, brown sugar, rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes until the sugar is dissolved.
Marinate the pork. Place pork chops in a zip-top bag or shallow dish. Pour all but 3 tablespoons of the marinade over the chops. Seal and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 4 hours. Reserve the remaining marinade for glazing.
Bring to room temperature. Remove pork from the refrigerator 15 minutes before cooking. Pat lightly dry with paper towels — this helps the chops sear rather than steam.
Heat the grill or skillet. Preheat an outdoor grill or a heavy skillet (cast iron works great) over medium-high heat. Brush with vegetable oil.
Cook the chops. Grill or pan-sear the pork chops for 4–5 minutes per side, until a deep golden crust forms and the internal temperature reaches 145°F on an instant-read thermometer. In the last 2 minutes of cooking, brush the reserved marinade over each chop and allow it to caramelize.
Rest before serving. Transfer chops to a plate and tent loosely with foil. Let rest for 5 minutes so the juices redistribute.
Garnish and serve. Scatter sliced green onions and sesame seeds over the top. Serve with steamed rice, grilled corn, or a simple cucumber salad.

Nutrition (per serving)

San Francisco Pork Chops — The Deck, the Grill, and Just the Five of Us