Scrumptious Spicy Pork Chops

Now that we've finally made it through all the leftovers my parents had made us, we were craving something new. So last night Michael made these amazing pork chops.

There was no official recipe that he followed for these - just his usual "throw some stuff together and use it for a marinade" approach, which always turns out well, but is difficult to replicate precisely the next time. That's not a problem, but more of a way of saying I'm totally guesstimating on the amounts and proportions here.

Marinate thin cut pork chops for about 30 minutes in:
2 cloves garlic
2 T cider vinegar
2 T mirin
1 T brown sugar
2 T mustard - we didn't have any dried mustard or brown mustard (gak!), so we crushed up mustard seed & combined that with a bit of yellow mustard
sriracha (the amount depends on your preference for heat)

He grilled it for just a few minutes and it was juicy, flavorful, and had just a bit of a kick to it. We were hoping to use the leftovers for homemade banh mi, but, alas, there were no leftovers. Even if there had been more than one pork chop each, I'm pretty sure I could've eaten a short stack of these, so I'm not sure that would have worked anyway. Nevertheless, we'll definitely make lots more next time so we can have some homemade banh mi sandwiches, too.

The first time we made homemade banh mi, our friend Doug brought over the pickled carrots & daikon radishes, which he'd found already prepped in the deli section at Safeway. He saw it, grabbed it, and brought it over as a request that we make banh mi. We've never seen it at our Safeway (or Fry's), so I grab the pre-packaged stuff in the produce section at our Asian market when I'm there buying curry and coconut milk, but it's also easy to make at home (just see any one of the recipes in the link above) if you've already got the veggies on hand. Now, I have to say, even though I'm a banh mi fan, I like mine bastardized so I usually prefer my homemade banh mi to going out for it. Why? I'm not a big fan of the rice flour baguettes, so I use regular baguettes instead. Throw on some jalapenos, cilantro (unless you're one of the anti-cilantro folks out there) and, in my world, more sriracha, and you can call it done. Yes, ok, so there's traditionally mayo involved, but I'm leaving that off the list for you, too.