A Recipe for Caramelized Pork Chops and Macaroni

In a world of rice and noodles, be a macaroni (+ Tu David Phu and Soleil Ho's "The Memory of Taste")

***Hi friends, just as a heads up: there will be no TOD dispatch next week—hope my Stateside subscribers enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving! 💕 And, as it often is, some of the links in this post are affiliate links, meaning I’ll earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you decide to purchase the amazing books, ingredients, etc. through them. Thank you ever so much in advance for your support of this newsletter ❤️

The recipe box is a collection of recipes and techniques from my favorite cookbooks—everything from up-and-coming titles to tried-and-true favorites from my collection. (Though you may see some original recipes here from time to time, too 😉) You can check out TOD’s archive of past recipes here if you’re looking for some meal inspiration.

Given a cuisine where rice and noodles still reign supreme, it may be a surprise to some that pasta also has notable prevalence in Vietnamese cooking. The word for it, nui, is a loanword from the French word for noodle, nouille. To the Vietnamese, the term “pasta” tends to evoke images of macaroni and other short pastas (as opposed to longer noodles) and is often made from rice flour to use in stir-fry dishes like nui xào bò, or brothy soups like súp nui sườn heo. According to Tu David Phu and Soleil Ho in their cookbook, “The Memory of Taste,” however, many home cooks in the Vietnamese diaspora have leaned on the dried duram wheat pasta easily found in major supermarkets without problems.

Though Tu spent his career working in the nation’s top restaurants, he’s found that the culinary lessons that truly impacted him came from his parents—refugees from Phú Quôc who raised their children in Oakland, California and imparted wisdom on resourceful, frugal cooking and “gill-to-fin eating” (especially given the similarities in Phú Quôc and the Bay Area’s coastal environments). The recipes in “The Memory of Taste,” particularly in its “Inauthentic as Hell” chapter (where today’s recipe comes from) where dishes blend his refugee family’s Vietnamese-rooted food wisdom with the Bay Area’s diverse culinary style—thus creating a beautifully inauthentic authentic cuisine unique to the diaspora. 

Now. Let’s talk pork. For Tu, there’s nothing more nostalgic than a pork chop being fried in a pan, sizzling in fat and filling the kitchen with a deeply savory aroma of caramelized garlic, lemongrass, and oyster sauce. As delicious as everyone knows a well-prepared pork chop is, real ones will know that the best part is the sauce made from the bits of browned meat and marinade that stuck to the pan. Though you could certainly pour the extra juices over the pork chops, why not take it up a notch? Tu recalls his parents often adding pasta or day-old rice to the hot pork drippings, letting the starch infuse with the flavors that might’ve otherwise gone to waste, resulting in an incredibly comforting and filling dinner. Grab the recipe below, with instructions depending on your carb of choice—don’t worry, whether it’s pasta or rice, we got you. 😉

Before I leave you all for the rest of the week, I’d like to kindly remind everyone that I’ve previously featured Soleil here on the newsletter—specifically, to talk about a dish brimming with nostalgia ideated by their grandmother. You can read more at the link below:

Crossroads, No. 1: Soleil Ho's Buddig Turkey Slices Over Rice

Some additional Vietnamese-American adjacent reading you may also like …

A Clay Pot Caramelized Fish Dish from the Heart of Vietnam & NOLA

Photo by Dylan James Ho

Serves 4

Pork Chops (sườn chiên)

• 3 tablespoons fish sauce

• 3 tablespoons oyster sauce

• 1 teaspoon minced ginger

• 1 teaspoon minced shallot

• 1 teaspoon minced lemongrass

• ¼ sliced green onions, white and green parts

• 1 teaspoon phở seasoning or five-spice powder

• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar

• 2 tablespoons orange marmalade or honey

• 1 teaspoon sesame oil

• 4 bone-in pork chops, cut ½-inch thick 

• 2 tablespoons neutral oil (such as vegetable oil) 

Macaroni

• 8 ounces dry elbow macaroni 

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 

• ½ cup filtered water

• Sliced cucumber (for garnish)

• Whole cherry tomatoes (for garnish)

1. Combine all the marinade ingredients into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the pork chops to the bowl with the marinade, then give them a nice 5-minute massage, as if the pig’s been working real hard lately. Place the bowl in the fridge to marinate overnight. Half an hour before you plan to start cooking, take the bowl out of the fridge and allow it to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

2. Then, get started cooking the pork chops. Set a large, heavy frying pan over medium heat. Give the pan 3 minutes to heat through, then add in the neutral oil. Once the oil starts to shimmer, tilt the pan away from your body and gently lay the pork chops in the pan. Place each chop in the frying pan starting with the part closest to you so that the pork doesn’t splash oil in your direction. (If the pan’s too small for all four pork chops, do this step in batches.)

3. Fry the pork chops for 5 minutes on each side, or until they register an internal temperature of 145°F. Remove the pan from the heat and transfer the pork chops to a cooling rack or cutting board and set the pan aside. Rest the pork chops for a few minutes.

4. Cook the macaroni al dente according to package directions, then drain it in a colander in the sink. Rinse the cooked noodles with cool water to remove excess starch and let the pasta rest for 5 minutes.

5. Warm the pan of pork drippings from the sườn chiên over medium heat for 3 minutes, then add in the cooked macaroni, butter, and water. Stir to combine—the pasta will absorb all of the wonderfully savory, caramelly juices in the pan. Turn the heat to low and continue cooking the pasta for 5 minutes or until the liquid is mostly absorbed. Remove the pan from the heat and divide the pasta among four plates.

6. Use kitchen scissors to cut the pork chops against the grain into pieces that you can pick up with chopsticks. You don’t want to lose all that precious meat juice, so cut the pork chops directly over the plates if you can. Garnish with the cucumber and tomato and serve immediately.

Note: Want to use rice instead of macaroni for this recipe? No sweat. Tu says that, instead of pasta, you should throw 2 ½ cups of day-old broken rice into the drippings. As the rice cooks, it’ll absorb all the pork drippings. Keep cooking the rice until the moisture is mostly absorbed, about 5 minutes. If the rice appears too dry, add a splash of water to the pan and let it cook for another minute or until absorbed.

Recipe adapted from “The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quoc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between” by Tu David Pu and Soleil Ho. Copyright © 2024. Used with permission of 4 Color Books. All rights reserved.