Saturday Night Grilling

Tex-Mex tacos with grilled pork, scallions, radishes, and poblanos, topped with crumbled feta cheese, and a side of black beans. 

Your mouth watering yet?

It should be.  The Spicy-Smoky Mexican Pork Kebabs recipe from Fine Cooking, issue 72, was to die for.  The marinated pork by itself would have been gobbled down by several people...if given the chance. 

Mom chose this recipe earlier in the week and it was a good night to grill, as it's been way too hot to cook anything in the kitchen.  Be warned, there was a fair amount of chopping required for this recipe. 

The marinade is very easy.  Instead of putting it in the blender, I used a hand blender (best kitchen appliance ever...definitely going on my wish-list) because I'm too lazy to wash out the big blender.  For the dried chile, I chose 2 guajillo chiles and soaked those for about 15 minutes. 

I let the pork loin marinate for close to 2 hours, and instead of skewering it like typical kebabs, my dad just grilled as-is, which worked perfectly. 

The recipe also called for grilled vegetables to go with the 'tacos' (they aren't your typical Mexican tacos, so I don't know what to call them):  poblanos, radishes, and scallions.  Everything was tossed with a little bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper.  I also cut the poblanos into 1/4" strips, instead of the 1 inch chunks....NOT recommended for grilling!!  My dad lost several strips through the grill's grates...oops.  Also, grilled radishes are very strange...they're good, but they're just so different when you pop them on the grill.  My mom commented they tasted a little like turnips. 

Peppers, scallions, more peppers, and radishes...yum :)

We also had a side of black beans.  No recipe for that, although I kinda based it on the Classis Mexican "Pot" Beans from Rick Bayless' cookbook, Mexican Kitchen (yes, I do actually cook from other resources, besides FC!).  Basically I sauteed an onion with some garlic and a jalapeno pepper, then added in one can of drained and rinsed black beans, added some beef broth and let that simmer for a few minutes.  I also added a bay leaf, ground cumin, and chile powder.  I let it cook too long so I added a little more broth...the idea was that the beans would be moist.  They made a yummy side dish with a little feta sprinkled on top!