Splendidly simple, salt-and-peppered pork chops are grilled until tender, then topped with an absolutely divine sweet-meets-savory salsa. Blackberries, cherries, nectarines, lime, basil. All the best summer flavors. A divine dinner, that looks like you spent all day prepping. But takes only minutes to put together.
Is it just me, or do you sometimes forget what to cook for dinner?
Too often, I find myself staring at the stove. 6pm-ish. Completely incapable of thinking of what to cook.
When it started raining the other day, I realized this is an almost exclusively summer issue. When it's cold or wintery or rainy, there's no question as to what I feel like eating, what I want to cook.
But stick me under the red hot rays of summer evenings, and cooking is so far from my mind, I can't even conjure a single idea. Except for grilled chicken.
And grilled chicken gets kinda boring real quick.
So one night in the middle of our summer, we decided to switch it up. Grilled pork chops. Then topped them with everything we'd recently toted home from the market. Fresh ruby red cherries, big sweet blackberries. tiny heirloom tomatoes and plump ombre nectarines.
You already know the savory mellowness of salted pork tastes divine with fruit. So you can imagine how it pairs with all-the-summer-fruits.
Perfectly, is what. Absolutely perfectamently.
Food Photography Geek-Out Moment
These images were shot with a Canon 5D Mk III paired with a Canon 24-70 f/2.8 . When shooting overhead, I almost always handhold my camera. And I always set the shutterspeed to 125 or higher, with the fstop at 5.0 (sometimes I'll go as low as 4.0 if I need a little more light on a dark or cloudy day).
I set all of my photos up in front of or next to a diffused window (light's on the left when I am not backlighting).
See my setup and discover even more tricks with my 90-Minute Food Photography Crash Course.
The backdrop was purchased from one of my favorite Etsy sellers, ASPAULJOY. His work is consistently amazing, ships quickly, and is made with food photographers in mind. The pretty speckled plates you see there are by the divine Ms. Susan Simonini. If you can nab some of her pottery, buy every piece you find available. It's just stunning, stunning work, and makes my photos look 289380x better than they would without her artful molding.
Wanna nerd out even more? Find tricks, tips and answers 24/7 in my Food Blogging, Photography & Videography Facebook Group. It's free to join!
Simple Summer Pork Chops with Blackberry-Nectarine & Cherry Salsa
Serves 4 | 20 minutes
- 4 pork chops
- 1 Tbsp olive or coconut oil (for rubbing on chops)
- Salt and pepper, generous amount
- 3/4 cup pitted cherries
- 1 nectarine, sliced or diced
- 1/2 cup blackberries or blueberries
- 2/3 cup halved cherry tomatoes
- 1/4 cup purple onion (optional)
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 limes, juiced and zested
- Fresh chopped basil (lots of it)
Rub pork chops with oil, salt and pepper generously. Grill until cooked through.
In a large bowl, stir together cherries, nectarine, blackberries, tomatoes, onion (if using), honey, lime juice and zest. Salt and pepper to taste. Toss gently with basil. Serve over pork chops.