I had intended to make Curried-Pork Noodles at some point this week, but when we came home yesterday and discovered our freezer minutely ajar, the pork was moved up to the front of the meal queue.  Once this was discovered, I should’ve just removed the bones from the chops and ground the meat up straight away – but alas, I was tired and flustered, and so I went to bed instead, dreaming of kebabs as I fell asleep.

I woke up this morning motivated to make my imagined kebabs, and in doing so made one of those stupid prep mistakes that only happens when you’re not quite awake.  One bowl contained cubed pork topped with yogurt for a marinade.  The other bowl contained my breakfast yogurt.  You can guess which bowl received the generous spoonful of curry powder.  Augh!

Since I’d already started playing with the idea of the recipe, I decided to take it a step further.  The cilantro that I picked up last week was getting a bit limp, so I whizzed it up in the food processor with a chopped up banana pepper, olive oil, the juice of one lemon, and salt and pepper, which produced a pesto-like sauce with just a bit of heat.  While the pork broiled away on skewers in the toaster oven (instead of on the grill – curse you, rain!), I made a pot of white rice.  I was overly cautious with the cook time on the pork, but the moisture from the rice and the “pesto” made it work.

In the end, we had a fantastic and simple dinner with pretty complex flavors – and I felt like a contestant on Top Chef, having remixed the components of a recipe into something different, yet recognizably like the original.