Recipe: Pork and Orange and all things nice

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. 
Well, life gave me cheap boneless pork rib chops this week, so I made "lemonade", but I changed it to oranges. One of the local grocery stores had 1" thick chops on sale, so I couldn't just leave them there, could I?

Orange juice, dark rum, honey, sage and some chilli flakes sounded like a good combination for a cooking sauce, and it was. This recipe was inspired by a few "found" recipes, and some common sense as to what works well together. For example, none of the recipes had rum or sage. I'm going to post it on Food.com, but they're doing maintenance at the moment, so it will be up later. I need to take more care with my photography, but at the time I was hungry.

Makes 6 servings, or 3 if you really like it.

Pork with Orange Sage Reduction

6 boneless pork chops, 1" thick
3/4 cup orange juice (2 oranges)
1 tbsp orange zest, grated
1/4 cup dark rum
2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup ketchup
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp onion, grated
1 1/2 tsp dried sage (1 tbsp or more if using fresh)
1 tsp red chilli flakes, or to taste
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cracked black pepper

Preheat oven to 350°. Whisk together all ingredients, except pork, in a bowl and set aside. While the flavours blend in the sauce, pan fry the pork pieces, two at a time, in a little olive oil. More fat will come out of the pork as they brown. Season both sides with a little salt and pepper. Cook long enough to form a good, seared crust on both sides. They will not be cooked through.

Place pork in one layer in an oven-proof baking dish and pour the sauce over the meat. Bake for 30-45 minutes.

Let pork rest for 5 minutes, keeping warm. Meanwhile, pour cooking liquid from pork into a saucepan and reduce over high heat to about half, until slightly thickened. This should take 5 minutes. Pour reduction over pork and serve.

Serve with baked squash and Tomato-Thyme rice (recipe follows). I'm using US spelling of tomato because Food.com has a US spelling search engine. Squash will bake at 350° in 1 hour, which is the same time it takes to brown and then bake the pork.

Tomato-Thyme Rice
2 cups water
1 cup arborio rice
1 tsp thyme, dried
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 tsp salt

Combine water, thyme, paste and salt in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and add rice. Stir, cover, reduce heat to simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Let stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Serve.