Yum.

I've bought and cooked smoked pork chops (kasseler ripchen) for years. A
few years back the local grocery where I shopped stopped carrying them.
Recently we moved to a different part of the SF bay area, and I found
smoked pork chops in the local Hispanic grocery, where they have a very
nice meat department, with real butchers. So today I bought some.

They were larger then the kasseler rippchen I'd gotten before, and about
half the thickness (it seems that nearly all meat is sliced more thinly
for Hispanic cooks). Note that they were not advertised as kasseler
rippchen; the label just said (in Spanish) "smoked pork".

When I cooked them (just warmed and seared a bit, in fact), another clue
that they were not "authentic" kasseler ripchen showed up -- they were
obviously a lot more moist than the ones I had gotten before. Still very
tasty, though.

So the first question is, how did these things become a part of Hispanic
cuisine? Was it when the Germans migrated there and introduced "oom pah"
music to Mexico in the 19th century?

And the second question is, what would be a "traditional" Hispanic
recipe for smoked pork chops?

Isaac