0 Dishing Up Chops

I include the cover of Dishing Up Maryland for this post, in part because I could tell right away that this was going to be a dinner that looked much better in person than it would in a photograph. I also want to draw attention to what is shaping up to be a very nice part of our cookbook collection -- both on our shelf and in our church's online store.

The selection of Tuesday's dinner menu started last week, when we decided to add a package of Farmer's Choice pork chops to our weekly order of delicious, organic milk from Crescent Ridge Dairy. We turned to the Dishing Up Maryland book when looking for a way to do justice with this pork that began with local grain fed to free-range, local pigs.

The only pork-chop recipe in the book begins with recommendations to shop the Greenbranch or Whitmore farms in Maryland -- this is a volume that celebrates local food! Of course, adjusting to our own locale was perfectly appropriate.

The recipe calls preheating the oven to 350 and then nearly splitting the chops lengthwise to form little pockets -- for the small, boneless chops we had, this was a bit of a challenge. I seared these in a small amount of EVOO and then set them aside. I added a bit of butter to the pan (indispensable cast-iron, of course) where I cooked finely chopped onion, celery, and apple. Here Snodgrass has specific apples to recommend, but I used what was in our fruit basket. Once the onion was soft, I added some cubes of wheat bread and salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, and sage. I had never used fresh sage in my life. I had no idea what I was missing! I then added chicken broth (she calls for beef or vegetable) and dried cranberries and stirred until it looked like stuffing.

Rather than try to toothpick the chops back together, I spooned the stuffing in snugly, and set each chop on its side in a baking pan. I then baked for about 25 minutes. These chops were thin; otherwise the recommended 45 minutes might have been required.

We each enjoyed two small chops with some basmati rice left over from a recent burrito night, and considered it a complete -- and delicious -- meal. The stuffing was amazing and will give me plenty to think about in November, as I plan the Thanksgiving stuffing. I am very glad Pam found the high-karma dried (albeit sweetened) cranberries at Trader Joes. Had I gone with Craisins, we would not have known how delicious this stuffing could be. Of course, with a 45-minute cook time, blanched fresh cranberries would also have worked.

Detail: Dishing Up Chops

0 Another Ish Turkey Dish

Earlier this week, Pam made one of our comfort foods, known as Crusty Mexican Bean Bake. It is essentially a Sloppy Joe casserole on a biscuit-like base. Sometimes we make it with just beans, but since #1 Daughter was enjoying the Big Apple without us, we splurged and used a half-pound of ground turkey along with the kidney beans in that recipe.

Which left us with the second half-pound and several options on Wednesday night. On the short list was Turkish Turkey Taco, a favorite from The Well-Filled Tortilla that is emblematic of the situation that gave rise to this Nueva Receta project in the first place: at least 50 percent of our use of the book was that one recipe. Because we had all we needed for that recipe except tortillas (we've found somewhat reasonable tortillas for sale locally) and a jalapeño, we were about to follow that tried-and-true path again, when Pam decided to open the trusty tortilla tome in search of something a little different.

She found Spanish-style Ground Beef and Pork on pages 84-85, the name similarly connoting a dish that is probably as Spanish-ish as its precursor is Turkish-ish. No matter, it seemed -- and turned out to be -- both simple and delicious.

One adjustment I made was to heat olive oil infused with Persian lime, in place of ordinary olive oil, simmering onion, bell pepper (we used a frozen medley of this), pine nuts (the real deal this time), orange zest and thyme. I then added the ground turkey and a small amount of frozen breakfast sausage to get some of the mix intended in the recipe without buying more meat. Of course this was all browned in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, after which I added a generous pour-over of our home-vinted Chardonnay.

The result: warm and delicious! The next time I try this, I would avoid pre-cooked sausage, though I managed to chop it in pretty well. I would either use just turkey or perhaps a mix of ground turkey and Italian-style turkey sausage.

Detail: Another Ish Turkey Dish

0 The Colonel's Apple-Stuffed Pork Chops, adapted for Sandy

About a year ago I wrote a post entitled "Oddly, I'm looking forward to reading this..." about a (then) forthcoming "food autobiography" of Colonel Sanders (of KFC fame). Last week I remembered the post, and did a bit of internet searching to find out if the book had been published yet. It had. Online. And for free. The catch is, you have to "Like" KFC on Facebook to get it.  I am pretty selective about what I like on Facebook, especially anything corporate, especially corporations I don't actually like. I was given the option, though, of making my "like" not visible to others, and so I downloaded the book (184 pages, including about 50 pages of recipes). I have not yet read the autobiography part, but I did browse through the recipes and noticed Apple-Stuffed Pork Chops, and we had recently ordered pork loin chops from Crescent Ridge Farm, which delivers our milk each week. We could not even remember the last time we had pork chops it is such a rare meal in our house, so we knew we had to make it good. We also have had a lot of apples lately, delivered in our CSA farm box this month, so this recipe was a good match of our local farm deliveries. We also knew that Hurricane Sandy might have caused our power to out at any time, and the recipe calls for cooking the chops for an hour in the oven. We decided to use our covered indispensable cast-iron skillet and cook on the gas stovetop instead, which was good, because our power did go out in the middle of cooking. These did not take long to prepare, and James and I working together had them ready for cooking in about 20 minutes. I chopped the apples and onions and cooked them in butter to soften. James mixed bread crumbs and fresh parsley (he braved the storm and got it from our garden!) and cut pockets into the chops. We then combined the bread and parsley mix with the apple and onion mix and added a bit of apple sauce (the recipe called for apple juice, but we didn't have any, and were not about to go out in the storm for that.) and stuffed the chops with it. The chops were then coated with flour and placed in the hot skillet and browned on each side. Then we turned down the heat, added more apple pieces and let them cook, covered, for about an hour.  Perfect. These were tender, and tasted like autumn. Eaten by candlelight, while the winds whipped and the rains came down, and paired with a South African Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon "Le Bonheur" this meal was cozy and romantic.

Detail: The Colonel's Apple-Stuffed Pork Chops, adapted for Sandy