pork chops

What’s In That Jar?

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Everybody (except maybe germophobes) loves a buffet and potlucks. 

There’s nothing like lining up and filling your plate with roast beef, egg rolls, broccoli casserole, French fries & gravy, and two or three taquitos.

But it’s not a very cohesive meal.  The only thing it says it that you probably eat too many carbs, and OMG, would a green salad kill you?

It’s the culinary equivalent of pajamas and a tiara.

You could go with a little black dress in the form of a single dish meal; soup, salad or Cap’n Crunch.  But honestly, as much as I love an LBD, humans need variety.

That is why, in chef-driven restaurants, the plates are carefully curated for gestalt.  The kitchen has worked hard and experimented, and each plate is designed with an eye to cohesive, collaberative,  texture, taste, and aroma.

The dinner I made the other night was designed so the flavors repeated and echoed each other, like a well-styled outfit in lush fabrics.  Recently I was visiting Trader Joe’s and noticed in the freezer section they carry this fire-roasted corn with all the flavors of elote, the delicious Mexican street corn. 

At home I had a new bag of orzo and some pork chops.  Then I remembered I had two Joe’s jars, and decided to make some Tex/Mex, a perfectly styled designer outfit for dinner.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Elote Pasta

1 cup orzo

1 bag Trader Joe’s Mexican-Style Roasted Corn

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

¼ cup chives, green onions, or Chinese chives, sliced thinly

Make orzo according to package instructions—make sure the cooking water is very salty.  Reserve 1 cup pasta water and set aside.

Make corn according to instructions on package.  When finished, pour cooked pasta into pan with corn.  Gently stir until everything’s mixed and coated.  Pour in the pasta cooking water until the sauce is silky and not dry looking.

Serve in skillet garnished with chives and the cheese packet from the corn.  Serves 4.

Sandy Mexican Pork Chops

*I call these sandy because after baking the crumbs take on a sandy texture—not like the beach, but like a buttery, crumbly shortbread cookie.  If you like your spice with a side of heat, add some cayanne into the flour or hot sauce into the buttermilk to taste.  If you put it into the crumbs it will burn.

4 boneless pork loin chops, about ¾ inch thick

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

2 tablespoons Trader Joe’s chile lime seasoning blend

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 ½ cups fat-free buttermilk

About 60 Captain’s Wafers crackers (1 ½ sleeves), ground to fine crumbs in food processor

2 tablespoons Trader Joe’s Everything But the Bagle Sesame seasoning blend

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Place crushed crackers and everything bagel seasoning in a 9X13 pan in a 350° oven.  Toast until golden—10-15 minutes.  Remove from oven and pour into a shallow dish.

Preheat oven to 425°.  Put 1 tablespoon oil in bottom of the same pan you used to toast the cracker crumbs.

Coat the meat with a three-part dredge:

In a large plastic bag, mix flour, chile lime, and salt.  Set aside.

Pour buttermilk in a shallow dish.

Line up bag and the pans with buttermilk and crumbs in a culinary assembly line.

One at a time, coat meat in flour, then buttermilk, then crumbs.  As you finish, set in oiled pan.  Drizzle coated chops with remaining oil.

Bake for ten minutes, spin pan 180°, and bake ten more.  When the internal temp is between 140° and 145°, remove from oven and let sit, lightly covered with foil, for five minutes.

They call me Tater Salad

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Both of us were very happy at dinner tonight.For Petey, there were big, fat, baked pork chops. When I took them from the freezer, I made a rub using coffee salt, freshly cracked peppercorns, ground caraway seeds, thyme, and fresh rosemary.  I rubbed it all over the chops and put them in the fridge to thaw.

When it came time to cook them I tossed them into a bag of flour.  Them I ran them through a pan of buttermilk and pressed pecan pieces and whole grain cracker crumbs all over them.I set the oven to 375 degrees.  I put a little vegetable oil into a shallow baking dish and nestled the pork chops inside.  I inserted a probe thermometer into the thickest part of the thickest chop.

Common wisdom used to be to cook the pork chops until there was no moisture left in the meat.

But there are a few problems with that tactic.  Pork is very much leaner than it used to be, so the meat comes out dry.  And cooking them to a temperature of 160 or so makes the meat come out very dry.  So the end result is pork that is very dry.Did I mention it would be dry?

Even the USDA, historically a very conservative and safety conscious bunch, now recommends that pork only needs to be cooked to 145 degrees.  I cook our pork chops to 140, which gives us a very light pink center.  Even if pink is not a color you want in your chop, 145 will be cooked through, but still juicy, and a radical sea change from the chalk-like 160 or higher.

So that was Petey’s treat.  What was mine?Tater salad.

I don’t remember exactly I lost my heart and mind to potato salad, but I do know that unbelievably when I was little I didn’t like it.  If you’ve read more than one or two of these essays, you know that my two favorite foods on the planet are potato salad and birthday cake.  And even I know that woman cannot live on birthday cake alone—although I’d be happy to volunteer for a study to find out exactly how much birthday cake one can live on.  So if you know somebody in research…Anyway.

My treat tonight was the potato salad portion of the program.  And I was trying out a new recipe.

That’s the great thing, but also most problematic part of potato salad.  When I googled recipes, I got 6.33 million results.  Putting “classic” in front only lowers that number to 1.78 million.  There is no one right recipe.  It varies according to culture, geographical region, ingredient availability, and even mood.

What.The.Literal.Hell?

What this means is that there are numerous amazing, delicious versions of the dish.  And there are just as many recipes for dreck.  Mustard, celery, relish?  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

But, you might think that broccoli or olive oil are abominations.  Everyone has a place at the potato salad table.  So pull up a seat, and grab a fork.

Thanks for your time.

Parma potato salad

parma potato salad3 pounds red skin or yellow potatoes

½ red onion, diced

½ cup pancetta, cut into strips, cooked until crispy, and set aside

3 tablespoons pancetta fat, divided (if you don’t have enough, add olive oil)

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Zest of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 cup mayonnaise

Salt & pepper

In a large heavy pot with heavily salted water, boil unpeeled potatoes until a knife easily pierces it.  Drain, and let cool.  When fully cool, peel and cut into bite-size chunks.

Place into a large bowl along with onion, and drizzle 2 tablespoons of fat over veg, along with salt and pepper to taste.  Gently stir to coat.  Cover, and let sit at room temperature for thirty minutes.

Make dressing.  In a small bowl whisk together the last tablespoon of fat, Parmesan, lemon juice, zest, thyme, and mayo.  Season, taste, and reseason if necessary.  Cover and refrigerate thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes before service mix dressing into potatoes starting with about ¾ of it, adding more if needed. 

Sprinkle pancetta on top of each serving.  Serves 4-6.

I’ve never said this before, but I can’t even.

   

Days Of Tickle Pink Wine and Rose’s Lunch Counter

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Originally Published in the Herald Sun 5/14/2012

I’m pretty much cross-eyed from evaluating thousands of pairs of shoes online.
One of my oldest and closest friends (we were actually in the Brownies together), Rhiannon, told me our high school class is having a reunion in September.
What?
It is not too early to window shop webtastic windows. September will be here before we know it. In the past I’ve used getting jury duty and a trip to the dentist as an excuse to look for new shoes.
I have the perfect dress (J Crew, dark heather gray jersey wrap dress, timeless and simple), but I need absolutely fabulicious kicks, and bag, and wrap, and…
In 1982, I graduated from Northeastern High School, in Elizabeth City. In the only public high school in the county, I was ranked 17 out of a senior class of 362 (It’s sad I need for you to know that, isn’t it?).
Fourteen months later, I married Petey.
Although, as a child, I’d taken cooking lessons a few times (including classes at the VEPCO building on Ehringhaus St, in E City), I was no cook. I was a restaurant-frequenter, and a heater-upper.
Luckily for my new groom, this was when all the microwave meals started coming onto the market. Otherwise it would have been peanut butter and jelly on Wonder bread, or ptomaine under an oxygen tent.
We supped at Copeland’s Grill four or five days a week (Tragically the Hughes Blvd diner is now closed). For $1.49, we ate a meat, two sides, bread, drink, and a dessert. I always ordered popcorn shrimp and double potato salad. They also had a stripped down version; meat and two sides for 99 cents.
Truthfully, I think Copeland’s contributed to the survival of our marriage (and us) those first years.
I took a few recipes and the Betty Crocker cookbook along with me to our honeymoon cottage. My mom gave me her famous pork chops and mushroom gravy recipe (apple sauce offered, but optional).
She’d made it since her own wedding. It was one dish from a repertoire of only two or three held by the new bride almost fifty years ago.
The first night she made them for her strapping six foot, two inch new husband, she made two. He ate both. She wanted him to get enough to eat, so the next time she made three. He ate them. Every pork chop dinner, one more chop; every night, he finished them all.
Finally, on the night he had finished seven servings, all was revealed.
Mom was sick with the financial worry of satisfying her new spouse’s bottomless pit. My poor dad? Just sick.
In O’Henrian fashion, Mom wanted Dad to get enough to eat. My sweet father didn’t want to hurt his bride’s feelings by not eating all she had prepared for him.
I’ve made this porker dish since the very beginning of my marriage. The recipe and flavor, like my cooking abilities, have become deeper, and more complex over the years. But one thing hasn’t changed in almost thirty years, the boring couple that ate it in a 12X60 trailer, still do, only now in a 1600 square foot Victorian in Durham, NC.
Before I give up the recipe, I want to talk about one ingredient: the onion marmalade.
Every couple of months, I buy five or six pounds of regular yellow onions. I then take a full day to cook them down into about two cups of deep, amber-colored caramelized onions.
If you can’t, or won’t, do this, you still need slowly, deeply browned onions.

Debbie Covers Mom’s Smothered Pork Chops

4-6 3/4-1 inch thick pork chops (whatever cut you like), approx 2 lbs.
seasoned flour
1/4 cup onion marmalade *
2 lbs cremini mushrooms, cleaned, stems removed and sliced into 1/8 inch slices
3-4 cloves garlic chopped finely
1 cup marsala wine, apple brandy, or beer
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3 cups chicken stock
2 cups beef stock
1/2 cup whole milk, half & half, or cream
2 tablespoons low or no-fat milk
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 tablespoon apple jelly or honey
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon fennel seed, crushed in mortar and pestle
(they can be a bit tough to find in the store, but add a really complex, resonant flavor like
nothing else)
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary, dried; use 1/4 teaspoon
1 large or 2 small bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Roux:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
Cook together slowly in a small skillet until the color of peanut butter.

Pre-heat oven to 325. Shake chops in a bag of seasoned flour, shake off excess, and brown in a large, heavy, Dutch oven (they only need browning, they’ll finish in the oven).
Remove to a holding plate.
In same pot, cook mushrooms, with salt, pepper, and thyme.
Cook until all the moisture is cooked out, and you can see a good amount of browning. Add garlic, and cook just ’till it barely starts to color. Put in onions, then deglaze pot with booze. Add the tomato paste while you can still smell the alcohol, the tomato has flavors that are only released when exposed to spirits. Let it reduce until it’s very thick.
Stir in remaining ingredients, except for roux. When it comes to a boil, slowly whisk in roux, until smooth, and gravy thickens. Check for seasoning, and balance of flavor.
Put chops back in, cover, and bake in oven for 1 1/2 hours.
Let pot sit on counter for ten minutes before opening.
To serve dish:
Remove pork to serving platter (carefully; they are literally falling apart tender). Whisk sauce in pot to smooth out, remembering to scrape all the goodness off the bottom.
Serve with buttered rice, and salad or spring veg.

*Faux Onion Marmalade: 2 yellow onions, peeled, cut in half, and sliced into 1/4 inch half moons. Cook onions on low with 1/2 tablespoon olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper. If you have an electric skillet, use that, otherwise, use a heavy bottomed frying pan.
Done well (read:slowly), this will take up to an hour. But you can do it days ahead.

It will definitely shock some old friends from NHS that I have a food column that’s not about dining out.
Sonic was and is a favorite for grab and go grub. In fact, when we were dating, Petey wooed me with their pink lemonade.
They don’t have it on the menu anymore. Also absent, a guilty pleasure; “Frito chili pie”. Luckily, I know the difficult, top-secret, recipe.

Frito Chili Pie
1 cup Fritos
1/2 cup canned chili (Petey likes Wolf Brand), heated
handful shredded hoop cheese
Top Fritos with chili and cheese, and put under broiler, until gooey, melty, and lightly browned. You can also tear open the front a snack size bag of Fritos, and pour in the hot chili and cheese, and put the whole thing under the broiler, for more of a cave man experience.

There are countless amazing cooks in the Harbor of Hospitalty. Rhiannon’s amazing, beautiful, talented grandmother, Georgie, was one of them. I can’t tell you how much wonderful food I put away in her kitchen, while wearing my nightgown.
The Kid met Miss Georgie, and Rhi’s strong, stubborn, secretly sweet, grandfather, Mr. Harland, as a toddler. It was eternal love at first sight for all three.
Miss Georgie’s friendship was one more link that led to culinary school.
While living in E City, I was too immature and uninterested to ask for cooking lessons, from her, or anyone else. I can never get that chance back.
Please, let me be your “Don’t Bee”:
If somebody cooks you something amazing, or is generally a wizard in the kitchen, ask for lessons!
Today.
One of these days, I’ll spill about my first attempt at a dinner party, in 1983, in my little skirtless home, in Steven’s Mobile Home Park, a lonely drive of twenty three miles from the bright lights of Elizabeth City.
Go Eagles!
Thanks for your time.