Easy Pork Chop Recipe

I'm a pattern seeker/finder by nature. One thing that led me to learn how to experiment in the kitchen is seeing the patterns in various recipes for "nearly" the same thing. Take pork chops. One recipe says brown, the cover with x, then cover the pan and simmer for 30 minutes (or 45 or 60). Another recipe says brown, then move to a baking dish, cover with some sauce or whatnot, and bake for an hour at 350. Another skips the browning. Another throws nearly the same ingredients in a slow cooker, with or without browning first.

Tonight I did this:

3-4 pork chops (bone-in, because that's what I had)
salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste (or pepper and garlic salt)
1 Tbs oil
1 can of cream of mushroom soup (or make your own cream of soup)
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Sprinkle the pork chops with whatever you want. Heat the oil on medium high heat and brown the pork chops on both sides. I used to not turn the heat high enough I realized and rarely got a good "browning." Anyway, brown the chops while you're mixing up the soup, ketchup, and Worcestershire. Pour the soup mix over the pork chops when they're browned, cover, and cook for some amount of time. I did an hour tonight on barely a simmer because I wasn't in a hurry. Cut into one if you're not sure if they're done and you're in a hurry. Also, about halfway through, I turned them and then spooned the sauce back onto the top of them.

Serve with egg noodles or rice or mashed potatoes or whatever you like because the sauce is quite tasty!

Variations I have on seen or tried:

• Brown some onions first, leave out the ketchup and Worcestershire
• Add a can of mushroom slices or pieces when you add the soupy mix
• Add some sliced carrots
• Add some milk with the soup for more sauce
• Top the chops with a box of stuffing mix
• Bake instead of simmer on the stovetop
• Use 1 cup of cola and 1 cup of ketchup for a more "barbecue" taste

Experiment!

Great Dinner - But All Repeats

Had a fantastic dinner last night, but no new recipes. Still, it made for a wonderful meal so in case anyone's casting about for menu ideas, here it is:

London Broil with a Lime Juice and Soy Sauce Marinade
Chard with Garlic French Yogurt Dressing
Sauteed Chard with Garlic and Lemon Juice (the girls don't like the chilled chard)
Plain Ol' White Rice

For dessert, my girls had made Blondies. Oh, I don't have that posted. They follow the recipe in Marion Cunningham's Lost Recipes I think. I'll have to ask them. They always come out so good that this time my eldest doubled the recipe and yet there are NONE left to pack in lunches tomorrow!

Tapas

I was reading an article in some woman's magazine about tapas. It said that tapas originated because bartenders put little plates of food on top of glasses of sherry in Spain to keep the bugs out of the drinks.

Frankly, if a bug were to land somewhere on my food or drink, I'd think I'd rather have it land in the drink, where the alcohol is. Wouldn't that be better than having it land on your food?

Cooking and Planning Ahead

On my CheapCooking discussion group, someone asked for help getting a reasonable dinner on the table when she didn't get a home until 6pm. People chimed in with all kinds of great ideas, most of which boiled down to planning ahead and cooking ahead just a bit on weekends if you could.

All the talk about cooking on Sundays for the week ahead inspired me. I also remembered a good book, Warehouse Gourmet. The recipes focus on what to do with various "tray packs" of meat you can buy at Costco, Sam's Club, and other warehouse stores. The recipes have all been really good so far. I'm trying a couple of new ones today. Oh, they have a web site too, http://warehousegourmet.com/ with a blog and a few sample recipes. Another favorite books for getting a good dinner on the table fast and cheap is Cheap. Fast. Good!

I didn't do much actual cooking, because I prefer to just prep stuff. I bought a tray pack of ground beef, a 2-pack of flank steaks, and a tray pack of chicken thighs.

I mixed up a marinade for the flank steak and froze each one in a freezer bag. Later, I can pull out a steak to thaw, then quickly grill it for dinner.

I did the same basic things with the chicken thighs, mixing up a marinade and freezing 4 bags of thighs and marinades. I can bake them or grill them or throw them in the crockpot some other day.

For the ground beef I mixed up a double batch of my new favorite meatloaf, from the book Cheap. Fast. Good! and froze two meatloaves, raw, so I can pull them out and bake another night. I also made up a bunch of meatballs and baked them. I froze them once they cooled off. I took some of the meatball mix and baked it in muffin tins for mini-meatloaves. The rest of the ground beef I split into slightly less than 1 pound portions and froze, leaving out one portion for tonight's dinner of San Francisco Joe's (ground beef and spinach and eggs cooked together). My girls love this and asked for it when they saw the big bags of spinach at Costco.

So a bit of time spent on Sunday to prep ahead pays off later. Just having that stuff in the freezer makes for easy dinners to come.

Easy Tapioca Pudding

I looked online yesterday for tapioca pudding recipes because the only ones in my cookbooks involved separating eggs and folding in beaten egg whites later, something beyond the skill of my youngest, who wanted to make the pudding. I didn't have the box of tapioca anymore, since I tend to store stuff like that in Tupperware containers. I finally found the recipe pretty much as I remembered making it as a kid, very easy and very good. Maybe one day I should try the fancier recipe and see if it's worth the extra effort. But this one is so easy and so good it's to imagine.

1/3 cup sugar
3 Tbs minute tapioca
2 3/4 cup milk
1 egg, well beaten
1 tsp vanilla

Mix together everything but the vanilla and let stand for 5 minutes. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly so the milk won't scorch the bottom. Bring to a full boil, then remove from the pan from the heat. Stir in the vanilla.

Let the pudding for 20 minutes, then stir. Put in bowls and refrigerate a bit before eating, unless you like it warm.

Tomato Salsa

I read that Southern Californians are having a hard time with their tomatoes. Up here in the middle I'm having the best season I've ever had. Just one plant seems to have dried up for some reason. I'll have to check the variety. I know it was a new one. But my Better Boys and Beefsteaks and Early Girls are going whole hog and taste fantastic. During tomato season, I almost always have a bowl of salsa in the frig.

2 cups tomatoes, chopped
1 small onion, diced (1/2 to 3/4 cup)
lots of fresh chopped cilantro (2-3 Tbs)
2 Tbs lime juice
salt to taste (1/4 to 1/2 tsp?)
2-3 minced garlic cloves (optional, I add garlic to everything)

I don't put jalapeno in my salsa very often. When I do, I'd add maybe 1 small pepper minced.

Sometimes I add some green onion. Sometimes I don't have lime juice. Definitely always tomatoes, salt, cilantro.

Mix this all up and let it sit 30 minutes.

Soft Tacos with Pork Carnitas

Record the day. I almost followed a recipe exactly. I did, however, begin with a different cut of meat... This is from the most recent issue of Cooking Light. I have to say I stopped my subscription because I got tired of all the non-cooking stuff in there. I don't want to read about exercise, vitamin supplements, restaurants, travel, and most especially make-up. I want to read recipes. I love their "technique" section and the section where they "lighten up" readers' favorite recipes is always fun. Really though, the "light" here is not very light. It's "average," aiming for the USDA dietary guidelines of 30% fat I think. But most of the recipes are quite good. I just wish there were more of them. I might subscribe again. This issue caught my eye because I just bought myself a pizza stone and they had pizza on the cover. So of course I make pork carnitas instead.

This is a two day recipe. You cook up the pork, then refrigerate, then heat and reduce the sauce and turn the carnitas into whatever you're doing with it. They had both a beef and a pork carnitas recipe, and then three things to do with each of them, from beef carnita empanadas to pork stew. I turned my carnitas into soft tacos basically. They were excellent. It fed 3 of us tonight, I froze half of what was left and will maybe make the pork stew with the rest later this week.

The meat difference. They called for boneless Boston butt pork roast. All I could find at the store for a reasonable price was a pork shoulder roast. Is that at all the same? I think my cut was leaner, because there was almost zero fat to skim off the next day. It tasted great and for $1.79 a pound I've got 3 meals for 3 people out of a $4 piece of meat, or less. There were actually two roasts in the package for $7 and I froze one for another day.

Oh, the tomato paste. Don't you hate recipes that call for a tablespoon or two of tomato paste? You can buy it in a tube, if you use it somewhat regularly. Or open a small can, use what you need, then plop tablespoonfuls of it into a bag, keeping them separated, and freeze. Or plop them down on a piece of wax paper and freeze, then bag. Then you can open the bag and pull out what you need for the next recipe. I have one section in my freezer door that holds stuff like this: a bag of tomato paste spoonfuls, a bag of chopped onions (why bother chopping half an onion?), lemon juice ice cubes, lemon zest, various herbs, chopped peppers, nuts, etc. All those little bits of stuff you hate to throw away but will easily lose if you don't keep an eye on them in the freezer. I throw them in sandwich bags and keep them all together.

2 Tbs tomato paste
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
10 garlic cloves, peeled (I might have used more, I like garlic)
2 to 2 1/2 pounds sirloin pork roast or Boston butt pork roast
1 cup chicken broth (I used turkey because that's what I found first in the freezer)
1 Tbs lime juice

Preheat the oven to 350.

In a Dutch oven or oven proof skillet, mix together the tomato paste, salt, pepper, garlic cloves, and pork, then pour the broth over all and stir some more. Cover and put in the oven for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until the pork is very tender.

Cool and refrigerate overnight, then skim any solidified fat off. I didn't actually have any with the sirloin roast I used. Let the pork sit out for 30 minutes to get up to room temperature, then cook in a large non-stick skillet over medium heat until most of the liquid is evaporated, 10-15 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lime juice.

I served this on corn tortillas, with fresh salsa, chopped avocado, and a bit of shredded Cheddar cheese, with refried beans on the side. I think it would also be good if you took some of it and heated it with green salsa. that tomatilla stuff I love so much, making it into a pork verde of sorts.

If I end up trying the Pork Stew with Chickpeas and Sweet Potatoes, which is in the same issue, I'll let you know. It's not quite cool enough to think about stews somehow. Maybe I'll do that later with the batch in the freezer. I just heated up white corn tortillas tonight for soft tacos and it was fantastic!

Cucumber Salad with Sour Cream

Seems like I did a fair bit of cooking somehow this weekend, although we were off to Santa Cruz one day and to the Scottish Games the other. I am growing cucumbers this year. Two plants seems to provide me with "just enough" but not too many cucumbers. The girls like them plain. I like them in a mildly sweet vinegar marinade or in this sour cream dressing. I think next time I'll try it with yogurt rather than the sour cream. I'm partial to recipes that are a) easy to remember (note the 2 Tbs repetition) and b) I can pick some of the ingredients from my garden, in this case the cucumber, lemon, and dill.

2-3 cucumbers, peeled and sliced very thinly
1/2 cup sour cream
2 Tbs lemon juice
2 Tbs white vinegar
2 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs fresh dill, chopped
1/4 tsp salt

Mix everything but the cucumbers together, then stir in the sliced cucumbers. Chill until serving.

I saw a few similar recipes. One added mint instead of dill. Since I'm growing mint as well, I think I'll try that next time! Yet another variation used mayonnaise instead of sour cream, and added capers, parsley, and anchovy paste. I can do without the anchovy paste but love anything with capers so there's another variation to try, although I think I'd rather eat the yogurt or sour cream than mayonnaise. Still, there's obviously plenty of room to experiment if you've not got or don't like something in the original recipe. The basic idea of cucumbers with vinegar, some cool dairy-like product, and various herbs is a winner.

Chermoulah

I got this recipe from an old copy of Fine Preserving which is annotated by MFK Fisher in the version I have. I tried this particular recipe because she declared it one of the best in the book. Although I've only tried a dozen or so of the recipes, I have to agree. It's green peppers cooked in olive oil and vinegar, with garlic, coriander, and paprika. She says to serve it as an appetizer, which I do. Sometimes I can make a meal of it if I have some good French bread to sop up the juice. Other times I layer the cooked peppers on a sandwich or add them to a salad. I do as she (MFK) suggests, and typically cook up at least two different colors of peppers. Today I used red and green. If you do that, cook them each up separately then combine in a jar.

The warning of botulism is a good one. I guess people sometimes think the oil protects against things from going bad, but botulism thrives without oxygen. The book says to keep them in refrigerator, of course, and to eat them up within 3-4 weeks. As MFK notes, they never last that long anyway around here.

2 peppers
1 cup olive oil
1/4 cup vinegar
4-6 cloves garlic, peeled
2 pinches ground coriander
1/8 tsp of paprika
salt, maybe 1/8 tsp

Seed and devein the peppers, then slice into 1/2" thick slices.

Combine everything in a saucepan, bring to a simmer, and cook for 20 minutes, until the peppers are soft, stirring periodically.

Peppers are on sale around here and this is a fantastically delicious treat! And of course, at the end you're left with some wonderfully flavored oil for salad dressings and whatnot.

Summer Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes, Onion, and Basil

This is one of my favorite dinners in the summer, when I can walk out in the garden and pick the tomatoes just before dinner. My girls won't eat it with the onions so I only put them in when they're gone. I'm not sure about measurements since I just chop enough tomatoes and cook enough pasta that will feed as many as I'm feeding, plus an extra portion for my lunch the next day. I use either mozzarella or Cheddar cheese, depending on what I have handy.

If you want to seed the tomatoes first, cut them in half horizontally. This exposes the seeds and you can just squeeze them gently over the sink or your compost bowl or scoop out the seeds a bit with your thumb while you're squeezing.

Here are my best guesses on measurements for two portions:

2 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
a few leaves chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup chopped onion (optional)
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
salt to taste
1/4 - 1/2 cup cheese, grated or cubed
1/2 package of fettucini or whatever you have on hand

Preferably about an hour before you want to eat, chop the tomatoes and mix with the basil, onion, garlic, olive oil, salt, and cheese. Stir well and let sit.

Cook the pasta. Drain. Mix with the tomatoes. Eat.