On Why I'm the Jew least likely to keep kosher, or Delicious Braised Pork Chops

I come from a long line of proud, pork-eating Jewish women. From my grandmother, who is said to have placed a roast ham in the refrigerator every time her orthodox father-in-law visited (so there wouldn't be any ambiguity about the trafe status of the kitchen), to my mother who never met a BLT she didn't like, we are pig-meat lovers. I've mostly given up feeling bad about it, but sometimes I get a little sad and then I need to comfort myself with something delicious, like a piece of bacon.

Tonight I was facing a bit of a cabbage crisis. I had purchased two large heads - a green and a red - anticipating a kimchi-o-rama, but have yet to get up the gumption for that process. Rumors were starting to spread about the deteriorating state of the green and and I knew something had to be done. As is so often the case in my house, pork came to the rescue! I pulled some chops out of the freezer, rustled up some apples and onions, and created what I'm calling:

Pawk Chawps and Apple/Cabbage Braise

2 inch-think pork chops (really all quantities are loose and goosey here - cook as many chops as you want)
about 3 cups of shredded cabbage, mix of red and green
about 2 cups of sliced onions, again mix of red and white
3 large cloves of garlic, chopped
2-3 apples quartered and sliced
1 cup white wine
3/4 cup prune juice (yes! the secret ingredient)
1/2 tsp of thyme
1/2 tsp of sage
salt and pepper
vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 300. Start by sauteeing the onions, garlic, cabbage and apples in a large dutch oven that has a close fitting lid. You may have to do this in batches - I did all the onions and garlic first, and then the cabbage and apples. They should be softened, but don't need to be fully cooked. Remove from the pan to a bowl.

Add some more oil to the dutch oven and get it nice and hot. Brown the pork chops well on both sides - about 3 -4 mins per side, depending upon how big they are. Again, you may need to do this in batches and you don't want to fully cook the chops, just get them nicely browned. Remove to a plate.

With the heat still on, add the wine and prune juice to the pot and stir well to deglaze . Now add the veg back to the pan and mix well with the sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let cook for a minute or two. Turn off the heat. Add the chops back to the pan, tucking them into the veg so they are covered. Put the lid on the dutch oven, and put the whole thing into the oven. Roast for 80 to 90 minutes, checking after 60. The meat should be tender enough to pull away with a fork. Taste the vegetables and sauce for seasoning, adding more salt or pepper if necessary. Serve the chops with lots of veg and sauce. This would be great with potatoes or spaetzle.

This dish is a great example of flavor balance. You've got the bitter with cabbage, the sour with the wine, sweet with apples and prune juice, salt-y with salt, umami with meat. The onions and garlic add depth and sweetness, too. Most often when I find a dish is lacking flavor, it's a problem with sweetness or sourness (occasionally with fat, but that's rarely a problem with my cooking!). It took me a long time to recognize how important sweet-balance is to getting good flavor, but once I caught on to that, I started experimenting with all kinds of ways to add sweetness and depth to my dishes. Juices are great for this, but also dried fruit (raisins or prunes would have been interesting addition to this braise). Jams and jellies are also fun to experiment with, especially when reducing a sauce, as they can really add a depth of flavor that's later hard to pinpoint in the dish. So next time you've got a soup or stew that seems to be missing something, try foraging in the fridge or cabinet for a touch of fruity sweetness. You'll often find it was just what you needed.

And before I sign off for the night, let's raise our glasses to pork - l'chaim!

Mushroom Soup

I happened to find myself with about 2lbs of fresh mushrooms in the fridge, and anyone who has ever purchased large amounts of fresh mushrooms knows they create a ticking clock in the back of the mind - dawdle just a bit too long, and one is left with a nasty brown slime where once there were lovely fungi.

So I rushed home from my day of mentoring, cogitating upon things to do with mushrooms. I decided upon a soup. Not the cream-of-mushroom soup of my childhood, which tasted great poured over chicken parts and baked (see the recipe for that further below), but something where the star vegetable was chunkier and featured more prominently in the dish. I was out of onions and heavy cream, but had some fresh rosemary in the fridge and (hurrah!) some bacon in the freezer. The whole thing was quite delicious, though not as thick as I wanted. The recipe below is pretty much exactly what I did, but you might use heavy cream our more roux to get that thicker version.

Mushroom soup

4 slices of bacon, cut into chunks
3/4 lb cremini mushrooms, sliced, stems reserved
3/4 lb shitake mushrooms, sliced, stems reserved
4-6 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced thin (reserve one peeled and whole)
3-4 cups water
chicken bouillon mix (I used the stuff that comes in a jar)
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
4 Tbsp butter
2/3 c whole milk
2 Tbsp flour

In a small saucepan, simmer the mushroom stems and the whole clove of garlic for about 20 mins to make a mushroom stock.

In a large dutch oven or soup pot, brown the bacon until the pieces are crispy. Remove the crispy bacon and drain on a paper towel. Add the sliced mushrooms and garlic to the bacon fat and cook over a medium low heat until the mushrooms are just soft. Add the rosemary and cook a bit more. Strain the mushroom stock through a sieve and add the chicken bouillon, about 2 tsps of it. Add the stock mixture to the mushrooms and cook all that for about 5-10 mins.

Now add about 2 Tsps of butter and the milk to the mushrooms, and get that simmering. Melt the remaining butter in a heavy saucepan and then add the flour. Cook, stirring, for about 3 mins. Add liquid from the mushroom pot in 1/2 cupfuls to the flour mixture, stirring vigorously. When you have a thick sauce, scrape all that back into the soup pot and cook for another 10 mins or so over medium hot. Taste and check for salt (I didn't need any because the bacon and bouillon together were already salty). Serve garnished with the crispy bacon.

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When I was in grade school, my mother decided to pursue and MBA and started attending classes every Monday night. This left my brother, my stepfather and I to trade off cooking duties. We stuck with admirable consistency to a rotation of the same dishes: my brother made macaroni and cheese with sliced hot dogs on top, my stepfather made 3-alarm chili, and I made chicken with mushroom sauce, rice and peas. Eventually my mother abandoned her plans for higher education. However, I've never forgotten the recipe for that chicken, which is quite tasty, if not exactly wholesome.

Baked Chicken with Mushroom Cream Sauce

1 chicken cut into individual pieces (actually, this is even better with just chicken thighs - I think the recipe would easily cover 6-8 of them)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 small container heavy cream
salt, pepper, paprika

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wash the chicken pieces, pat them dry, and salt and pepper them. Place them skin side up in a baking dish. Mix the can of soup with the heavy cream and resist the urge to start eating this by the spoonful. Pour the soup mixture over the chicken and sprinkle the whole dish with paprika. Bake for 1 hour, or until the chicken is done. Serve with white rice and peas. Make your brother do the dishes.