The Inaugural Dinner

The first night in our new home, we ate some very delicious eggplant parmigiana my mom had made. But what to make the second night? I knew I'd also want to get some unpacking done, so I couldn't throw myself into a three-hour dinner making extravaganza. But I didn't want some chintzy, hastily assembled dish like salade nicoise or sauteed shrimp, which I'd been considering, and I'm sure would be fine, but not momentous enough for the first home-cooked meal. I could've tried a new recipe from any one of my many cookbooks, but what if it was a dud? That wouldn't be a good omen for the first real meal in a new home. I was pretty much stressed out over dinner, and it wasn't good.

And then, the epiphany: a family recipe. Something I knew how to make by heart; that I'd never screwed up; that was hearty, homey and good; and that we didn't eat all the time but that we always enjoyed. It was Pork Chops and Vinegar Peppers, and it was just the thing.

I grew up loving this dish, with its acidic peppers smoothed out just a bit by chicken stock and pork, with spaghetti on the side. I loved it so much that in third grade, when we were going around the classroom naming our favorite dinners, I proudly said, "Pork chops and vinegar peppers" when everybody else was saying meatloaf and pizza, and got a chorus of ewwws. But I didn't care.

This is a quick meal to put together; the hardest thing might be finding the vinegar peppers, depending on where you live. B&G Foods makes them; the company started in Manhattan in 1889 and apparently has not achieved world domination yet. I guess other peppers would work, but the dish won't really be the same. The peppers in vinegar are tangy and add such a nice punch to the pork. Other than that, things are straightforward: brown chops, saute peppers, add juices, cook until pork is done, serve over spaghetti mixed in with all the juices and lots of parsley.

Hoping this is the beginning of many more delicious, happy meals.--S

Pork Chops and Vinegar Peppers over Spaghetti

Serves 4

4 center-cut pork chops on the bone
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large jar red bell peppers in vinegar
2-4 T fresh parsley, minced plus more for garnish
1/2 c chicken stock
1/2 lb spaghetti

1. Warm 2-3 t olive oil in a large nonstick fry pan. Season pork chops with salt and pepper. Brown chops in pan 1-2 minutes per side on medium high heat. Remove chops from pan.
2. Slice peppers and reserve the vinegar from the jar. Add 2-3 t olive oil to the pan and saute peppers for 5 minutes. Add minced garlic and cook 1 minute. Add stock and 1/4 c reserved vinegar.
3. Return the chops to the pan along with parsley. Cover and simmer on low flame 5-7 minutes, until pork registers 155 degrees or is slightly pink inside. Meanwhile, cook pasta in boiling, salted water until al dente.
4. Place chops and pepper son a serving platter. Toss pasta with liquid from pork chop pan. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with grated parmesan cheese.

Almost Meatless... Unless There's a Juicy Pork Chop Nearby

I know I've been extolling the virtues of eating less meat lately, but I have to confess: there is nothing like a good pork chop. We're lucky enough to live about three blocks from a terrific butcher, an old-world kind of place that carries lots of high-quality organic meats. The pork chops they cut to order are just gorgeous. So you know, if you're going to eat meat, this is the way to do it.

Braised Pork Chops with Savoy Cabbage seemed like a good choice for a rainy winter Sunday. The recipe, from Lidia's Italy, plays on a centuries-old combination; in this rendition, the meat and its juices are used to flavor and cook the cabbage. I'm usually not a huge cabbage fan, finding it kind of stinky and even bitter. Just a few weeks earlier, I'd given it a chance, and was disappointed. But I reasoned that Lidia had never steered me wrong, and at least I was certain the pork would be stellar.

The recipe has you slice the cabbage into inch-and-a-half-wide strips and boil them until tender, about 15 minutes. Next, you heat up some butter and olive oil in a skillet and brown the chops alongside a few rosemary sprigs. Once they're nicely braised, you remove them, and pour some white wine into the skillet, deglazing any caramelization. Toss in a bit more butter and olive oil (I should've known: wine, butter and oil are keys to making cabbage tasty), and then pile in the cooked, drained cabbage. Let almost all the liquid evaporate, and the cabbage shreds start to caramelize, then return the meat to the pan. Cook it all for a few minutes more, and you're set.

There was silence as we tucked in. Fork finally broke it, saying, "Perfect. This is the best pork chop I've ever had." I had to agree. The chops were slightly pink in the center, juicy and--I can't believe I'm writing this, but it's true--succulent. The cabbage was tender and delicious, the rosemary cutting any bitterness and the meat giving it a rich, deep flavor. We ate the cabbage and pork with a spinach salad with hard-boiled eggs and bacon, and some semolina bread. And we ate it all, every last bite.--S

Braised Pork Chops with Savoy Cabbage

serves 6

4 lbs Savoy cabbage
6 T butter
6 T extra-virgin olive oil
6 pork loin chops, on the bone, 2.5 to 3 lbs.
2 t coarse sea salt
2 or 3 small branches fresh rosemary
1 c white wine
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Brings 6 quarts of water to the boil in the large pot. Slice the cabbage head (or heads) in half, and cut out the core completely so the leaves will separate. Discard all tough and torn outer leaves, lay the cabbage halves cut side down, and slice crosswise into strips about 1 1/2 inches wide. Drop all the strips into the water, cover the pot, and return to the boil. Cook the cabbage until tender, about 15 minutes, and drain in a colander.
2. When the cabbage is cooked, put 3 T each of butter and olive oil in the big skillet and set over medium-high heat. Season the pork chops on both sides with salt (about 1 t in all) and lay them in the hot skillet. Drop the rosemary branches onto th epan bottom.
3. Sear the chops on the underside, about 3 minutes, turn, and brown the second side for a few minutes more. The chops should still be rare--if you like them better done, cook a minute or two longer on both sides. Remove to a platter, and keep in a warm spot.
4. Pour the wine into the skillet and bring to a boil, stirring to deglaze any caramelization. Cook for just a minute or so, to dissipate the alcohol, then drop in the remaining 3 T of butter and 3 T of olive oil. Stir well until the butter melts and the liquid is bubbling.
5. Pile the cooked, drained cabbage in the skillet, turning the strips over as they heat and wilt in the pan juices. Sprinkle 1 t salt all over, and cook, tossing and stirring, until the pan is nearly dry and the cabbage shreds are just starting to caramelize.
6. Push aside the cabbage, lay the chops on the pan bottom, and pour in any meat juices from the platter. Still over medium-high heat, cook the chops for 2 or 3 minutes, turning them over once or twice, just until they're heated through. Stir the cabbage so it continues to caramelize and pick up flavor. Season with more salt and some freshly ground black pepper to taste.
7. Serve right from the skillet, or arrange chops and cabbage on a platter and bring to the table.

Recipe courtesy of Lidia's Italy

Fennel and Garlic with Pork

The name of this recipe is Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Fennel Garlic, but I propose renaming it to focus on the fennel and garlic. Don't get me wrong. The pork is succulent and juicy, lightly scented with oregano, and very tasty. But the fennel and garlic? Amazing.

You toss 12 whole garlic cloves, peeled, and fennel bulbs that have been cut into eighths with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast them for 10 minutes in a very hot (475) oven. After 10 minutes, you push the veggies to the side, making way for the tenderloin, which you've rubbed with oil and seasoned with oregano, salt and pepper, and put the sheet back in the oven for another 20 or 25 minutes.

Once the pork is done, you must let it rest for five or so minutes out of the oven, and while that's happening, I dare you not to pick a bit of roasted fennel off the pan for a taste. It's impossible. Fork and I hovered over the resting meat, nibbling at slivers of burnt fennel that had sweetened in the hot oven. And then there was the garlic: browned and crunchy on the outside, sweet-savory and yielding on the inside. It was like garlic candy. And yes, the pork was really good, too, but I'm seriously considering roasting up a pan of fennel and garlic tomorrow, they're that good.--S

Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Fennel and Garlic

12 garlic cloves, peeled
3 lbs fennel bulbs (I used 2 large), fronds and stalks removed, bulbs cored and cut into eighths
3 T olive oil
Coarse salt and ground pepper
2 pork tenderloins (about 1 lb each)
1/2 t dried oregano

1. Preheat oven to 475. On a large rimmed baking sheet, toss garlic, fennel, and 2 T oil; season with salt and pepper. Roast 10 minutes.
2. Rub pork with remaining T oil; season with oregano, salt and pepper. Remove baking sheet from oven, and push fennel and garlic to sides of sheet. Place pork in center, and roast 20 to 25 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in thickest part registers 145.
3. Transfer pork to a cutting board, and let rest at least 5 minutes before thinly slicing. Serve pork with fennel and garlic.

Recipe courtesy of Everyday Food

Run with It

Isn't it nice when you have a string of great culinary days in a row? No bombs, no duds, no curiosity-killed-the-cat expeditions to, say, Olive Garden? (Okay, I'll stop harping on Fork's and my life-altering [in a bad way] experience at OG). I've had a good run since Friday, though it's bound to end around 9AM tomorrow, when I order a sub-par cup of deli coffee before work.

This weekend, however, was just glorious. On Friday evening I tried a recipe from my cousin Kathy, an excellent baker, a Thyme and Cheese Bubble Bread. Intrigued? Kath's explanation:

a regular bread recipe, but you knead shredded monterey jack cheese into the dough. Then you roll the dough into a rectangle and cut it into 50 one-inch squares, roll each square into a ball and dip them in a mixture of thyme, parsley and butter. Then you place each ball in a loaf pan & bake. It’s like pull-apart bread.

As far as breads go, this is probably the coolest-looking one I've ever made: knobs of crusty, buttered bread, flecked with bits of thyme and parsley, mounded over the rim of the loaf pan. The look is trumped by the phenomenal smell: the aroma of freshly-baked bread, cheese and herbs. Its flavor also gets high mark, amazing out of the oven, but like a lot of breads, a little less exciting when cooled. Fork ate it day-old, and I knew he wasn't getting the full effect.

He did get to enjoy a piping-hot and delicious meal on Saturday. At the suggestion of my friend, Cara, I prepared Giada De Laurentiis' Pork Chops alla Pizzaiola. it's a simple dish: you brown bone-in pork chops, remove them and keep them warm under foil, then saute sliced onions, diced tomatoes (with their juices), herbs and some red pepper flakes in the pan. After 15 minutes, you return the pork chops to the pan with the veggies, get 'em nice and hot, and voila. Spicy tomatoes on top of browned chops: how can you really go wrong? This meal was augmented (actually, who am I kidding, it was dwarfed) by a sublime bottle of Caymus 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon (pictured at the top of this post, with the pork chop) from my cousin Mike. We savored every sip.

Earlier on Saturday, I visited a landmark purveyor of homemade pastas on W. Houston St., Raffetto's. The place is family owned and operated, has been for 100 years, and the original owner's grandsons now help customers. Their mother works the register. Happy shoppers can choose between 18 varieties of ravioli and 16 pastas, including chestnut, saffron or squid ink. Most of their business is wholesale, about 300 local restaurants and hotels serve Raffetto's pasta, including Il Mulino and Patsy's. Good enough for me. I had a pound of bucatini weighed for me, and also picked up some bocconcini mozzarella and a loaf of semolina.

Sunday brought a visit to the Guggenheim to check out the Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso exhibit (we also checked out Bill and Chelsea Clinton, who were at the museum, too!). Fork and I had seen a number of the works on display at the Prado and the Reina Sofia on a visit to Madrid in 2005, but it was fabulous to see them grouped like this, periods overlapping, themes uniting--all in the stunning building that is the Gugg. After strolling about 30 blocks, we cabbed it the rest of the way home, and later ordered from one of our favorite pizzerias, Totonno's. The legend probably deserves its own post, but I can say it was the perfect ending to a very tasty few days.--S