Apple-Cranberry Stuffed Pork Chops

I don't know exactly where, when or how I obtained the recipe on which I based tonight's dinner, but the magazine page I worked from indicates that it's a Redbook from April 2008.  I wouldn't be surprised if I've really had it sitting around that long -- as we had recently cleaned out the recipe book; getting rid of stuff we'd probably never make, and singling out those that we needed to actually, finally try soon.  Anyways, this is the dinner I cooked, modified to our tastes, what we had on hand, and (we think, some better) ingredient choices:

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup finely chopped dried cranberries
• 1/3 cup finely chopped celery
• 3/4 cup finely chopped onion
• Dried sage, about 2 teaspoons
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 Granny Smith apple
• 3/4 cup shredded mild cheddar cheese
• 6 one-inch thick boneless center-cut pork chops
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1 and 1/2 cups apple cider
• 2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard with honey (Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?")
• Salt and Pepper

PROCESS:

Using a sharp knife held parallel to the board, cut a pocket in each pork chop, leaving three edges in tact.  Set them aside.

Melt 1 Tablespoon of the butter over medium heat in a large nonstick skillet.  Then add the onions, celery, cranberries, garlic, sage, and a little salt.

Cook it down for a few minutes until it starts to soften and become translucent.

Then add the apples.

After a few more minutes, when the apples look cooked and a little soft, turn off the heat and stir in the cheese.

Stuff each pork chop with as much as it will hold.

I found that, even though it looked like way too much overall, there was just enough stuffing to fill them all quite plentifully.  Season the chops with salt and pepper.

Melt the other Tablespoon of butter in the now empty skillet, again over medium heat, and add the chops, being careful not to let the stuffing spill out.

Flip the over after about 4 minutes to cook on the other side.

After 4 minutes cooking on the second side, add the chicken stock to the pan.

Let it cook for a few more minutes until they are done, turning the chops over once more if you like.  I also chose to cover them loosely with a pot lid, to help the cooking along.

Transfer the chops to tin foil, and cover to keep warm.

What you should have left in the pan at this point is chicken stock, and maybe some bits of stuffing that fell out.  Now, add the apple cider and the  mustard, and whisk it all together.

Bring it to a full boil, and let the sauce reduce down to about half to one-third of its original volume.

Finally, serve each chop up with a spoonful or two of the sauce.  We had ours, as you can see, with steamed carrots.

This was very, very yummy.  What else can I say?  you should try it.  :)

Real New England BBQ

Real New England BBQ?  Yes, I said "New England" BBQ, because that's where we live.  ;)

We are big BBQ fans -- which in case you don't know is not the same as "cooking out."  Texas, Carolina, Memphis, Kansas City, you name it.  It's all good.  And while there are a slight few worthy restaurants near us for this type of food, it's still hard....very hard....to find good BBQ around us.  So, why not make our own, right?

What we have for you in today's third foodventure installment (can you tell it's a catch up day on the blog?) is yet another Alton Brown recipe.  He calls it AB-BQ, and while it's time consuming, it's easy peasy.  Here's how we did it (of course we didn't stick exactly to the recipe)....

YOU WILL NEED:

• 3 quarts water
• 12 ounces kosher salt
• 8 ounces  molasses
• 8-10 pound boneless pork butt (We only used about 3 pounds, because we're only 2 people and also that's the size we found at our local supermarket)
• Special Equipment:  A smoker and 4 ounces of hickory or oak wood chunks

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

1.  Place the water, salt, and molasses in a large container and stir until the salt dissolves.  Add the pork butt to the brine and weigh it down to make sure it is completely submerged.  Alton suggests filling a zip top bag with 2 cups of the brine and laying it on top of the pork to accomplish this, but we opted instead to lay a couple of small plates on top of the pork -- works just as well.

2.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Remove the pork from the brine, and pat dry.

3.  Heat your smoker to around 225 degrees F.  Add the wood chunks, and place the pork into the smoker.  AB's recipe didn't call for it, but since our smoker has a separate tray for liquid, Hubby filled it mostly with water and then added a 12-ounce can of Coke to the water.  In it went to the smoker.

4.  Cook until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees F, or 4 to 5 hours.  We didn't use a thermometer, and since our pork butt was a lot smaller than what AB's recipe calls for, we just smoked it for four hours.  Note: you may need to add more charcoal or wood chips throughout the process, depending on how long you soaked your chips, the temperature outside, and how fast things burn off.

5.  A bit before you go to take the meat out of the smoker, heat your oven to 300 degrees F.  Wrap the pork in aluminum foil and transfer to a pan with high enough sides to catch any drippings (we don't want no messes in the oven, now do we?).  Place on the center rack and cook until the pork reaches an internal temperature of at least 200 degrees F, anywhere from 3 to 5 hours.

6.  Remove from the oven and rest, covered for 30 minutes before serving, pulling, or otherwise messing with it.  This is what ours looked like after resting:


Dayam, right?

 

Look at that caramelization!  Mmmmmm.



And the smoke ring.  Ooooooh!

7.  Use two forks to pull the pork apart.

So.  freaking.  good.  We served it with garlic-chive mashed potatoes, buttered corn, and a sliced garden fresh tomato.  The sauce that you see on top here was whipped together by Hubby.  Unfortunately, like most of his rubs and sauces, no measurements were done, but we can tell you that it contains ketchup, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, tamari (that's gluten free soy sauce), garlic powder, apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper, and that he cooked it on the stove to reduce it to a desired consistency.  No worries, though, sauces are a personal thing and you should make yours (if you even want one) to your own liking.

BBQ Pulled Pork and Buttery Cornbread

In my last post I mentioned how Hubby and I spent Sunday doing some low and slow bbq style cooking, including the brisket that I talked about there. Well, also whipped up during our lazy, rainy afternoon was some most excellent Slow Cooker Pulled Pork and Buttery Cornbread (as is customary you will find the recipes that we based our adventures on at the links). Both of these were super easy and required little attention. Here are our versions, as usual slightly altered from what we found online:

PULLED PORK

Ingredients

• 4 pounds of pork tenderloin
• 24 fluid ounces of root beer
• Homemade bbq sauce (Hubby’s recipe consisted of approximately 12 ounces ketchup, 6 ounces molasses, 6 ounces Worcestershire sauce, a tablespoon or two of garlic power, a tablespoon or two of onion powder, a half-tablespoon of cayenne pepper, and a half-tablespoon black pepper)

Directions

Place the pork tenderloin in a large crock pot along with the root beer. Cover and cook on low until well done and the pork shreds easily, about 5 to 6 hours.

Shred the meat with two forks and mix it with the bbq sauce.

Like a lot of barbecue that isn’t of a typical Carolina style, this one was all about the sauce. We tasted the meat before mixing it with the sauce, and truthfully, couldn’t quite discern the root beer much, if at all. Therefore, we don’t know that it was necessary to use root beer per se, and perhaps any liquid of your choice would have done. Once it was coated in the sauce, though, damn was it good. All those kudos go to Hubby for the sauce he created. Sauces and rubs are, after all, his forte.

BUTTERY CORNBREAD

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 and 2/3 cups milk
• 2 and 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 4 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 ear of corn, raw, kernels removed

Directions

Preheat your oven to 400-degrees.

In a mixing bowl (we used a stand mixer), cream the butter and sugar.  Combine the eggs and milk in another bowl. In a third bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt.

Add the wet and dry ingredients to the creamed butter/suger mixture alternately until everything is incorporated.

Dump in the raw corn kernels and give it one last twirl.

Pour the batter into a greased 13x9 dish and Bake at for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cut into squares and serve warm or cold. 

I'll tell you what -- the name of this cornbread did *not* lie.  It was super-buttery and delicious.  A lot of times I will spread butter onto my cornbread before eating it -- that was wholly unnecessary with this one.  =)

Apple Cider Marinated Pork Chops

Last night, we did another Autumn-themed meal, using up some cider and apples.  It's not really anything too special, but a win nonetheless:


This dish started the night before last, after we went food shopping and came home with (among other things) two thick-cut, bone-in pork chops.  Hubby whipped up a marinade of apple cider, cloves, and freshly grated nutmeg (perhaps salt and pepper, as well, but I don't know because I wasn't watching)....and it all sat in the fridge overnight.  Come dinner time last night, and they were deliciously ready to go.

Cooked off in a super hot cast-iron grill pan....

....with a side of steamed carrots....

....and a side of green beans sautéed in a bit of olive oil with salt, pepper, sliced fresh garlic, and almond slivers....

....plus we boiled down the marinade (adding a cornstarch slurry, salt, pepper, a bit of brown sugar and a pat of butter) to make a gravy to go on top of the chops....

It was all quite super yummy.  But just wait until you see what we had for dessert afterwards (that's where the using up of some apples -- not just cider -- comes into play)!  Post coming soon.

:)

A Delicious Autumn Food Experiment

Inspired by a seasonal special dish that he had at Polcari's last week (Slow Oven Braised Cider Marinated Pork and Creamy Risotto), Hubby emailed me the other day with an idea that he had for what he called a "Food experiment."  He wrote:

I wonder how good this would be-

Mulled cider- marinated pork loin medallions over

Adobo/Bourbon sweet potato puree.

I wonder if the sweet/smoky bourbon would work with the smoke/heat of the adobo. And if that DOES work, how well it would play against the pork loin.

And yes, this is all out of my head.

Even better... I wonder how it would taste with wild boar.

Well, we are wondering no more.  We didn't have time to pick up any wild boar, so we did it with pork loin.  Here's what we ended up with....

Apple Cider Marinated Pork Loin Medallions with Apple-Cider-Bourbon-Adobo
Sweet Potato Mash, an Apple-Cider-Bourbon Reduction, and Adobo

We don't have exact nutritional information for this meal, because we were sort of winging it, but no matter -- it was fantastic nonetheless.  Kudos to Hubby, as the concept was all his.  And all gluten-free to boot!  As Gordon Ramsay would say, I would be happy to pay money for this in a restaurant.  :)

Hubby says if you want the exact recipe with seasonings and all, you have to come here and he will cook it for you.  Lol.

The money shot (a/k/a the perfect bite):