First to the pig part----I have no current source of heritage pigs and that limits the cuts of pork that I buy to boston butts (shoulder roast), short ribs and now my go to pork chop replacement, boneless ribs @ $2.99/lb at my butcher shop. My wife and I evenly divide three pieces. I would guess it to be a 6-8 oz portion. They have enough fat to add the flavor that our current crop of commercial pigs is missing.
What made this outstanding was the sauce. If you make this recipe do not miss the lemon zest and juice---that elevates this to an entirely different level.
I have added my own adjustment notes:
Here’s my favorite recipe in Toni Tipton-Martin’s excellent and invaluable “Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African-American Cooking” (2019). It’s a remix of one that the chef Nathaniel Burton collected into his 1978 opus, “Creole Feast: Fifteen Master Chefs of New Orleans Reveal Their Secrets,” and one that Tipton-Martin glossed-up with lemon zest, juice and extra butter, a technique she learned from the restaurateur B. Smith’s 2009 collection of recipes, “B. Smith Cooks Southern-Style.” It’s a dish of smothered pork chops, essentially, made into something glorious and elegant. “The food history of blacks in America has been a story of the food of survival,” she told me in an interview. “We need to start celebrating the food they made at work."
Ingredients
• 4 bone-in pork chops (about 8 ounces each)
• Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
• ½ teaspoon dried thyme leaves
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 very small shallot, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced (about 1 teaspoon)
• 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour (1 tablespoon, seemed perfect, see notes)
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 ½ cups chicken stock, homemade or low-sodium, if store-bought
• 2 tablespoons drained capers
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley, plus more for garnish
• 1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest, plus 2 tablespoons juice
• Hot sauce (optional)
• Approx. ¼ cup of ½ and 1/1
Preparation
1. Dry the chops with paper towels, and season aggressively with salt, pepper and the thyme. Swirl the olive oil into a large skillet, and heat over medium until the oil begins to shimmer. Add chops, and cook until well browned on each side and cooked through, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer chops to a plate, and cover to keep warm.
2. Drain the fat from the skillet, then melt 2 tablespoons of butter in it over medium heat until sizzling. Add the shallot and garlic, and sauté until the aromatics soften, reducing the heat if necessary, about 1 minute. Sprinkle in the flour, and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Whisk in the wine and chicken stock, raise heat to high and bring the liquid to a boil, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Reduce heat to medium-high and cook, uncovered, until the liquid is reduced by half, 7 to 10 minutes.
3. Stir in the capers, parsley, lemon zest and juice and hot sauce to taste (if you’re using it), and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter until it’s melted and the sauce looks smooth. Nestle the pork chops into the sauce, and allow them to warm up for a couple of minutes, then serve, pouring sauce over each pork chop to taste. Garnish with more fresh parsley.
Cooking Notes
Wondering if it should be 2 Tablespoons of flour. The sauce is really thin when the directions are followed.
In response to Vanessa: 2 teaspoons create a sauce. 2 tablespoons (in conjunction with 1 1/2 cups of stock and 1 cup of white wine would create more of a gravy.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis
Heritage hogs are breeds that used to be commonly raised. The current commercial pig has been selectively bred to benefit the producer and marketers. The result is a product that isn't very tasty. One of the primary focuses in that breeding was to reduce fat--fat is a bad thing in the mind of the marketers and apparently consumers. However, fat is the source of much of the flavor and the current breeds exhibit almost zero marbling.
I have a farmer who I have bought 1/2 hogs from who raises Berkshire hogs in fields that are mixed woodland and pasture. The result is far more taste and juicy meat. The downside is that I cannot always get one when I need it.
Substituting the boneless short ribs from commercial hogs for pork chops is not a perfect solution but it does go a long way.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis
If they didn't smell so damn bad I'd raise a couple for the freezer. And lots of other freezers, too.
On a slightly different note, the property where my brother deer hunts is over run with ferral pigs. I wonder how they might compare. Probably not as much fat.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible - Arthur C. Clarke
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