How It All Started

Bob Phillips

The title of this blog was inspired by one of my Spanish professor's at Miami University of Ohio, Dr. Robert Phillips, who died in the e...

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Colonel's Apple-Stuffed Pork Chops, adapted for Sandy

About a year ago I wrote a post entitled "Oddly, I'm looking forward to reading this..." about a (then) forthcoming "food autobiography" of Colonel Sanders (of KFC fame). Last week I remembered the post, and did a bit of internet searching to find out if the book had been published yet. It had. Online. And for free. The catch is, you have to "Like" KFC on Facebook to get it.  I am pretty selective about what I like on Facebook, especially anything corporate, especially corporations I don't actually like. I was given the option, though, of making my "like" not visible to others, and so I downloaded the book (184 pages, including about 50 pages of recipes). I have not yet read the autobiography part, but I did browse through the recipes and noticed Apple-Stuffed Pork Chops, and we had recently ordered pork loin chops from Crescent Ridge Farm, which delivers our milk each week. We could not even remember the last time we had pork chops it is such a rare meal in our house, so we knew we had to make it good. We also have had a lot of apples lately, delivered in our CSA farm box this month, so this recipe was a good match of our local farm deliveries. We also knew that Hurricane Sandy might have caused our power to out at any time, and the recipe calls for cooking the chops for an hour in the oven. We decided to use our covered indispensable cast-iron skillet and cook on the gas stovetop instead, which was good, because our power did go out in the middle of cooking. These did not take long to prepare, and James and I working together had them ready for cooking in about 20 minutes. I chopped the apples and onions and cooked them in butter to soften. James mixed bread crumbs and fresh parsley (he braved the storm and got it from our garden!) and cut pockets into the chops. We then combined the bread and parsley mix with the apple and onion mix and added a bit of apple sauce (the recipe called for apple juice, but we didn't have any, and were not about to go out in the storm for that.) and stuffed the chops with it. The chops were then coated with flour and placed in the hot skillet and browned on each side. Then we turned down the heat, added more apple pieces and let them cook, covered, for about an hour.  Perfect. These were tender, and tasted like autumn. Eaten by candlelight, while the winds whipped and the rains came down, and paired with a South African Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon "Le Bonheur" this meal was cozy and romantic.

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