Caramelized Pork chops and Apples

 

This one came from the New York Times Cooking pages. We had some Miso sauce from previous recipes so when this one appeared on my Facebook page we put in an order of pork chops with our regular weekly delivery.  Most of this was done in one skillet, although the miso was mixed with brown sugar and cider vinegar separately before it was added. We also had a side of mashed potatoes and paired this with a Chardonnay from Westport Rivers.

Chicken Enchiladas

 

This recipe came from our Best Simple Suppers for Two cookbook. The original intention was to make it for Valentine's Day, but we decided to roast a whole chicken instead for our romantic February 14 dinner. Since this recipe called for shredding a prepared rotisserie chicken it made more sense to use the leftover chicken for this one. The recipe says this has a prep time of 10 minutes, which I found wildly inaccurate. It took about twice that long to shred the chicken, chop the onion and garlic, cook it all with the other ingredients, then divide, and assemble. 

Full ingredient list includes:

4 six-inch corn tortillas (next time I will use six tortillas)

2 T olive oil

1 garlic clove (minced)

1 small onion (chopped)

2 cups shredded cooked chicken

1 can black beans (rinsed and drained)

1 can diced tomatoes

juice of one lime

1 cup corn kernals

1 t. cumin

1 c. enchilada sauce

2 cups shredded pepper jack cheese

While sautéing the onion and garlic in our indispensable cast-iron skillet I charred the tortillas in a dry cast iron pan on the stovetop. I added the chicken and beans to the skillet and seasoned with some salt and pepper. Once the chicken and beans were warmed through I removed half the mixture to a separate bowl and mixed half the corn, half the tomatoes, half the cumin, half the lime juice, and half the enchilada sauce into what was left in the skillet and sprinkled a third of the cheese on top. Two tortillas were placed on top of this, and then the rest of everything (except the cheese) was mixed together in the bowl with the remaining chicken and bean mix, and then put over the tortillas. A third of the cheese was added, and then the other two tortillas followed by the last of the cheese. This was all baked in the skillet (with its lid) at 350 for 14 minutes. We topped our enchiladas with sour cream.

A spicy, flavorful meal with a lot of texture. We both liked this, although it wasn't especially simple. It had a lot of ingredients, a lot of steps, and created a lot of dishes. We will likely have this again, but I will save it for a weekend meal next time.

CodFish ChowderSoup

Thanks to our resident librarian, we knew that yesterday was National Homemade Soup Day -- which was perfect for the record-setting cold we were expecting (and received). In preparing this blog post, I noticed that it has also been Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, but the aforementioned conditions made my usual Saturday gingerberry waffles a better choice.

In addition to finding the holiday, Pamela found just the right resource -- the Soup Cookbook from the Jean Childress Country Kitchen collection. More a pamphlet than a book, this publication is 32 pages (that is, eight sheets folded and stapled) and is apparently difficult to find even on sites that carry other works by this New England writer.

Having already intended to pick up some seafood for the day's main meal, we quickly settled on the recipe entitled "Oven Baked Fish Chowder" even though I usually prefer shellfish chowders to fishy fish chowders.

Preparation was simple. I preheated the oven to 375F and arranged the racks so that a Dutch oven (that is, a large, oven-safe covered pot) would fit. 

I then set the pot on the counter and added most of the items from the ingredient list (my choices and variations in parenthesis):

• 2 pounds cod or haddock, cut into bite-sized pieces (I chose 1 pound cod and applied kitchen math to all other ingredients; original quantities are shown below, so cooks should do their own math)
• 12-ounce can evaporated milk
• 4 potatoes, unpeeled and cut into chunks (as I usually do, I partly peeled some Yukon golds)
• 1/4 cup celery leaves (we opted to exclude this, given the tiny quantity would use)
• 1 bay leaf (I used a small one)
• 4 whole cloves 
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 tsp dried dill (I used a bunch of fresh dill, chopped)
• 1/4 tsp black pepper (I used more than this)
• 2-1/2 tsp salt (I used less than this)
• 1/2 cup dry white wine (see below)
• 2 cups boiling water (I set this on the kettle while chopping and measuring the rest)

I simply placed stirred all this together gently and placed the covered pot in the oven for one hour at 375F.  After about half an hour, the aromas began wafting into the rest of the house, reminding us that this meal was now preparing itself.

Meanwhile, I gently heated light cream (recipe calls for 2 cups, so I heated 1 cup) on the warming zone of the stove top. Any way of getting the temperature close to that of the soup without scalding it would do. 

After an hour, I stirred in the warmed cream and chopped some parsley for a garnish. I added Tabasco to my serving (this is chowder, after all) and served it with some buttered crusty baguette from our favorite fishmonger. Kyler's Catch is of course the only place I would go to for cod, and they usually have some yummy bread to go with whatever seafood we are having. 

This was both tastier and more photogenic than I expected.

The recipe purports to serve 8, which seems correct. Divided in half, we had plenty for the two of us, and enough leftover for a lunch. I used only 2 ounces of white wine in the soup, so the rest of the bottle served as our beverage. Langhe Doc Bianco Dragon was both a good ingredient and a perfect pairing. 

Some folks use only cheap or leftover wine for cooking, and sometimes we do that. But more often we use what we are drinking in what we are cooking, and we never regret this. I had selected this wine for the label when browsing our new favorite wine store, not realizing until later that the Luigi Baudana vineyard had named the wine in honor of its label, which had been the last work of their beloved designer Gianni Gallo. This is a white wine from Barolo, a region I had associated only with exquisite reds.