Roasted Cider Sage Pork Chops

Won't you consider the pork chop?

Actually, I suspect that most of you who read this blog probably give the pork chop ample consideration. Its just me.  I don't.  So I guess I'm really just talking to myself here.   Up until now I have failed to show much consideration for this particular cut of pig.   That's changing.

When it comes to pig parts it has always been the pork tenderloin that has had my eternal gratitude.  Lets face it, a pork tenderloin (with any marinade at all) in a 500 degrees oven for 20 minutes (exactly!) and you have a perfectly prepared dinner entre every time.   Pork ribs earned my finger-licking respect many years ago when I discovered that slow cooking at very low temperatures would deliver fall-of-the-bone deliciousness every time with very little possibility of cooking time errors.  Respect.

Ham is the food of celebrations and offers up its bounty in many forms of leftover all week long.  Who doesn't love "ham week"?    And bacon, well, who won't admit to worshiping bacon? (Observant Jews and Muslims excepted, of course.)

But the pork chop? Meh. Not so much.  Pork chops until now only succeed in arousing my feeling of indifference.    

This culinary ennui may be the result of not having many quirky stories relating to relate pork chops.  Unlike most of my personal favorites herein, the pork chop doesn't remind me of my childhood in any significant way.  This is because pork chops weren't a part of our family meal rotation, moreover, I can't recall even a single instance of my mother making them for us.

My grandmother didn't have any celebrated pork chop recipes either although I do recall one uncelebrated attempt.  One morning during an overnight visit to grandmother's she served  up the greasiest chops I've ever seen  - for breakfast!  The meal also featured fried eggs, biscuits, and country gravy - a heart stopping way to start the day if there ever was one.   Her breakfast choice that day never made any sense to us and when questioned about it later she  explained away the pork chops by calling them "fancy bacon".

We were unconvinced and so chalked it up to some form of aggressive messaging from grandma to our mother, who had prepared a list of culinary do's and don'ts to follow while we were being watched for the weekend.

Grandmother never made them again.   So, just as we would never answer the riddles of the odd tasting ketchup and green mustard, Grandmother's unexplained pork chop episode would never be fully explained with any satisfying detail.  Just like your  average episode of "Lost".

Restaurant pork chops could never seduce me either.  I found them mostly to be tough and dry by the time they get to my table.  Perhaps this is due in part from the cook's irrational fear (despite the facts) of poisoning me with trichinosis.  In his mind he isn't serving me tough as nails, dried out pork meat, he is saving me life!

 If the chop is fortunate enough to survive its brining,  broiling, frying, grilling, or which ever  chosen method of preparation it then slathered in some sort of sweet, sugary fruit sauce made with jam-- as if an early dessert is sufficient consolation prize for suffering through overcooked pork.

Why again would I want to make these at home?

I went against type and gave chops a try when I happened on them a week at Trader Joe's.  They were offered for sale already frenched in the meat case.  Their tiny little bones sticking out made them look naked, vulnerable and in need of some love.  I felt as if I had found a lonely kitten abandoned in a cardboard box on the street with a note on it that read 'free to good home."    

"Ooooh!  Aren't they cute!   I can't leave those here.  I have to bring them home!"

I didn't really know what I was going to do with them but I knew I had to do something.  Something that did not include any jam to be sure.   Sage fit the bill and the only fruity something something was from the apple juice which boiled out and balanced the vinegar.   Hardly knew it was there!  

The method here is the thing.  Toss the chops into a hot pan in a hot oven and let them do their thing.   Caramelizing on the hot pan in a hot oven seems genius to me as it lets the chops get browned and cooked through on all sides, shortening the cooking time to prevent drying.

Do adjust the cooking time for the thickness of the chops and take them out before they are fully done.  They will sit awhile and no, you won't get trichinosis.  I will make these again now that I am fully considering  the pork chop.

Roasted Cider Sage Pork Chops

 

 

Double Chocolate Bread With Peanut Butter Spread Attending a Housewarming for the Lady Across the Street

I recently attended a special housewarming for Belinda, the lady across the street.

The first time I ever saw Belinda she was wearing her bathrobe and dragging a heavy trash bag down the street to a neighbor's construction dumpster. In her high heels. Brad's infamous party had come and gone without many injuries or any severe property damage and our street actually seemed close to regaining its regular serenity.

Then Belinda moved in -- right across the street to be exact.

When Belinda finally ventured across the street to introduce herself to us she became practically unhinged at learning we were a happily married gay couple.

"Oh my GOD! Faaaabulous!  How could I get so lucky?!"

She winked at me when she said it.  It was as if uttering "fabulous" the way she did she was offering me some code word for  "I'm cool with the gays."  (Actually, it is.  Shhh.)  I marveled at her skill in making something as personal as our marriage into something about her all in under 5 minutes.

"I can't wait until we are best friends! We will be right? I can't wait until you I have my housewarming party and I can get to know you!  Oh, I know we will be dear friends! I will be Grace and you [turning to look at me] ... can be my Will."

Ugh. She seemed to be favoring me so it meant it would be my job this time around to fend off the unwanted Grace in our midst. Its not that I didn't like Belinda. It was just that, um, I didn't like her. At least not in that Grace way.

In the coming days Belinda would be pushy in the face of my ardent disinterest and  quite unwilling to give any notice to all the the verbal and non-verbal cues I was throwing in her direction.

She would just assume that I would know which of her many shoes would go best with her vintage Emilio Pucci knee-length halter dress (the tall white boots and please take off that neck jewelry!)  Or, would I mind giving her an honest opinion of the red semi-permanent hair rinse she had just put through her hair.  (It looked a bit trashy, girl.)    I even turned down her weekly invitations to play $25,000 pyramid with her work friends because that just sounded too much like that other Will and Grace for my comfort.   (I would have won though.)

I was dreading her housewarming party.

What Belinda needed I just didn't have the time to give her.  I already have a Grace.  In fact, I am lucky enough to have more than one and let me tell you, they take time.  Graces are great. I love my Graces. (Or is it "Greece"?) I have several Greece and I'm not looking for any more at this particular time.

There is only so much time in my day.and so fended her off.  My bad.

Her housewarming invitation never came.  Then I heard from Brad that  Belinda was dealing with an impending divorce and it had now finally come through.  Brad told us it was very messy and involved physically violent situations with her husband.   The purchase of the condo just across the street was her escape.

Nobody had heard from her in a few days;  I felt horrible for enjoying the neighborhood quiet so much.  Once I heard about the divorce my newfound serenity transformed into anxiety.  More than a bit of shame too.

Was Belinda ok?  Did she need a shoulder to cry on?  Did she need a...[wince]... "Will" to coax her out of her depression?

I realized that Belinda would probably need some kindness about now.   Maybe she'd need a party?  A housewarming party!   I should have known better than to not find some time for someone who was just asking for a friend.  Rather than stand on ceremony I decided I would go across the street and see what I could do to lift her spirits.  I'd throw Belinda a housewarming party.  Just the two of us.

While thumbing through my copy of Baked Explorations by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito I spied this recipe for Double Chocolate Loaf with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Spread.    Chocolate and Peanut Butter seemed just the type of kindness a woman distraught over her divorce might appreciate.  Anywhere there is peanut butter its a party, right?

Besides, I suggest to you that when you aren't quite sure what to say to someone in need, baked goods will find the right words for you.    Baked's authors suggest that this particular loaf is the "ultimate gift" and so they suggest doubling the recipe.  I did.

The Universe was certainly sending me a message.  Make chocolate loaf and go on a neighborly visit.

I wrapped up a still-warm loaf in parchment, put some peanut butter cream cheese in a jar and sheepishly walked across the street, somewhat ashamed that I hadn't been more available earlier.   Maybe if I had she would not be hiding away in the house,  distraught and unable to face the neighbors.

But as I approached the door I could hear loud music.   When the door opened I saw a woman not cowering in despair but rather in the midst of a loud and happy celebration.   A party all by herself!    Even though I had interrupted her good time she invited me in.

Her housewarming for one was now a party of two.  And yes, it stung a bit when I realized that Belinda had time for me to come in but I had not recently shown her the same considerations.

You know what? I had a blast at our housewarming for two!

I presented her with my double-chocolate offering and we toasted her newfound freedom with a bottle of very expensive bubbly.   And then another.  And another.

We played poker, we danced, we looked at pictures and funny videos. We laughed until it hurt and boy did we drink.  We gossiped, we told the stories of our lives. and we drank some more.   It was a housewarming for two but we drank for dozens.  When a lady in 6 inch heels switches from 2 bottles of champagne to tequila shots and can still demonstrate for you a perfect runway walk (with pivot and turn) you pretty much get the idea that she knows her way around a liquor bottle and a good time

Belinda wasn't needy at all.  She was fabulous.  She was starting her life over and very excited about it.   She is rebuilding  and knew just how she wanted it to be and the type of people she wanted in it.

I left feeling nothing but admiration for her.

So the moral of the story here is you should not assume too much about the new people who come into your world.  Take the time to listen and get their stories.  You could really be missing out on someone great.

Belinda came in and tried out for the role of my "Grace" and instead won the part of "Karen".  Cheers Belinda.  Happy housewarming!

(Via "Castro Gays" Tumblr)

Double Chocolate Bread With Peanut Butter Spread 

 

Rosemary Parmesan Crackers

I ran into my old friend Rosemary a couple of weeks ago while shopping at the supermarket. I had rosemary in my shopping basket at the time but that just just a happy coincidence.  Still, I made a joke of it when I saw my old elementary school acquaintance. 

I have a friend name Ginny too but I practically never run into her while buying gin.

Rosemary didn't think the joke was all that funny so I quickly moved the conversation along --even though we don't have a very long list of available topics. We weren't that close to begin with.  Despite this she said she had something "very important" to tell me and invited me to sit for coffee. Right there in the market! 

Rosemary's name isn't really Rosemary. It's Lauren. Just about everybody who knows her from elementary school still calls her Rosemary even though long ago she started asking us not to.  Some things are hard to unlearn once you have learned them. Like using two spaces after a period when typing.

Lauren and I first met when we were 10 years old. The first time I noticed her she was out by herself on the grass field at school all alone, near the back playground fence. Occasionally she would stop her wandering, point her front leg out in front her her, and then sniff and stomp on the grass with her feet. Every five minutes she would lope around in a circle and shake her head as she came to a quick stop.

"That's Lauren," my new friend David explained to me in a rather matter of fact tone. "She's a horse."  

His tone was either meant to communicate what should have been obvious, or instill some sort of assurance that Lauren's behavior was normal.  I didn't know which it was so I didn't ask any more questions. It was accepted fact on the playground that Lauren was a horse during recess.  

One day, a year or so later, Lauren would inform us that her new name was "Rosemary." We were politely asked to call her Rosemary from now on and we obliged. Rosemary seemed like a nice enough name and what did a bunch of 11 year-olds know about the mechanics of name changing anyway?  

Certainly Lauren, er, Rosemary, had cleared this with her parents?  When a horse asks you to call her by a new name you do it.

* * * 

Rosemary and I wouldn't share an actual classroom together until we hit 7th grade math. There she would sit in the back row, sporting her outdated horn-rimmed glasses and never speaking to anyone unless answering the teacher's questions. She would always have a reluctant tone to her voice when called on and forced to speak but her answers were always correct.  Its too bad that 11 year-olds aren't wise enough to regard intelligence as a prerequisite for popularity. If so, Rosemary would have been our school's head cheerleader and class president.  The girl was clearly smart. 

Yet far from being popular, she was an outcast. Her strange, loner-type behavior would ensure it.  

She had stopped being a horse somewhere along the way before high school although every once in awhile she would unthinkingly let out a long, labored breath with her lips fluttering. When this would happen the entire class would titter and she act embarrassed -- before she remembered not to care. Some habits are indeed hard to unlearn.

We would never be actual friend- friends even though she lived only a few suburban blocks from my house.  Mostly I would only see her on our daily walks to and from school.  Rosemary seemed too busy being a loner and I was too busy perfecting what I would later refer to as my 'protective cloak of invisibility.' You can't be bullied in school if they can't see you, right?   

Perhaps it was Rosemary's inability to go unnoticed that allowed me to fade into the background. Horses and invisible boys can only get so close after all.

* * * 

Which brings us back to my encounter with Rosemary, the kind-of-friend, about a month ago while I was shopping for rosemary, the herb. Rosemary, who now always goes by Lauren, told me that she had something important that she had been wanting to tell me for quite some time. Every since Facebook appeared on the scene encounters with former classmates has not been uncommon.Without exception I have found it a pleasant if not a thought provoking exercise. My visit with Lauren (who used to be Rosemary) would pretty much change that. 

She asked me if I remembered the day when I had found her eye glasses on the playground and brought them to her home after school.  It seemed very important to her that I remembered this moment from years ago -- so I felt badly when I couldn't.  It must not have seemed important to me at the time. Why would I remember such a small thing like that from over 35 years ago?

Apparently I had stood outside her front door and rang the doorbell and knocked on the door until she reluctantly answered it. Startled to see me, she took the glasses out of my hand quickly, said thank you and then immediately shut the door in my face. 

I don't remember any of it.

You would think that having a friend shut the door in your face after doing them a kindness would be memorable to a young boy but that is not necessarily so.  I was probably too busy or just too eager to get home to give it much thought. Perhaps I didn't think it was all that much of a kindness at all. At any rate, stand-offish behavior from Rosemary would not have surprised anyone. It was Rosemary after all.  

Lauren said that she remembered that day quite often. In fact, she admitted to thinking about that day every day since. For her, everything changed that day and my brief role made it memorable to her. 

It turns out that Rosemary was not exactly thriving at her home those many years ago.Over coffee Lauren confided in me that her home was quite dark and sometimes violent. Her mother had been physically beaten in front of her several times and Lauren was frequently the target of unrelenting verbal abuse and more infrequent physical abuse by her step-father, a man with uncontrollable anger issues. His brand of discipline would frequently leave bruises and welts that Lauren struggled to hide from her classmates for years. 

Furthermore, Lauren explained to me that when she fantasized about being a horse those many years ago it was because she dreamed of being able to gallop far away from home. Far away where horses played in meadows and had people in their lives that brushed them and took care of them.  So being a horse wasn't random odd-ball behavior from a pre-teen little girl, it was a fantasy of freedom and escape from a horrible home life.

I asked her if changing her name was part of this escapist wish and she nodded her head and revealed to me that "Rosemary" was actually her much older step-sister's name. Lauren had only met her step-sister, the real Rosemary, a few times when her mother had first married her step-father. Rosemary the step-sister never came to visit her father (we know why) and so while Lauren didn't really know her, she wanted to be her.

Because the real Rosemary was somewhere out there, far away from home.

It seems that the day I walked up to her front door, the day I don't even remember, Lauren was in fear of being 'punished' for losing her glasses at school.  She had lost them once before so she looked for them in a panic all afternoon --  she knew from experience that when her step-father found out he would unleash a tirade of verbal and possibly physical abuse.  

Someone would get hurt. Someone usually did.

Rosemary was thinking of how she would kill herself that afternoon. She thought she would simply kill herself before her father discovered the glasses were missing. If she were dead, perhaps her step-father would leave her mother alone this time.

This is the moment when I suddenly showed up at her front door with her glasses in my hand. The moment I don't really remember. 

Lauren doesn't really know if she would have killed herself that day. She actually doesn't think she would have as she doesn't remember thinking about any of the necessary details. She just knows that she was thinking about it at that particular moment and wondering if she should do it. She thought of suicide often in those days so this particular afternoon thought wasn't actually all that unusual.

Apparently my brief and awkward visit was taken as some sort of sign by Lauren.  In that moment she realized that her situation at home wasn't going to last forever.  It dawned on her that someday she would be free of her step-father, that someday she would have friends, and that if she could just hang on, one day she wouldn't have to fear her own home. Or fear being hurt by her step-father.

She stopped thinking about killing herself that day.

It doesn't really matter that I can't specifically remember this day. Perhaps it wasn't even me but some other boy from the neighborhood who brought Lauren her glasses that day.  While she swears it was me Lauren's memory may be playing tricks on her. What matters is somebody did an ordinary kindness for Lauren that day and it ended up playing a significant role in her young life by serving as some sort of talisman of hope for her.  A kindness that would inspire her with strength to hang on and which she would remember for years.

So, for now on when I cook with rosemary (the herb) I will be reminded of the power of a simple human kindness. I will try remember their potential to have positive, often unforeseen consequences in people's lives. I will think about how it is the small, often effortless gestures, the kind that we will surely forget, that can have the greatest potential to impart real meaning -- in ways we will probably never know.

Or, maybe, if you are as lucky as I was, you will sit down to coffee in a supermarket with a kind-of-friend and she will tell you. 

Rosemary Parmesan Crackers

 

 

Navarin Printanier: Spring Lamb Stew

I have a stew problem.  Stew.  Eew.

I hear the word "stew" and immediately relive my experience of opening hundreds of #10 cans of it every Wednesday afternoon while working as a summer camp counselor.  My wrist still aches when I remember the hours it takes to feed an entire camp from a can.  

Each week we were asked to work one day off our regular camp jobs and spend a day in the kitchen working for Big Betty, our camp's (ahem) "Chef".

Its hard to refer to her as a "Chef" these days without choking on my words a bit.  To call yourself a chef you should first have people in the kitchen that you direct but - but when you do direct these minions to open 100 cans of Dinty Moore Stew for your dinner entree, well, you should be forced to abdicate your title.  Don't you think?

So, Wednesday was my day for kitchen work and Wednesday night was stew night.   Like clockwork. Stew, salad, butter and rolls.  Hot fudge sundaes for dessert.  Chef Betty had obviously hoped that campers who had just sugared up on ice cream sundaes would no longer remember the meal they suffered through just minutes earlier.

You'd think with a menu like that I would have spent my Wednesday mornings dicing beef shoulder, quartering potatoes, or at least peeling and slicing bags of carrots so that they could simmer all afternoon, filing the kitchen and dining hall with their enticing and nourishing aromas. .

Nope.  At Big Betty's direction  I spent my Wednesday afternoons opening up hundreds of #10 cans filled with stew,  scooping their contents into big pots and carrying them to the cooking line where Betty's number 2, an even bigger woman named Claudia, would melt down their contents over the stove and pass them on to a  minion who would, in turn, scoop them out onto a sectioned cafeteria tray.

You can only imagine how horrifying this whole experience was to a young, impressionable youth such as myself.  A youth, I might remind you, with particular culinary sensibilities.  

I lost 10 pounds at camp that summer.

So now you know why I have an aversion to stew.  Its not permanent I assure you.  I'm working it out because, well,  I actually really like stew.  Now that I know what it should taste like.    Since stews are just a tick of the gastronomical index away from all manner of elegantly braised dishes that I love. --  Coq au vin, boeuf à la bourguignonne, veal oso bucco, etc..

Seems all I really have to do to enjoy stew is stay away from cans and give it another, more fancy name.   A name you won't see on the side of a can.  A name like Navarin Printanier.

Navarin Printanier
adapted from Dorie Greenspan's "Around My French Table"