Sooo, new cookbook? New recipes! A particularly good cookbook it is: The Commonsense Kitchen: 500 recipes + Lessons for a Handcrafted Life by Tom Hudgens (Chronicle Books, 2010). A beautifully pictureless thick brick of a cookbook -- I LOVE IT! Bibliophile Friday just turned into Bibliophile-any-day-of-the-week-I-darn-well-please... And my first recipe attempt out of it was a huge success, so I am going to share it with you. !
Apple-Marinated Pork Chops
adapted from The Commonsense Kitchen -- prepare 1 day ahead, serves 3
3 center-cut pork chops, about 1-in thick, a little fat left on
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 flavorful apple (I used Gala), unpeeled, thinly sliced
1/4 small red onion (sweet, or go for yellow), thinly sliced
1 cup apple cider
Rub the pork chops with salt and pepper. Place the apple slices over the top and the bottom surfaces of each chop, put the chops in a shallow bowl, and scatter the onion over them. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap down on the surface of the chops, and refrigerate overnight.
Set them out at room temperature about an hour before cooking. Remove and reserve the apples and onions. Pat the chops dry with a paper towel.
Heat the olive oil in a wide skillet over medium-high heart and brown the chops for about 4 minutes on each side, or just until they feel firm when pressed with a finger (the ones I got were even thicker than an inch, so they took quite a bit longer. Just keep an eye, don't get impatient and turn the heat up). If they don't seem cooked, continue cooking for a few minutes more on lower heat. They are thoroughly cooked, but still juicy, when they have reached an internal temperature of 150 degrees F. Remove the chops to a clean plate.
Get the skillet heated back up on medium-high heat, and pour off any fat left in the skillet. Add the apples and onions and pour in the apple cider. Bring to a boil, scraping the browned, flavorful bits from the bottom of the skillet with a wooden spoon and letting them dissolve in the cider (I used a nonstick skillet and there wasn't much of this to be had). After everything has boiled for about a minute, strain out the apples and onions if desired -- but they're good in too! Boil until the liquid is reduced to a thin syrup, just a few tablespoons. Pour over the warm chops and serve.
I like to use the paper they wrap the meat in at the counter as a work surface. Rub in the salt and pepper; use a chopping board to cut up all the apples and onions.
Layer thin slices of a sweet, crispy apple over the top and bottom surfaces... I chose a Gala apple because it's super sweet.
The Commonsense Kitchen calls for yellow onions, but I'm a through-and-through red onion fan. I love how sweet they are, and I was looking for sweet pork chops. Plus, they're just nice to look at. ;)
Brown the pork chops in a pan -- these chops were really hefty, so they took a bit of time to cook, but the heat was low and they remained juicy inside.
Boiling the apple cider with the apple and onion made a marvelous, thin syrup. I didn't want to throw any of the apple or onions out -- I thought it would be even better to pair with the pork than just the syrup alone. I wasn't disappointed.
Yum-yummy. :D Enjoy!
...I'm off to the midnight showing of the very. last. Harry Potter movie. There are some pretty die-hard fans I'm going with -- Should be a fun (long..) night. Much to report, I'm sure. ;)
I don't dwell too much -- or try not to -- on things that happen at work when I am not at work. I make an effort to keep work separate from life outside of work -- which is easy enough to do when one works retail because you can pretty easily leave the store and leave it behind for the day. But it is worth mentioning that when things get stressful at work, it's harder to shake off that feeling when you know it's going to be stressful again the next time you go in. I mean, it's no small thing to work 40+ hours per week somewhere; it's a big chunk of your life that can affect your attitude hugely if things aren't going the way they're meant to.
It was like that for about a month at the bookstore as they/we were busy implementing all sorts of new technology and inventorying all the books/CDs/movies/younameit, and the overwhelming feeling of being overwhelmed was getting the place collectively down. It was a little touch-and-go there for a while; I never knew what sort of situation I was going to walk in on when I went into work. For my part, I consider a number of people at the bookstore good friends. Like, awesome friends. And it was a bummer to see people that I usually have such a great time with, not having such a great time.
But... as it always does, it subsided. And once all the craziness started to calm down and things started getting back to normal, and all of us took a big breath and thought, okay, moving on... a few of us managed to get together for some bevvies and the world turned upside-up.
Beer and liquor, pizza and pancakes and coffee. Lots of coffee. Typing up poems, listening to music, laying on a dewy lawn and smoking too many cigarettes. Singing and dancing, and drinking more coffee.
Somehow, at least for me, like a switch was flipped back on, things are once again wonderful in the world. That may seem like an overstatement, but it's not: I am merely appreciating (vigorously) how much my friends and these (sometimes very) spontaneous gatherings make me happy.
I also dread/love the first hint of sunrise every time.
So now that I'm all rejuvenated... It was time to think about something to make -- I needed an ingredient list for the farmer's market tomorrow so that I could stay within my means/bounds. I flipped through a couple of my cookbooks and found one that I had nearly forgotten about: The Highlander's Cookbook: Recipes from Scotland by Sheila MacNiven Cameron (Gramercy Publishing Co., 1966).
I picked it up after getting back from my most recent trip to Europe where my family and I roadtripped through Scotland (and now can hardly go through a day without wishing ourselves back there). We were spoiled by a bunch of authentic Scottish food while we were there, and when I ran across this oldie at the bookstore not too long after getting back home, I knew I had to have it. How could I have almost forgotten about it!? I've found a simple cold dessert recipe perfect for the farmer's market tomorrow that uses blueberries and bread to make a bread pudding/cake that is then poured over with cream or custard. Can't wait!
Since I live on my own and have to cook for one person (challenging, I find, because there's a lot of potential waste if one isn't careful), going to a farmer's market is a challenge in self-control. Because I WANT EVERYTHING. And considering it's still early in the season and there isn't a gigantic selection of produce yet, there's still enough to be tempting (too tempting) for one person alone.
So I tend to stick to the fruits, things that can be eaten quickly (preferably by the handful) so that they don't spoil... and fruit doesn't necessarily have to have a meal planned for it. Sure, I really wanted garlic scapes, but I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head that in the next week I would REALLY NEED garlic scapes for. ;) That's the beauty of the market, though; if I figure something out, they will likely be there next Saturday.
Although the state's second largest farmer's market is only a fifteen minute drive from home, I opted to head to the one here in town, which has a steadily growing selection of things to choose from. There are a few crafts and plant vendors also, but my mom orders pasture-raised beef (delicious!) from a farmer there, there are a few Hmong family booths with a wide variety of whatever is in season (along with a Hmong spring roll/egg roll stand that I can't avoid no matter how hard I try). I think maybe my most exciting discovery was an Amish bakery from which I bought the. most. AMAZING seven-grain honey bread. I seriously just ate about half of it. Plain. So great. I know where I'm getting my bread from now on -- made in little loaves just perfect for a singlette like me!
After the market, I went to the home improvement store and bought paint for the kitchen (!!!), and also found at a local thrift shop some shelves that I am revamping (photos to come, of course). While I intended to start painting the kitchen, it seems as though my bathroom suddenly became the center of redecorating attention. So we'll see where that leads me...
I declare today Bibliophile Friday. Why? Well, is it redundant to say that books are awesome? Because they are. Some are, anyway. A lot of them. I work at a used bookstore where a huge quantity of every-subject-you-can-possibly-imagine comes across the counter daily. I see a lot of the same stuff -- titles and authors you could probably guess at, like Danielle Steel, James Patterson or Dr. Phil self-help books. But we see a lot of great cookbooks, too, and art books, philosophy, pop culture, travel (and music and movies, too)... the list goes on.
I thought it would be good to share the scoop on some of my favorites, and new things I come across, so hopefully, if I remember ;) -- Friday will be my show-a-book day! Yay!
Because I've been cooking up a storm lately, I thought I'd start with an oldie, one that sits in my kitchen cabinet more for decoration than anything else, but one that I have referred to in the past just for fun. Betty Crocker's New Picture Cookbook, printed in 1961 by McGraw-Hill, is oh-so-quaint mid-century. Betty, Betty, you little devil, this cookbook is one of my favorites.
I remember reading somewhere that a vast percentage of Betty Crocker cookbook readers at the height of her popularity in the mid-20th century thought she was a real person, rather than what she actually is, a brand name made up by General Mills. She's gone through many makeovers during her lifetime, and I have to say, she looks pretty demure in her spine portrait. There is actually another book that came out a few years ago by Susan Marks about the history behind the icon, called Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food. The portrait comparisons on the article's page are endearing.
As far as this specific book is concerned, I'm mostly in love with the cover. The colors are adorable. The entire book is illustrated, however, by Joseph Pearson, and it's one of those typical everyone-is-SO-cheerful! kinds of cookbooks.
It's worth noting that I'm just finishing up season 2 of the show Mad Men, so I can't help thinking of Betty Draper when I look at some of the illustrations of the happy-bappy housewife whipping up dinner for her picture-perfect husband and two kids. The nuclear family, remember?
It's kind of amazing to think of the culture that these cookbooks appealed to 50 years ago. This book was geared to women and only women, as the makers of food and the satisfiers of family in the home. (Today, I just ran across an old falling-apart copy of the Settlement Cookbook, another classic from the beginning of the 20th century, and even that, right in the first page, boasts "The way to a man's heart." Gotta love it. That would never fly today.) But housewife-ing was a full-time job, presentation being the keystone.
And maybe one of my favorite photos is right in the beginning, at the Betty Crocker test kitchen in Golden Valley! Look how pristine everything and everyone is! It looks like a girl's dream come true. If only I looked that adorable while decorating cakes and lining up my loaves of bread perfectly!
Here's to a wonderful piece of nostalgia, and some darn good classic recipes.
