Oink! Mark picked up a hundred pounds of custom-cut hog from the farm yesterday. Because nobody felt like grocery shopping, I promised I'd figure out dinner from the pantry and freezer, and that was definitely a reason to inaugurate our half-hog.
When Mark and I were first married, one of our favorite meals was a one-skillet dish of rice and boneless pork chops in tomato sauce with green beans and basil, topped with cheese. For some reason I made it less and less as time went on. But not too long ago when we started eating smaller quantities of meat with our meals, we discovered that, although the original recipe called for a pound and a half of meat, it's really very easy to adapt it so the meat plays a smaller role. Also, I prefer to use millet or quinoa rather than the white rice called for. I think any grain that cooks "like white rice" would work, maybe bulgur or couscous even.
It's truly a quick, one-pot meal, and very much a kid-pleaser in our family. Here's how we did it tonight, with a few notes on possible variations.
Italian-flavor skillet pork
- 3 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 lb and 4 0z bone-in pork chops (that's two inch-thick chops), OR 1 pound boneless pork chops. The amount of meat can vary anywhere from a half-pound to one and a half pounds. (You may wish to have it sliced so that each person gets "a piece of meat;" or you may elect to cut the meat off the bone after cooking, chop it up and return to the skillet. Either way works.)
- 1 cup quinoa soaked in cold water for 30 minutes and rinsed and drained, or 1 cup white rice or millet or similar.
- 1 fifteen-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, roughly chopped and drained, the juice reserved and water added to the tomato juice to equal 2 cups liquid
- 1 fifteen-ounce can tomato sauce
- 1 and 1/2 tsp basil or oregano or combination
- 1/2 to 1 cup chopped red or green bell pepper
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 12 ounces frozen green beans (French-cut, cut, or Italian)
- Salt and pepper
- 4 to 6 ounces of provolone or mozzarella or monterey jack cheese
- 2 to 4 Tbsp of freshly grated parmesan
Heat the oil in a broiler-safe skillet that can later be covered, and brown the pork chops well on both sides; remove to a plate and pour off the fat. Season the chops with salt and pepper. Add the water and tomato juice and stir, scraping browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Add 1 cup of the tomato sauce, the quinoa or other grain, the basil and/or oregano, the bell pepper, the garlic, and 1/2 tsp salt. Bring to a boil over high heat, then return the pork chops to the top of the mixture, cover, and simmer on medium-low heat about 20 minutes until the grains are tender or nearly so and the chops are cooked through.
Remove the chops and stir in the the green beans, mixing well. If desired, cut the meat off the bone, chop it, and stir it into the skillet, then top with grated cheeses; or, if the pork is sliced into serving-size pieces, return the slices to the skillet, top each slice with sliced provolone (or mozzarella or monterey jack) cheese, and sprinkle the skillet with grated parmesan. Pass the skillet under the broiler to melt and brown the cheeses.
We served this tonight with steamed Brussels sprouts and a jar of Grandma's home-canned peaches. Plus a bottle of Shiraz. The kids added ketchup to theirs. Enough was left over for Mark's lunch tomorrow.
Now a note on the sourdough. I had been mixing my dough in the bread machine on the dough cycle, letting it have a long, cool second rise, and then trying to shape it all into boules or baguettes. The results had been less than fantastic. It all tasted great, but the dough is so darned delicate, the shaping step was destroying a lot of the structure. I could feel the dough deflating under my fingertips, no matter how carefully I tried to handle it.
So the last time I mixed up a sourdough bread — in this case a white-rye combination — I decided to let the dough have a long cool second rise, covered, in the bread machine pan, and then — get this — I left it in the bread pan and baked it in my oven.
You know, it doesn't look all rustic and wonderful the way a beautiful sourdough boule or baguette looks. It looks like a loaf of sandwich bread. It's not fancy and beautiful. It's practical and down-to-earth. Meaning, er, you can make a sandwich out of it.
But you know what? It's a loaf of really good, sturdy, well-risen sourdough sandwich bread. I just may have to live with it.
(Rough recipe: 1 cup fresh sourdough starter, 1/2 cup water, 1 cup rye flour, 1 plus 1/3 plus 1/4 cups bread flour, 2 Tbsp fat, 2 Tbsp dry milk, 1 and 1/2 Tbsp sugar, 1 and 1/2 tsp salt, no yeast. Covered the pan with foil, started the dough cycle at bedtime, then transferred the pan to the oven in the morning and baked it to an internal temperature of 208 degrees. 375 made it a little bit too brown. I'll try 350 next time.)
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