In order to make a gentle start on the project, this week’s new dish was really an old dish that I haven’t made for ages. In fact we rarely eat any meat that isn’t on a pizza or in a curry, so a pork chops dish seems quite exciting.
The recipe for this was emailed to me by Lisa, about two years ago. I had a glut of cabbage at the time. I reproduce it here in full, and she can tell you where she nicked it from:
Preheat oven to 170C. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 10 g butter until v hot then fry 6 slices chopped streaky bacon for a couple of mins. Add 4 thick pork chops and brown each side; transfer chops and bacon to a roasting tin. Add 1 small chopped onion and 2 sliced cloves garlic to the pan until softened then scatter over the chops. Bubble 310 ml cider in the pan for 2 mins, season, and pour over chops too. Cover roasting tin w foil and put in oven for 50 mins. Remove tin from oven (no!) and add 1 shredded savoy cabbage, mixing it into the juices and keeping the chops on top. Return tin to oven, uncovered, for 20-25 mins until the cabbage is tender. Put the chops on a warm plate white you stir 3 tbsp creme fraiche and 1 tbsp grainy mustard into the cabbage.
Apart from having to call Pete at work and demand that he buy cider on the way home, it was really easy to do and tasted delicious. Plus there were three cans of Scrumpy Jack left in the fridge.
Yes – what you said about meat applies here too, so this seems quite outlandish to me.
Will add it to the list, and have posted a recipe for chocolate malt cake, which I made a few weeks back but which was new to me at the time and warrants further inspection.
That said, I suppose cake isn’t quite ‘menu’ fodder, is it?
Nicked from Sainso magazine, as I recall. I haven’t done this one for ages either, will add to “revisit” list.
Actually while we are discussing it, what do you people feed your children? Because both of mine are almost exclusively carnivorous, which means that we now eat meat at almost every meal. We used to eat it rarely, but we mostly had curries and chillies and stir fries and stews, none of which are popular with, well, Tamsin mostly (Maggie won’t eat anything spicy but is otherwise unfussy; T distrusts anything “blended”, liking all the bits of her meal separated on the plate). Ideas would be gratefully received.
It’s a bit poor when I analyse it. Sausages, a lot. Baked-beans-and-bacon “chilli” with rice. Fish at least once a week. Usually something veggie. And lunches are almost entirely sandwich-based.
Ah, but what I meant in my vague and garbled comment was: what ~veggy things do your children eat?
Well, here cheese and lentil wedges go down well, as does nut loaf. Also, leak croustade (a Cranks one), various veggie soups, and three-bean wraps. Eggs?
OK,. wedges are a possibility (is there a recipe or do I just kind of make it up?). I don’t like soup (T, fusspot). She does like eggs but not mucked about with. Hmm.
Cheese and lentil pudding, macaroni cheese, pasta and anything (e.g. tomato and mascarpone sauce, broccoli and mushrooms, spinach and cream cheese, whatever), risotto, 3 bean no-chilli, root vegetable chips. No soup here, either.
Here are the cheese and lentils.
Maybe I’ll attempt to rootle out the Cranks book and find some new inspiration in there, with a veggie bent, though I do like the sound of the sausage and lentil thing that you’ve just posted, Karen. Still, never let it be said that I don’t do my bit to turn children the world over into vegetarians.
(That’s a sort of in-joke, I suppose, come to think of it – nearly everyone I meet seems to assume I’m vegetarian, and I’ve never been able to work out why. Quercus reckons it’s my clothes; others have suggested reasons ranging from hairstyle (!) to academic background.)