I don’t know about you, but for a long time cooking pork freaked me out. I think it had something to do with the fact that under cooked pork looks a little like human flesh and over cooked pork is somewhat like chewing on an old shoe.
I have conquered this fear, I do a few rather awesome (if I do say so myself) pork dishes. However, when I stumbled over this recipe from the wonderful The Wednesday Chef I had to try it.
Total side note, I met Luisa Weiss at a book reading last week (even got to sit next to her for a group photo, squee) and she is so very lovely and kind just as she comes across in her blog. Also, read her book, then you will really want to be her friend.
I have always loved Italian recipes (the Sicilian side of the family would have me taken out otherwise), mostly due to their simplicity, they tend to feature fresh produce used in a way to highlight the taste of the item rather then as a vehicle for something else. I also liked this recipe for its use of lemons (which I use all the time in everything), the hubs once told me he ate something recently that featured lemons and his mind linked it to me (double squee for the cutest hubs ever).
Essentially you take pork chops, cover one side in coarse salt, cook and squeeze lemon over them when done. No, seriously that’s all it takes.
To make these pork chops your very own self take the pork chops (one for each person you want to feed), cover one side in the coarse salt. Meanwhile heat a heavy pan to a medium-high heat. Then once hot enough cook the pork chop unsalted side down (no need for oil but a non-stick pan isn’t a terrible idea) and cook till the salt starts to clarify (it was hard for me to tell so I flipped about about 4 minutes based on the thickness of my chops). Then flip to the salted side and cook a few minutes till done. Now Luisa (or rather her uncle who cooked the pork chops in her version) scrapped the salt off, which I didn’t do the first time and will do the second time I make them. Then squeeze half a lemon over each. And eat.
I added some roasted broccoli to the plate, heat the over to 350ish, toss raw broccoli with olive oil and garlic salt, and roast until the broccoli tips start to brown.
All in all I think the whole meal took 20 minutes from me walking in the door starving to sitting down for some Monday night TV, plate in hand.