Stephen’s Smothered Pork Chops

Simply lift the lid and let the incredible aroma of tender chops and veggies call everyone to the table.

Stephen’s Smothered Pork Chops

Nutrition facts for 6 servings

Ingredients:

6 (1 inch thick) bone-in pork chops

Salt and pepper to taste

2 T vegetable or your favorite high heat oil

1 red bell pepper, deseeded and sliced

1 yellow (or orange) bell pepper, deseeded and sliced

1 green bell pepper, deseeded and sliced

1 large sweet onion, thickly sliced

1 lb cremini or button mushrooms, rinsed, dried, and thickly sliced

2 T soy sauce, low sodium

1/4 cup unsalted vegetable stock or white wine

1/8 t ground black pepper

1/4 t ground rosemary

6 sprigs fresh thyme

Michael’s Hot ‘n Sweet Chile Pork

We’ve all eaten Tex-Mex food, a style of eating that is not quite firmly in one cuisine or the other. Michael’s awesome take on pork is Tex-Asian cooking at its finest. Make a big pot and enjoy. (picture coming soon!)

The nutrition facts were created at Calorie Count!

Michael’s Hot ‘n Sweet Chile Pork 

Ingredients:

1-1/2 - 2 lbs. lean, trimmed pork chunks

1 packet of your favorite Taco seasoning (rec. Lawry's or Old El Paso)

1/2 yellow onion, peeled and coarsely chopped

1  med. clove garlic, minced

2 Tbsp. good olive oil

2- 3 cups good quality bottled red chili salsa (chunky is best; rec. Pace Chunky Medium or Hot)

2/3 cup of good peach jam

4 - 6 cups jasmine rice, cooked

salt and pepper to taste

a dash or two of cayenne pepper (optional, for real spice fans!)

Directions:

Begin cooking the rice per cooker instructions or your usual method.

Empty the contents of the taco seasoning packet into a large freezer bag.  Add the trimmed pork chunks, seal the bag and shake, to thoroughly coat the pork.  Set aside.

In a large nonstick skillet or saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and garlic, and sautee until the onion begins to look translucent.  Raise the heat level a bit, add the spice-coated pork.  Cook over medium heat for four to six minutes, until the pork is well browned on all sides.

Once the pork has browned, remove from heat and use a large spoon to remove as much of the pork fat as possible. 

Return the meat to the burner and add the salsa and peach jam, mixing thoroughly.  (Add salt and pepper to taste, and the cayenne, if desired.)  Cover the pan and simmer the meat/salsa mixture for five or ten minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

Serve over hot rice.  Goes well with steamed or sauteed yellow squash or zucchini, carrots, green beans, or garden salad.

Serves six.

Corinn’s Katsu Curry

The nutrition facts for this delicious Japanese curry were made at Calorie Count!

Corinn’s Katsu Curry

Ingredients:

The Tonkatsu:

8 thin-cut pork chops, boneless

Panko bread crumbs

All-purpose flour

2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp salt

1 tbsp black pepper

1 tbsp shichimi togarash (seven-flavor pepper powder) (you can sub cayenne pepper for this, but reduce to 1/2 tsp)

2 eggs diluted with milk or water

The Veggies:

8 red-skin potatoes or new potatoes (waxy potatoes work best), diced into large-ish cubes

1 red bell pepper, cut into strips

1 small sweet onion, sliced

2 carrots, sliced thinly on the bias

3 green onions, chopped finely

1 red hot chili pepper, sliced very thinly (optional if you like heat)

Splash of soy sauce (in the boiling water)

The Sauce:

3 tbsp olive oil (not extra virgin, just regular olive oil)

1 tbsp butter

All-purpose flour (to thicken, amount used varies based on desired thickness)

3 tbsp good-quality yellow curry powder (get this from an Indian grocer if you can, the quality difference is HUGE)

1 tbsp shichimi togarash

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 tbsp fresh ginger, minced

1/4 cup soy sauce

Water to your desired consistency

Directions to make the curry:

First, you want to get the veggies boiled off. Cut up the potatoes and carrots, since they need to be boiled first. Put them in a pot and boil them with a splash of soy sauce. While this is going on, you can start breading and frying your pork chops.

Set up a breading station with a dish of flour (seasoned with garlic powder, pepper, salt and shichimi togarash), a bowl with the egg and milk mixture and a dish with plain panko breadcrumbs. Bread the pork chops normally and fry off in vegetable oil until crisp and golden brown. Store these in the oven, wrapped in foil, to keep them warm.

By this time your veg should be done; remove from heat and strain off. Start making the sauce. In a large saucepan, add the olive oil and butter and melt it down. Add the onion and bell pepper (and chili peppers if you want it spicy) and cook them until the onions are translucent. Add curry powder, shichimi togarash,  garlic, ginger and (if necessary) more butter. Add the flour and cook it off to make a roux. Add cold water and whisk vigorously, cooking until thickened. Add boiled potatoes and carrots to the sauce; reduce heat to low and cook slowly for another five minutes.

Remove from heat and add finely chopped green onions.

To plate:

Slice two breaded pork chops into long, thin strips and arrange on a mound of white or brown rice in a shallow bowl. Ladle a few spoons of sauce over the top; garnish with pickled ginger and a sprinkling of shichimi togarash.  Serve immediately. Feeds four-six rather hungry individuals.

Juanita's Black Bean and Jalapeño Soup

Juanita has been making this knock your socks off soup for over 40 years much to the delight of those that know her!

Black Bean and Jalapeno Soup

Ingredients:

2 cups black beans

2 grated carrots

2 celery stalks with leaves, finely chopped

1 onion

3 cups vegetable stock

3 Tbsp. vegetable or olive oil

4 tsp. granulated chicken bouillon

garlic powder to taste

12 – 16 oz. of pork chunks

1/2 to 2 cans chopped jalapeños, to taste (or equivalent fresh jalapenos)

Directions:

Soak the beans overnight and then drain (or use canned).

In a large stew pot, sweat the onion, celery, and carrots in the oil. When the onion is translucent, add the vegetable stock, pork, bouillon, garlic powder, jalapeños, and beans. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 1 1/2 to 3 hours.

Serve with warm tortillas and honey butter.

Buggy's Pulled Pork Sandwich

This fantastic sandwich looks like it is loaded with calories, but it's not. Even if you use a full quarter pound of meat, coleslaw, barbecue sauce, and bun you will only consume 381 calories! It even gets a B+ nutrition rating.

The nutrition facts are at Calorie Count - the BEST place on the web to count your calories!

Pulled Pork Sandwich

Ingredients:

1 pork tenderloin, 2 pounds
16 oz ginger beer*
8 oz barbecue sauce**
1 1/2 cups coleslaw
8 rolls or hamburger buns
edible flowers for garnish

Directions:

In a large pot with a lid, slow simmer the tenderloin in the ginger beer until the meat is fork tender and can be pulled apart easily. Add more ginger beer if needed, but you do not want the meat to have too much liquid at the end of cooking.

After pulling apart the meat, mix in the barbecue sauce. Top rolls with the meat, top with coleslaw, decorate with a garnish of edible flowers, and enjoy!

Notes:

*Typically ginger beer has more bite from ginger than ginger ale. It is a deeper, richer full-bodied flavor. Buggy uses ginger beer from a company called The Ginger People.

**If possible, take the time to make a homemade barbecue sauce instead of using a bottled version. There are a lot of great recipes out there. Here's a great sauce from The CC Palate!

Janice's Roasted Pork Tenderloin

This meal is a cinch to put together after you get home from work. Let it roast in the oven while you stick our feet up, have a cup of herbal tisane, and relax a while.

The nutrition facts for this fantastic meal can be found at the best FREE website to count your calories - Calorie Count! 

with tri-color fingerling potatoes and carrots

Roasted Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients:

3 cloves garlic, minced*
1 tablespoon dried rosemary*
pepper to taste**
 2 pounds boneless pork loin roast
 1/4 cup olive oil (preferably habanero olive oil and you can use less if you like)
3 C carrots, chopped into large chunks
1 onion, rough chopped
 3/4 cup white wine
1 T olive oil

Optional additions: potatoes cut into chunks about the same size as the carrots and mushrooms!

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees***.

Crush garlic with rosemary, salt and pepper, making a paste. Pierce meat with a sharp knife in several places and press the garlic paste into the openings. Rub the meat with olive oil and the remaining garlic mixture.

Spray baking pan with Pam and add the tenderloin.

Surround with chunks of onion and carrots. (alternative is to make a bed of the veggies and top with the tenderloin, that works too!) Sprinkle a little seasoning on the veggies. Drizzle veggies with the habanero olive oil. Add 1/2 C white wine or more - enough to make sure that there are no dry areas in your pan. If you don't want to use white wine you can use chicken stock.

Cover tightly with foil and bake for approximately 1 1/2 hours minimum (depends on how much your roast actually weighs, if it's 2 pounds or less, 1 1/2 hours should do it) - check with meat thermometer to make sure it is at least 160 degrees - the meat should be fork tender. Then remove from the oven, keep it tented, and allow to rest 10 minutes before serving.

Notes:

Consider adding some corn starch and chicken broth to the sauce after you scoop out the onions and carrots in order to make a gravy - or, better still increase the wine to 1 cup when you roast the loin and then thicken the juices with a bit of Tony Chacheres Instant Roux! Just put your pan on a burner set to medium, shake and stir til it's right. Most excellent. To make even better gravy, make sure you use habanero oil to rub the pork loin.

* If you don't want to chop up garlic, try this terrific dried spice that is a combination of rosemary and garlic - Spice Island's Rosemary Garlic Blend - it comes in a "grinder" which I don't like as I had a hard time getting anything to come out. I just remove the lid and pour the stuff out into my hand, rub to "grind" and proceed. The proportion of rosemary to garlic is just perfect. Give it a try.  All you have to do is use 2 tablespoons and stuff some in the slits and rub the rest all over the roast! That spice is a great addition to wild rice, too.

** I don't use salt, you may want to do so, but it won't be in the nutrition facts.

*** ok, there are options here. If you don't have the time to cook 1 and 1/2 hours because you came home from work too dratted late but had a taste for this, you can cook it at 425  for an hour and you will have the tastiest juciest roastiest pork ever and the carrots will be nicely very well cooked. The meat may not be quite forkable, but it will be most tender. For that matter, tenderloins are flexible things indeed, if you think you might not have enough time, roast it at 425 for a half an hour first and then finish it at 350. I've done it all three ways. The first (for a small roast) and the latter get you fork tender pull apart pork. The middle way is slicing pork.

Now let's talk about "well cooked" carrots - if you are one of those that likes your veggies "crisp tender" you won't like the way these carrots turn out because they will be actually done and not just barely not raw as is consider "crisp tender" by so many. But if you are like me and want your veggies well cooked, you will be well pleased.