January 6 – January 12, 2025

Monday:                               Antipasto Salad with Parmesan Crostini

Tuesday:                               Steak with Potato Pancakes and Green Salad

Wednesday:                       Winter Minestrone with Cabbage Pesto and Soda Bread

Thursday:                            PFC

Friday:                                   Fiesta Pork with Tortillas

Sunday:                                 Beef Stew, Popovers, Shaved Carrot Salad

Home on the Range

On the Food Network there is an amazing cook – not a chef – who is at home on the range (a farm in Oklahoma) and cooks food for cowboys who eat large amounts of it and stay slim because they are continually engaged in wrangling cattle and roping dogies and saddling horses and repairing fences and branding and feeding and loading onto trucks and all of the things one does with cattle before they are sent to the stockyard and then the slaughterhouse and reduced (how about that for a euphemism?) to steaks and burgers and roasts.

When I first saw this cook, I didn’t pay much attention.  She seemed to be cooking rather simple food, she was clearly not trained at a culinary institute and she wore voluminous clothing that reminded me of the ‘house coats’ that my grandmother occasionally wore.

But one day, when I was casting about for an idea of what to cook for the gang, I decided on the simple but supremely satisfying combination of tomato soup and grilled cheese.  Grilled cheese was like falling off a log, but when I searched on the web for a tomato soup recipe I came up with one that read “The Best Tomato Soup Ever,” attributed to one Ree Drummond, the Muumuu-clad cook I had dismissed out of hand.  Well, it was pretty much the best tomato soup I had ever tasted and I was hooked and have been a fan ever since – not of her emphasis on desserts, not of her overuse of cheese, but of her generally down home focus on flavor.

For an Oklahoma cowgirl, Ree uses an awful lot of garlic and spices.   She seems to be slowly nudging the cowboys of Oklahoma into eating like the smart set in New York and L.A.  And last week I saw her make a pork dish that I decided to try right away.  Ree calls this dish “Fiesta Pork Chops” – she is, like so many cooks, addicted to cute names for her recipes.  The names always put me off, but the results are nearly always fine enough to make my snooty aversion to the vulgar seem like what it is – privileged nonsense.  [“We don’t want tuna with good taste, we want tuna that tastes good” – the Starkist Tuna Company]

This dish simply explodes with flavor due to the spices Ree uses and the way she cooks the vegetables in the spicy residue left over from searing the chops.  It is probably the most flavorful dish I’ve cooked in the last year.  Heck, I might even wear a Muumuu, if I could have this for dinner once a week.

FIESTA PORK CHOPS

(adapted from Ree Drummond)

Timing:                                                   20 minutes

Ingredients:                                           Serves 4

Four 8-ounce, boneless pork chops

1 red onion, diced

2 Fresno Peppers sliced

1 cup frozen corn kernels

2 limes juiced

1 can black beans, drained

3 Roma (plum) tomatoes, diced

2 tablespoons kosher salt

1 tablespoon ancho chili powder (you can use other chili powders)

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

For Serving:

    1 avocado, diced

    8 tortillas, charred in a skillet

    Sour cream

    Cilantro leaves or parsley for garnish

    Hot sauce (we did not use and I advise against – the dish has a great taste and

    some hot sauces would overwhelm that)

    Lime wedges

Prep:

Slice and dice vegetables

Trim pork, if needed

Assemble rest of ingredients

Combine salt, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, brown sugar and black pepper in a bowl to create a rub for the pork.

Reserve one tablespoon of the rub.

Heat oil and butter in a skillet over medium.  While they are heating, coat the pork with all but that reserved tablespoon of the rub.

When the oil and butter are hot, add the pork to the skillet and cook until the chops are cooked through and caramelized – about 4 minutes per side.  (If you are using the very thin chops known as breakfast chops, don’t cook for more than 2 minutes per side.

Remove the chops to a plate.

Now add the Fresno chilis, corn, red onion and tomatoes and season with the reserved rub and stir to combine.  Cook for about 3 minutes and then deglaze with the lime juice.  Add the black beans and cook until they are heated through (a minute or two), then add the chops back to the skillet and serve from the skillet, adding warmed tortillas, avocado, sour cream, and lime wedges to each plate.