Shells with taleggio, pecorino romano and parmesan topped with lightly sautéed kale
Filed under Cheese …
more cheese and chocolate
There will always be days like today, where half of a mug of hot coffee pours into your purse while you’re driving your car with a flat to the auto shop, a flat tire turns into a pricey investment in four new tires, and the potential of another investment lingers unless that bowl of arborio rice works its magic on your coffee-soaked iPod.
Before the day ends, when there’s still a chance for salvation, get yourself some stinky cheese and a crusty baguette. When you’ve had your fill of cheese, switch to Nutella. Things will be better.
The First Supper: Saint Paul
When you move to a city named after a saint, you should probably make a biblical reference in title of the post about the first meal in your new kitchen, right? And you should break in your new kitchen by cranking up the oven to 400-degrees twice in the same steamy afternoon to make a comforting meal and then toast your new place with tall glasses of milk and water because you forgot to buy wine, right? And you should whip out your phone to take pictures of the tourists tooling around your new neighborhood on Segways, right? Check, check, and check.
Our first home-cooked Saint Paul meal started with a lovely composed salad of golden and chioggia beets, sun gold cherry tomatoes, fresh chives, crumbled blue cheese, and a drizzle of buttermilk dressing. Simple, summery and delicious.
For the main course, we had Pimiento Mac and Cheese. I’ve been craving mac and cheese for weeks, and a scoop of the sorry excuse for it on the Whole Foods salad bar that I ate last week just didn’t cut it. I thumbed through a few cookbooks in search of a good recipe before remembering a recent issue of Bon Appetit with a picture of gooey mac and cheese on the cover. The cover photo turned out to be Pimiento Mac and Cheese, and although it wasn’t the traditional route I had originally planned on taking, it looked too good to pass up.
(Sorry for the rotten photos – I ran out of daylight.)
It was awesome! It was close enough to regular mac and cheese to satisfy my craving, but it also had enough going on to make it new and exciting, just like our new living arrangement. Instead of starting the cheese sauce with butter, flour and whole milk, you boil a red pepper in a little water until it softens and then purée it with roasted peppers, garlic and a tiny bit of butter. So, you know, you start with vegetables, and vegetables are good for you. It’s healthy. Mac and cheese for your health. Then you add a few cups of cheese to the pepper mixture and maybe you sample a little of the cheese as you’re grating it, but at least you’re adding all of that cheese to pureed peppers instead of a creamy béchamel sauce, right?
Matt declared this the best mac and cheese that I’ve ever made, and I tend to agree, which brings up a new issue: who gets to eat the leftovers?
Blue Cheese Stuffed Pork Chops
Yesterday afternoon Matt and I were standing in the middle of the bulk foods aisle at Whole Foods trying to figure out what to do with the pork chops that we’d just picked up, so I opened the Epicurious app on my phone and did a quick search for “pork chop.” We are so 2011! The first few recipes that popped up sounded good but required buying too many extra ingredients (although one of these days I will be stuffing a pork chop with chorizo). Then came the Roquefort-Stuffed Pork Chops recipe. Blue cheese and pork? Yes, please!
The only problem was that along with the Roquefort, bread cubes, and rosemary, you’re supposed to add chopped mushrooms to the filling. With a few minor exceptions, I don’t do mushrooms. Mushroom devotees would probably hate me because I grew up surrounded by woods that were a fertile breeding ground for morels, and although I enjoyed wandering through the woods in search of them, I can only remember eating them on one occasion when our neighbor was pan frying them and my best friend and I each smothered a half in ketchup, stuffed them in our mouths, chewed for a few seconds and then ran out to the garage and spit them in the trash. We were really mature.
I dislike being a picky eater almost as much as I dislike mushrooms, and I knew that I would eventually come around to trying to appreciate mushrooms. I’ve learned to love almost all of the short list of things that I didn’t like as a kid (avocado, salmon, wine – kidding!), and mushrooms are the one thing that I’ve been holding out on (although I learned to enjoy raw, button mushrooms on salads a few years ago). So there we were in the middle of Whole Foods, Matt really excited about stuffing those pork chops with blue cheese and mushrooms and me being the only thing standing in his way. Without really thinking about what I was getting myself into, I decided that it was time for me to try to enjoy cooked mushrooms, and we were off to gather the ingredients. I panicked a little as we were driving out of the parking lot and again as I watched Matt sauté the mushrooms, but when the pork chops were done, I happily dove right in. The verdict: melted blue cheese makes anything taste good.
Blue Cheese Stuffed Pork Chops
From Bon Appetit via Epicurious
*recipe adjusted to serve 2*
- 2 thick, bone-in pork chops
- 3 tbsp butter
- 3/4 cup small cubes of French bread
- 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
- 1 tbsp minced onion (we used a shallot)
- 1/4 tsp dried rosemary, finely crumbled
- 1/4 cup crumbled Roquefort or blue cheese
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Melt 1 tbsp butter in a heavy, oven-proof skillet over medium heat. Add bread cubes, and sauté until golden, about 10 minutes. Transfer bread to a medium bowl.
- Return skillet to heat and melt 1 tbsp butter. Add mushrooms, onion/shallot, and rosemary. Sauté until the onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Add to the bowl with the bread, and refrigerate for about 15 minutes, until cool.
- Slice each pork chop in half horizontally to the bone.
- Add the blue cheese to the cooled bread mixture, stir to combine and season with salt and pepper.
- Divide the mixture between the pork chops, and use toothpicks to hold them closed, if necessary.
- Melt the last 1 tbsp butter in the skillet over high heat. Add the pork chops, and sauté until browned on each side, about 2 minutes per side.
- Transfer skillet to the oven.
- Cook for 15-20 minutes, until cooked through.
- If you have any leftover stuffing, spoon it over the pork chops before transferring them to the oven.
Blue cheese stuffed pork chop with roasted asparagus and oven fries
