What’s for Dinner

 

Why should an author blog include stuff about cooking?

I know what you’re thinking. Who care’s what a fiction author is fixing for dinner? Well, I believe one reason people might come here to get to know the author as a person. I know that there’s a difference–a gap–between the author and the work, but I also know that my life experience informs what I write. Part of my daily life experience involves new adventures in the kitchen, so this is a chance for readers to see this side of me.

I hope to include at least one kitchen adventure every week. Even if there’s not much interest in this, it sounds like a fun thing to do, so I expect to stick with this for a few months at least.

This week’s dinner

Jump to Recipe

Once your chops–or whatever your cooking sous vide–are done, remove them from the plastic bag and dry them off. Even though the bag is sealed, in the hot water bath, water will seep through the plastic and get on your food. Since the next step is to sear the chops, you need to be sure they are dry.

You might be asking yourself why the “next step” is to sear the chops. I can hear you thinking, They’re already cooked. I just checked, and that’s what you said a couple of paragraphs ago.

It’s true, they are already cooked. But one of the things that makes meat taste good comes from searing the outer layer at a high temperature. This searing creates a Mailard Reaction, a chemical reaction between the natural sugars and proteins in the meat and gives it a brown texture. This “browning” step is essential to give the chop it’s final, flavorful taste.

I added herbs and spices after the sous vide bath. Some cooks recommend adding them to bag with the meat before cooking, and use the sous vide bath to infuse the flavors. I’ve tried this with fresh thyme and rosemary, but didn’t notice that it added flavors to the meat. It did add gloppy cooked herbs I had to dispose of before searing. It does seem to work if you rub some brown sugar and coriander on the meat prior to sealing in the sous vide bag, although tonight I waited to add these until right before searing the chops.

So, once you’ve got the chops out of their plastic bag, cooked through and through, and dried off, you put a couple of tablespoons of butter in a skillet and bring it to medium-high heat. This is also the time to rub your meat with herbs and spices. I used fresh thyme, ground coriander, ground ginger, and a touch of brown sugar. I also added minced garlic to skillet right before the chops. Anyway, stick the chops in the hot skillet for about a minute on each side, and they’ll be done to perfection. Just be sure the skillet is hot–give it a two or three minutes on the burner before you add the butter.

Pan Sauce

You’ll also be able create pan sauces with the juices and brown bits that wind up in the skillet. Once the chops are browned and out of the skillet, you can add chopped onions or shallots to the pan, a touch of olive oil, and then, after the onions are soft, de-glaze the pan with wine, Add some broth, herbs, garlic, mushrooms, maybe a touch of corn starch for thickening, and finish with more butter, and you’ve got a pan sauce. I used the pan sauce to top the Brussel’s sprouts I roasted in the oven, but you could use it as topping for the chops.

Blackberry Sauce

Yesterday, the grocery store had fresh blackberries on sale, and they looked so good I bought some. Now all I needed was to find a use for them. Impulse shopping has its downsides. I decided to fix a blackberry sauce for the pork chops. I found several recipes on the web, but constructed my own by smooching a few of them together. My idea was to get a sweet and savory sauce, kind of like a honey mustard pan sauce that’s a favorite of ours.

For the blackberry sauce, I used a basic recipe for a sauce you might use with pancakes or a dessert like cheesecake, and intended to add a touch of dijon mustard at the end. It turned out to not need it, so I left it out.

Take-aways

All right, so what have you learned so far? Well, you’ve learned that I’m a geek who likes gizmos, and who likes sciency-stuff when cooking, even if it does lead me to France and snooty French cooks. In fact, on my trips to France I’ve found that the myth of the snooty Frenchman is exactly that–a myth. Everyone I met while in France was warm and friendly, if a bit amused by my American walk and confused expression. Myth-busing is another favorite pastime.

Oh, and maybe you learned something about sous vide cooking. You’ve also learned I tend to lecture, er, I mean ramble.

For the rest of the meal, I roasted Brussels sprouts and topped them with the pan sauce I mentioned above.

Overall, this was a pretty easy meal. For cleanup, I had the skillet used to sear the chops and the saucepan used to make the blackberry sauce. I used a silicone cookie mat to line the cooking sheet that I used to roast the Brussels sprouts, so I only had to rinse that off–no real cleanup. Prep time was pretty minimal too. Maybe five minutes to trim and halve the Brussels sprouts. Cooking time added maybe fifteen minutes, most of it waiting for the sauces to thicken. I baked the sprouts while I seared the chops and made the pan sauce. We usually have a fruit salad with our meals, so add another ten minutes to cut up the fresh fruit–in this case, watermelon, strawberries, a pear, and a banana.