stuffed butterfly pork chops

dad's marrying a couple tonight so I've had to start early on my prep for dinner cuz I also have a piano lesson to give...so he'll have to eat when he gets home. I combined 2 recipes and came up with this one:

1/3 c. butter
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. sage
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/2 c. diced celery
4 c. toasted bread cubes
1/2 c. coarsely chopped onion
2 lg. delicious or winesap apples
1/4 c. raisins
6 pork chops cut 3/4 to 1 inch thick

Melt butter; add salt, sage, pepper, onion and celery and cook over low heat until vegetables are almost tender. Pour over bread cubes, stirring lightly to distribute ingredients evenly. Pare, core and coarsely chop one or two apples to make 1 1/2 cups. Stir apple and raisins into stuffing mixture and turn into baking dish (11 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches)

Glaze:
2 T. brown sugar
3 T. prepared mustard
1 T. fresh lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar and mustard. Mix together well.
3. Butterfly the pork chops and arrange them in a 9x13 inch baking dish over the stuffing mixe above. Spread the mustard mixture over the chops, then sprinkle with the lemon juice.
4. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 20 minutes, or to desired doneness.

I prepared the stuffing mixture in a caste iron skillet and then laid on the chops, and their glaze and then just slid the skillet into the oven.

Check for internal temp if you have an instant read thermometer

Alton Brown's Pan-Seared Rib-Eye Steak

Oh Wow! We had this amazing dinner on Sunday...way better than even steaks on the grill, if you can believe it. I need to return this cookbook to the library so I wanted to be sure and post these instructions so I don't forget and you can have a great steak adventure. No pictures cuz it was too amazing a dish to photograph, plus we were in heaven, savoring every morsel

NOTE: There's gonna be smoke. Turn on your hood if you have one and open a window. AB even removes the battery out of the smoke detector. I didn't find it quite as bad as this, however.

HARDWARE
cast iron skillet

SOFTWARE

2 1-1/2" boneless rib-eye steaks
1 t. canola oil, to coat
1 t. kosher salt
1/2 t. black pepper, freshly ground

1. Allow steaks to come to room temperature for 1 hour.
2. Position rack in center of oven. Crank to 500 degrees F and slide in a 12" caste iron skillet.
3. When oven hits temperature, carefully move skillet to cook top over high heat for 5 minutes.
4. Lightly coat steaks with canola oil then liberally sprinkle with the salt and pepper. Place carefully in pan, and don't touch for 30 seconds (you should use a kitchen timer).
5. Flip thesteaks with tongs and cook for another 30 seconds.
6. Move skillet back to the oven for 2 minutes/ Flip the steaks and cook for another 2 minutes.
7. Remove skillet to a heat-safe surface. For med-rare, the temp of the steaks should be between 130-140 degrees. Our steaks were much thicker so I cooked them longer in the oven...4 minutes per side and that worked out well.

When you temp the temp of the steaks do not insert the instant read thermometer from the top down, rather, insert it from the side, parallel to the base.

8. Allow steak to rest 5 minutes before serving.

You can place the steaks in a resting rig (meaning allow the juices to drain into a pan) and use the drippings from this as well as what's left in the pan to make a lovely sauce.

I added butter to the pan, some sliced onions and stirred around (called deglazing". I poured this over the steaks and then added some mozzarella cheese, grated. Yummy!

OR you could place the steaks over a slice of toast, preferable sourdough, which will absorb any escaping juices and make for a nice side bite in themselves

Tomato Sauce, Garlic, Artilicious Pasta

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, YEAH.

After a very long day at the mill, I mean high school (I just
read dad's blog. Confusion.),
where one student would not just LEAVE ALREADY! IT'S 6 FREAKING O'CLOCK AND I'M HORMONAL AND STARVING TO DEATH-IT SHOULDN'T TAKE YOU 3 HOURS AFTER SCHOOL TO FINISH THIS PROJECT!!!!!! (Rips paper to shreds and jams some in mouth)...

...where was I?

Ok, so I'm really hungry and getting ready to jab a clay tool through my eye, when I finally left the kid in my classroom, which is totally illegal, and drove home to some leftover pasta from last night. It was good last night, but it. was. so. great this night.

I don't know how or why, but it made me roll around on the floor with joy afterward, canceling out any trauma inflicted during the course of the workday.

I was so inspired by this pasta muse that I needed to share it with my family. So here is how I did it, to the best of my memory:

Garlic, minced
Barely any onion, mostly to remind me of Hank
Olive oil in a pan

Get that going on low-ish heat.

Crack open a can of tomato sauce. Just straight up, not Prego or anything
Crack open some artichoke hearts. Sniff them if they've been sitting in the fridge for a while from that last artichoke binge. Taste a sliver. Determine they will not poison you.
Crack open a little bit (1/4 cup?) of chicken broth, in whatever form you happen to have.
(I have some Goya brand that is mostly in Spanish. It makes producing stock very mysterious and adventurous.)

Get all those in the pan and let them cook one way or another till they're getting warm.

Cooking. Cooking. Cooking. This represents maybe 8 minutes. Cooking. Cooking. Cooking.

Crack open a little cream. Not the sour kind. Turn the volume down on that pan, and put a little cream in until it looks like the color you've had in mind for a dish so yummy.

Ummmm... (I'm trying to remember what happened next.)

Oh yeah. Salt it until it has some taste. Season it with whatever. Thyme. Basil.

Eat it on some pasta.

Ohhhhhhhh, yes.

This is so good, seriously. Sometimes these things are not so great, or taste a little weird, like the ingredients are too detached to really get into. But this dish, on this night, was the best.




I wonder if that kid is still in my classroom.

Signed, Anyone But Marissa

Chicken Stir Fry

While traveling to Columbus yesterday I went through a bunch of magazines and saved some recipes. This is the one I made after church and it was very good. I only got a picture at the very end of the meal and this was all that was left.
Marinate:
1 egg white
1 T vinegar (i used apple but it called for Rice Wine)
1 T cornstarch

chicken thighs ( used breast)
3 cups of whatever veggies you want to use
carrots, bell peppers, onions, broccoli, peas, celery, etc.
Sweet and Sour Sauce (Kraft makes a great one)

Cut the chicken into pieces and toss with marinate. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet or wok. Drain the marinate off the chicken. Place the chicken in the hot skillet and cook til tender.

Remove the chicken, wipe down the pan.

Heat 2 T olive oil in skillet again and add 2 cloves garlic, 1 t. ginger, 2 minced scallions, pinch salt and sugar. Cook for 30 seconds. Then add the veggies cooking the hardest to cook fast but just cook til tender crisp. Add in a sweet and sour sauce til heated.

Serve over rice.

western potato rounds

This is a PC recipe that I have enjoyed but when I shared it with Dawn, she really did like it, as did her friends (the Friday Party People). Dawn called for it again just now cuz she thought it was on our family blog and it wasn't. So I'll post it here and she can add pictures. Try it...I am sure you'll really like it.

2 large unpeeled baking potatoes vegetable oil 1 cup Co-Jack Cheese, shredded 6 bacon slices, crisply cooked, drained, crumbled 1/3 cup green onion, slices 1/3 cup barbecue sauce 1 Preheat oven to 450. Using Garnisher, cut pototoes into 1/4" thick slices. Using Kitchen Spritzer, generously spray both sides of potato slices with oil; place on 15" round baking stone. Bake 20 minutes or til lightly browned' remove from oven. 2 In 1-qt. batter bowl, combine cheese, bacon and green onion. Using Pastry Bursh, generously brush potato slices with bbq sauce; sprinkle with cheese mixture. Return potato slices to oven. Bake 3-5 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Sorta/kinda Penn Station Artichoke Sub

Living in Atlanta, I am approximately 250 miles too far away from any Penn Station Sub shop to quench my occasional, yet burning thirst for a Penn Station Artichoke-mushroom sub. In its absence, I have decided to use my own intelligence that existed before this world to SUB-stitute my all-time favorite sammich (Get it? SUB-stitute?!?) with a version of my own concoction.

And like my own special brand of humor, not everyone will appreciate this sub. I realize that feelings run pretty deep and strong in this family about certain elements of this sub. You know who you are, mushroom (gasp!) and artichoke (the humanity!) haters. My best advice is to take a sip of Hater-ade, and try this sub out, substituting anything you hate with something you love (like onions, for example.) I realize this would probably change the cardinal essence of this sub, but I accept our diversity of taste buds.....

Let the Subbing BEGIN!

You'll need:

some type of sub roll
mayo (don't you dare put that miracle whip on there)
(Ok, if you must.......)
mushrooms, sliced up
artichoke hearts (I prefer these unmarinated)
mozzarella cheese
garlic, minced
balsamic vinegar, olive oil


Here's what I did:

1. Heat up the olive oil, toss in garlic, artichoke hearts, mushroom and let it slosh around a bit in the pan till tender.

2. Splash on some balsamic vinegar. We always put the vinegar on our food when we're at Penn Station, so if the vinegar did anything in its brief existence, its smell made me feel like the sub was going to taste like the real thing.

3. Spread some mayo on a sub roll you've already sliced open

4. Slop the arti-harsh/mush-death mixture on top of the open slices, spread the motz on top and let it brown a bit under your oven's (or toaster oven's) broil setting. (Open-faced)

5. Season to taste with salt or oregano or gold flakes or Parmesan cheese. If only I had that Parmesan, life would be different....I'd be living in New York with Hank already, I'd have wings that would pop out of my fingertips on command, it wouldn't be 90 degrees for 4 days straight already.........

...........................................

Enjoy the sub, Hatchamealers! Even more importantly, let me know if anyone out there ever does try this sammich, and how it goes and any advice you might have if you've ever tasted the real thing.

M2D2, at your service.