Pork Chops with Mushrooms and Shallots

Hubby and I celebrated our second anniversary yesterday. He gave me a card with a list of “Things a wife just knows.” Number two on the list is, “Meat is his favorite meal.” Truth.

He also gave me pearl earrings. That has nothing to do with this blog post, but I thought you should know.

I’ve never been a huge fan of pork, but I do like to try to change things up and do something a little different now and then. I know hubby gets bored with chicken, and you can only do so many things with ground beef, so here we are. Anyway, this recipe (another from Gina at skinnytaste.com) looked yummy.

The recipe called for bone-in pork chops, but I didn’t realize that until I got home from purchasing my boneless pork chops, so I just went with it. I started by seasoning with salt and pepper.

Melt some butter…

And put those chops in the butter to sizzle and brown up.

I knew the timing would be off since I was using boneless, but timing meat makes me nervous, so after I flipped them, I used a thermometer to try to approximate doneness. Not sure it worked real well.

Anyway, when the chops are done, toss in a whole bunch of chopped shallots. These are the homegrown ones from my Aunt.

After a couple minutes, add some chicken broth. This will help get all that pork flavor off of the pan and into the sauce!

Then I added some Dijon mustard and dried parsley (because I forgot to pick up fresh).

Mmm, starting to smell yummy!

Finally, I added sliced mushrooms and some salt and pepper.

Just let it cook for a few minutes, until the mushrooms are done. And that’s it! To serve, put a pork chop on a plate and top with some of the mushroom sauce.

I served myself the chop that had the thermometer in it, and I think that was the driest one because all the juices leaked out. My impressions that night were that the pork was okay and the mushroom sauce was delicious.

But I had a leftover chop the next day, and I realized that that one was much better, even though it was nuked! So I guess I did all right. Seriously, though, my favorite part was the mushroom and shallot sauce. Even if you leave out the mushrooms, I still think it’s worth making. The tang from the Dijon mixed with the shallots and chicken broth? Oh yes. Yummy.

Stuffed Shells

I first found this recipe when I was living in my little one bedroom apartment above a photography studio in an old-fashioned Pennsylvania town.

I first prepared it when I was dating this guy long-distance and he was coming to visit me for the weekend. I think I wanted to impress him.

Honestly, I don’t remember how it turned out. I just remember how little I cared about the food once that guy showed up at my door.

The second time I made it, I had taken my relationship with that guy to the next level and had moved to Maryland to live with him. I served it when he had some friends over for dinner. His friend asked for hot sauce and immediately drenched his shells in it. I’m still mad at that guy for it, even though we’re not friends with him anymore.

This was my third time. The boyfriend is now my husband and we had just moved back to New York. We’d invited my family over for dinner and I decided to make these shells for them. The nice thing about it is that it can be prepared way in advance, so all I had to do when people were over was to get off the couch and put it in the oven.

Start off with some fresh, juicy baby portabellas.

I do love that colander. All the mushrooms get diced when they’re clean.

Sure makes for a lot. It occurred to me after I was done with this that I could have saved a lot of time by doing it with my food processor. Ah well.

Yep, definitely should have used the food processor. The onions made me cry.

But the garlic was easy (I used the stuff from a jar).

First step is to sizzle all the mushrooms, onions, and garlic in a big skillet.

It’ll cook down after a bit.

When you’re satisfied with it, add a pound of ground turkey. It had been a long time since I’d used ground turkey, and I’m not sure why. It’s good, and a lot healthier than beef.

Cook it up a bit.

Don’t forget to season with salt and pepper. I tend to forget that. Not this time!

While that was happening, I had prepped some other things. Here’s some fresh parsley.

And some frozen chopped spinach. It was in a bowl because I was thawing it in the microwave.

When the turkey was cooked thoroughly, I added the spinach (after squeezing out the water) and the chopped parsley.

And then a whole bunch of cottage cheese. I think I chose a reduced fat container of it.

And finally, some grated Parmesan cheese.

When it’s all mixed in, this is what it looked like.

I waited until this point to boil the jumbo shells because I really wanted to give the mixture a chance to cool down before sticking my fingers in it. I remembered from last time how hard it was to stuff the shells when the mixture is hot.

Once they were boiled and drained, I put them next to the cheese and turkey mixture in preparation for stuffing.

As far as stuffed shells go, these were so pretty!

Am I right? I’m right, I know.

As for topping them, this is what I had: “Grandpa’s Sauce” from Wegman’s and grated skim milk mozzarella. I’d never had that sauce before, but that name is pretty effective marketing. I needed it and I’ve never even had a Grandpa to make homemade sauce before.

Covered with foil and put it in the fridge until later. I made a big mess but had plenty of time to clean it up!

Fresh out of the oven, this is what it looked like.

And once it was served up, this is what it looked like.

None of the ingredients alone stood out – no one seemed aware of the mushrooms or the turkey or the cottage cheese – but they all worked very well together. The taste just works.

Definitely too much work for a normal weeknight, but it’s certainly doable on weekends and well worth the effort.

And they make for good leftovers. Hubby had them for lunch at work and I should have frozen some for later, too. Mmmm!

Crock-Pot Pork Chops

Sometimes I forget that there are other meats at the grocery store besides chicken breasts and ground beef. I guess those are what’s most familiar. Sometimes, though, I mosey on over to the pork section and come home with something different. Recently I did that and ended up with pork loin chops. Then I had to figure out what to do with them. I’m not the biggest fan of pork, but given hubby’s propensity toward meals that include meat, I try to include it here and there. It seems like it always ends up dry and overcooked, though, so I decided to find a crock pot recipe for them.

The description of this recipe almost put me off of it: “'Family and friends call me the 'Crock-Pot Queen,' reveals Janet P. of Meadville, Pennsylvania. 'Of my many slow-cooked specialties, this is my husband's favorite.'” I have trouble believing that there are really people who call her that. I imagine that this is a nickname that someone called her once when she put something nice together, and it made her glow, and now she imagines that people really refer to her by that. I bet people roll their eyes and let her think that. But her recipe looked decent, and it had a lot of good reviews, so I thought I’d give it a try.

First step, throw those pork loin chops in a skillet and brown them.

They smell DELICIOUS.

While that’s going on, chop up a green pepper.

And an onion.

The recipe said to add a can of mushrooms, but I opted to go with fresh.

Pork chops are still frying up. Make a sauce with tomato sauce, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, cider vinegar, and salt.

Put the pork chops in the crock pot. The recipe said to do 6, I thought 3 was plenty. Plus, that’s what I had.

Top the pork with the green peppers, onions, and mushrooms.

And then pour the sauce over everything.

Cover and simmer on low for 4-5 hours. I hate recipes that have that time period, because I am at work for much longer than this! But this was my day off, so I was able to start it in the early afternoon so that it was ready for dinner.

Then I did some housework and went to my zumba class.

When I got home, it time to put everything together. I cooked up some hot white rice in my rice cooker and served the pork and vegetables on top of it.

It was good, but I wouldn’t say it was anything extraordinary. Janet P. of Meadville, Pennsylvania, your description is quite misleading.

But it was very easy, and it was a nice change. I’ll probably make it again.

Recipe in tastebook at some point.