Cheddar Pork Chops

There was a time when the idea of blogging was far-fetched but the Kitchen has always been my haven and with friends who were determined to keep a souvenir of the day I even have my hands on an image from the memorable day.

Now my best of friends loves Pork. I mean she can devour on Pork all day long. I personally wouldn't mind the chop once in a while but I am more of a ham sausage kind of girl but well when you have friends whose primary interest in life revolves around gastronomy you have plenty to rejoice about for you can whip, chop, sear , fry and they shall wait with eager anticipation. The other good thing about having such friends is that due to their love for food they wouldn't lie to you if there was some deficiency in your dish and so you always end up with improving yourself in case the dish needs a bit of changing etc. I still remember that cold day from January last year when I was hosting a dinner party and was cooking this Kashmiri mutton and even after 2.5 hours it wasn't soft enough and my friend didn't hesitate one bit to let me know that. I immediately let it simmer away for another hour and my lovely guests enjoyed it to the last bit and among the guests one aunt still talks about the dish whenever she meets me

Now food is a matter of choice. What one would love the other wouldn't. So you cannot always satisfy everyone. For instance lets take these pork chops. Some like theirs just cooked , some might want it a bit crispy, my friend likes it in all forms. This one is a bit on the crispy side , tender and juicy inside and wonderfully cheesy yet crisp outside.

Basically 1 pork chop would serve 1 person

So I am writing down my recipe per pork chop which serves 1

You need

1 Pork Chop (Fat trimmed with a little bit of fat left for the pork to be rendered in)
4 tbsp of freshly shredded cheddar
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp finely chopped fresh herb of your choice I used parsley
Salt and pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Season your pork and press it down on the meat with your hands. make three incisions in the fatty section so that the chops do not curl up in your pan. Whisk the Olive oil and vinegar together and then add the herb salt and pepper and keep whisking and slowly add the cheddar and whisk to make a sauce. Now the cheddar wouldn't melt and that is alright.

Preheat oven to 180 C . Simply brush the a pan with butter and put it on high heat and then slowly add the chops and cook for 1.5 minutes on each side. Let it rest for 3 minutes and then grease your baking dish with butter and add the chops and use a generous amount of the fresh cheese sauce on both sides. Keep aside 2 tsp  cheese sauce aside. Bake for 20 minutes to 30 minutes using the butter on the pork chops after 5 minutes  and basting the meat with the juices twice during the length of baking. Let the chops rest for 5 to 7 minutes before serving. Serve it with cheese stuffed tomatoes , mashed potato and a few steamed greens . Take a tomato and hollow out the middle , stuff with the cheese sauce and grill it till the cheese melts and it sizzles.

Pork Chops with Sweet and Sour salad

Gordon Ramsay's Pork Chops with Sweet and Sour Bell Pepper Salad 

Well I was hosting a brunch. Now I have never hosted a dinner party or brunch where I personally do not know the people because knowing my guests is the key reason for my brunches. Now these friends were originally friends of my best friend who with the years united together for the love of food , movies travel etc. In fact when I was in Delhi I had a memorable day spent with one of my lovely guests in the Jawaharlal Nehru Campus eating a lovely dish of chili lamb and taking long walks in the middle of the night no to forget the wonderful street shopping the next day. 

I had planned the brunch a long time before the B-day and as is usually my style I asked them about preference, allergies etc and my dear friend told me she wanted something exotic from me which meant, usually unheard of dishes and expressly mentioned that she doesn't consider chicken and mutton to be meat anymore which actually made me very very happy because a reason for fatty pork chops is always welcome. 

While I planned and planned the other dishes I knew what I was doing with my pork chops. Back in September I was either watching TLC or Fox Travel or some channel on television  where Gordon Ramsay had shown this extremely easy and delicious looking pork chop and I simply typed in Ramsay Pork Chops and ah I hit the jackpot. It was right there on you tube and all I did was follow the recipe but with a mild change 

You see Ramsay cooks in Britain and I cook in Kolkata. While he can easily access any cut of meat he wants I am heavily dependent on one wonderful shop and while they deliver excellent quality of meat their pork chops are always 50% meat and 50% fat. In this matter I had to do a lot of trimming of fat because believe that amount of fat can give anyone a cardiac arrest. So instead of the olive oil Ramsay used in his pork chop I simply rendered the chops instead of using any olive oil. After the enormous success of this recipe I would say keep it simple keep it delicious

So what you need is basically extremely simple 

4 Pork chops 

salt and freshly crushed pepper

5 to 6 medium sized garlic unpeeled 

Bunch of thyme (In case Fresh Thyme is not available go for the Parsley) 

Butter to brush the pan 

Sweet and sour salad 

1 red bell pepper per person 

1 medium sized onion per person 

Half tbsp sugar 

2 tbsp olive oil 

salt and pepper 

A splash of balsamic vinegar 

1 tbsp fresh finely chopped basil 

Start with the salad. Thinly slice the onions and bell pepper. Heat the olive oil and add your pepper and onion and toss it around and add salt ,pepper , sugar and toss around for another half a minute and add your splash of balmasic vinegar. While it cooks away finely chop basil and add in the pan and toss everything and then place it on the dinner plates.  Once you cook your pork chop you simply add it atop the delicious salad. It takes not more than 8 minutes to cook this dish including chopping time. 

Ramsay gave a very valuable tip to prevent the chops from curling in the pan which is easily achieved by making slits on the fatty part alone. Season with salt and pepper and pound it lightly with your hands. If you have a good amount of fat simply heat the pan on high flame , brush it with butter and put your pork chops to be cooked and when it crackles put the herb and garlic unpeeled and crushed on the sides. Cook the meat for 5 to 7 minutes on each side and in between you must use a spoon to take the oily melted fat from the pan to bast the pork for tender juicy meat. Now use high heat for the first 1 to 2 minutes to seal the juices and then cook on medium heat so that it does not burn. To be fair Ramsay did use a good amount of butter while cooking the chops as well but mine had so much of fat that the Chops were literally swimming in the fatty goodness and I didn't have to add any butter. 

Ramsay's valuable tip for getting moist juicy chops is to let the Pork chop rest for the exact amount of time it takes to cook it before serving. When asked how it was my darling friend who is usually polished blurted out , "It is F****** awesome Oh F***" I asked, "Is it juicy? " to which the reply was "F****** juicy" 

I rest my case. 

Pollo Alla Milanese

So the most delicious things in life are the simplest ones. One such delight is the Pollo alla Milanese which is basically chicken breast beaten well to flatten it and then served with spinach and a tomato sauce but then Christmas is all about love is it not?

Well it actually goes back to the 26th when I was tryign to meet my deadline and was in a flurry of typing , listenign analsyizing etc and then the phoen rings and here si what happened:

H: "Where are you Manjari?" Me: " I am in my house why?" H: "Come out please" And holy Mother of God there he was standing in front of my house , my lanky bear of a husband. Well with his beard and all he can pass of as a bear , a lanky one at that standing with his luggage and a rose. Between transit to his hometown the dear man had made a stop and demanded that i immediately accompany him which was not possible since I had a deadline and a Christmas celebration which had been anyways fashionably postponed . With precious little time left since we came to an agreement of my traveling on the 30th I knew that a Dundee cake and whole roast would not be possible what with packing and all and so I decided on a simple recipe which did not require the oven.

So this cotoletta as the Italians would say might have originally been made of veal but i have read in blogs by people from that land of culinary delight that chicken is also acceptable hence from Cotoletta alla Milanese it becomes pollo (chicken) alla Milanese. Well authentic cotoletta is a cutlet fried bone in but i did get my chicken breasts all deboned from the butchers and used the bone for a fantastic stock for later usage .

Christmas is definitely all about relationships and so I had originally planned on the Pomodoro (tomato) sauce and spinach tossed around with garlic and olive oil but since I was going away I could help ask my best friend which sauce she would prefer and she said she would want the white based sauce and so the dish finally came to represent the Italian flag. My dear friend and cousin gobbled up both sauces and from the way they were engrossed in the dish I can say that my Christmas was most definitely a wonderful one. Now Bechamel sauce is essentially French but add a bit of nutmeg and Parmesan and you have Italian white sauce

Anyways the most obvious reason for choosing this lovely dish is because of its sheer simplicity and here is what you do

Use 1 chicken breast per person and flatten it with a mallet Ah but before that this is what you need

Chicken breast 1/2 per person
Salt and pepper
Olive Oil
Homemade breadcrumbs Handful for 2 breasts
1 egg per breast (again the size of eggs vary greatly)
Roughly 50gm all purpose flour per breast


For the pomodoro sauce (Tomato sauce)

8 large plump tomatoes
3 to 4 large sized garlic cloves which when minced should yield about 2.5 tbsp garlic (You see the size of the garlic varies from place to place)
Salt and pepper
2 to 3 tsp red chili flakes
Handful of fresh basil
1tbsp extra virgin olive oil

For the special Italian bechamel sauce

3 tbsp of silky smooth almond paste
3tbsp unsalted butter
3 cups of whole milk
6 tbsp cream
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and pepper
A good handful of Parmesan cheese

For the spinach

I used about 500gm of spinach
3 tbsp minced garlic
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

The recipe is basically very simple.

Start with the sauces . Simple blanch the tomatoes and chop chop chop. Use about 4 tbsp olive oil and saute minced garlic and add the chili flakes and half the chopped basil and quickly add the tomatoes and stir and cook on medium flame till it bubbles and add salt , pepper and the rest of the basil then mash a bit and simmer till you get a thick sauce.

For your white Italian bechamel sauce simply melt the butter and add the smooth nut paste and the milk and quickly add salt, pepper , nutmeg half the cheese and stir continuously so that no lumps are formed to make a smooth silky sauce and then add the other half of the cheese and mix well. You can also first bring the milk to a boil with the nutmeg salt and pepper and simmer it for 5 to 7 minutes then melt butter add nut paste and the flavoured milk and cheese and simmer while stirring continuously.

All you need to do is flatten the chicken a bit and season with salt and pepper and then simply roll around in the flour and then dip in whisked eggs and coat well with breadcrumbs so that no bit is left un-coated and then fry in the olive oil. The flavour of this cutlet comes from the frying in olive oil and this one must never substitute with other oils else it seizes to be Pollo alla Milanese from Italy and believe me the flavour of the olive oil fried cutlet is superb. Here is a little tip with your breadcrumbs. The fresher it is the better it is of course and nothing beats homemade ones but adding a bit of salt, pepper and dried oregano gives an amazing flavour.

Once you are done with the chicken. Simple add 5 to 6 tbsp olive oil to a hot pan and add the minced garlic and the chopped spinach and cook on high heat for not more than 3 minutes to retain the colour and flavour. Over-cooking renders the spinach bitter.

You have your beautiful meal waiting for you and everybody to appreciate