WE INTERUPT THIS BLOG FOR A PICKY EATERS WARNING: If you do not like the taste of raw garlic, you will not enjoy this dish. However, if like me you love the taste of raw garlic, then this is the dish for you! We now take you back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Since my husband Paulo started his new job in March, I've been planning meals for the week with the idea of having leftovers for lunch the following day. Sometimes this works out, and sometimes it doesn't (see previous entry for things not working out). Fortunately for me, however, he currently has Thursdays and Fridays off, so on those nights we can go out to eat or I can make smaller portions. That's where this recipe comes in.
You would think I would have been scared off of Nigella Lawson due to the ultimate failure of the last recipe I cooked of hers. (You'd be wrong, I still adore her!) This recipe, however, requires very little tweaking to make it healthy, as it pretty much already is healthy, excepting for drying the chops in oil, which I am willing to cope with. =)
In fact, the only tweaking at all I did to this recipe was to leave out any extra salt in the pork chop coating, because both the mustard and the parmesan cheese added the bit of saltiness it needed.
Without further ado, the recipe:
Crunchy Pork Chops with Garlicky Spinach and Tomato Salad
Adapted from Nigella Lawson
Ingredients
PORK CHOPS:
• 2 pork chops, approximately 8 ounces each
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup bread crumbs (I used Panko)
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated Parmesan
• 1 cup ground nut oil or similar, for frying (I used peanut oil)
GARLICKY SPINACH AND TOMATO SALAD:
• 3 medium tomatoes
• 1/2 clove garlic, minced (I grated it on a fine grater, watch your fingers!)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 4 cups baby spinach leaves (I took extra precaution and washed them in my salad spinner)
• Salt and pepper
Directions
Trim the thick white fat off the pork chops, cutting carefully around the outside edge. Lay the chops between 2 pieces of plastic wrap and, using a mallet or a rolling pin beat them until the meaty part of the chop is half as thick. You will need to beat around the bone, so turn them over once as you go.
Beat the egg in a shallow wide bowl with the mustard, oregano, and salt and pepper. On a large plate or platter, combine the breadcrumbs with the Parmesan.
Press each of the chops into the egg mixture, coating either side. Then dip the eggy chops into the bread crumbs, covering them evenly. Let them lie on a cooling rack to dry slightly while you heat the oil in a large frying pan. When a small cube of bread sizzles if dropped into the oil, then the oil is hot enough. Cook the chops until they are a deep golden color, about 5 to 7 minutes a side (depending on how thin you've managed to get them and how cold they were before going in the oil).
Meanwhile, quarter the tomatoes and take out the seeds, then cut the shells into strips and dice them. (Let me butt in here. I am way too lazy to remove all the seeds and finely dice the tomato. I cut each tomato into 8 wedges, then cut each wedge in half crosswise, and squeezed them slightly to get some of the moisture and seeds out. Just a gentle squeeze will do, it worked for me!) Combine the diced tomato, minced or grated garlic, oil, and lemon juice in a bowl, and season well with salt and pepper.
When the chops are ready, toss the spinach in the tomato mixture until well coated and divide the salad between 2 large plates, putting each chop alongside.
Results
Oh my gosh was this recipe easy to make. From start to finish I think it took me maybe 15 minutes of prep and cooking combined: a perfect after-work meal. Plus the taste? Yum! Even my semi-picky husband Paulo loved it! Not only was the pork super crispy and perfectly seasoned, the salad was really refreshing, with the acidity of the lemon juice cutting through the heaviness of the pork chops. Now I served the salad on the side, but in future cases I think I'm just going to dump the salad right on top of the chop. I ate it all together anyway, and I really enjoyed how the salad lightened the chop and how the chop added crunchiness to the salad.
Would I change anything? I don't think so. If I had to criticize it at all, I would say maybe there should have been a tiny bit more oregano. Or, better yet, I would sprinkle the oregano on between the egg wash and the breadcrumbs. A lot of it got lost when it was mixed into the breadcrumbs.
Now I ate this meal with a delicious Coca-Cola Classic, my drink of choice, but if I were to choose something alcoholic, I think this dish would be amazing with a nice White Sangria.
Verdict
I will definitely be making this again at least once before the summer is over. It definitely would have benefitted from garden fresh tomatoes instead of the still-good-but-not-amazing ones I got from Shoprite, but if you use really good produce this dish can really shine.
Up Next: Tomorrow night we are having oh so delicious pizza with my parents, so no post tomorrow, but I'll be back on Friday. Most likely fried catfish and hushpuppies. Stay tuned!
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