Cooking 101

Boneless pork chops with apple, almond, brown sugar stuffing and sauce

I absolutely LOVE to cook. Though it can be a bit exhausting, it is one of my favorite pastime on the weekend. Trust me, I am certainly not trained and I never took any cooking classes. However, a basic understanding of flavor combinations and food pairings help me feel a little more adventurous when its time to head in the kitchen.

Recently I tried the above mentioned meal and it was pretty easy. I was nervous about the flavour of the pork as I know that a lot of the taste is derived from the bone. Since I chose the boneless pieces, I wanted to make sure that I had some way to keep it flavorful and moist.

I seasoned my meat lightly with Italian spices, salt and pepper and also cut small pockets in the side in order to have the opening where I was going to stuff it later. I was super nervous about baking it as I know often times this can cause the meat to become very dry, very quickly. Therefore, I fried it briefly on both sides until the meat started to brown slightly. I used butter flavoured Wesson Oil Spray in hopes of obtaining some additional flavor. After removing the meat from the heat, I left them to cool off on a napkin while I worked on my sauce.

The sauce was very simple. I cut up one small red apple and threw it in the blender with a handful of honey roasted almonds and a little brown sugar. I added a little water just to create a smoother consistency. Since I was very nervous about the mixture being too sweet, I checked the taste to make sure I wasn’t adding too much brown sugar.

After the meat cooled, I was able to reopen the pockets to spoon in my stuffing. There was quite a bit of stuffing left over afterwards, which is where the sauce idea came from. Since the pork was already cooked partially, I only had to put it in the oven for an additional 20 minutes. I turned on the broiler towards the end so I could get a slight crisp to the meat.

Word of advice: Be super careful when involving a broiler. Even when the settings are placed on low, there is a potential of burning your food within a matter of minutes. So try to stay close by to keep an eye on everything.

I decided to pair my pork with some simple roasted white potatoes that I seasoned with garlic salt, Italian seasoning and black pepper. Simple enough, right guys?

Please don’t be intimidated by my long instructions, you guys should give it a try to let me know how it turns out.