Dijon Pork Chops with Pumpkin Risotto, Orange Chipotle Salmon, Maitake Marsala Steak & Melting Potatoes & Meal Prep Shrimp Pasta

Once again, there were lots of delicious things coming out of our kitchen this week and none were super involved cooking projects, even the risotto came together fairly quickly!

Dijon Pork Chops with Pumpkin & Collard Risotto

It’s maybe not advisable to make a risotto on a weeknight, but every other Wednesday I get home fairly early after the Northshore hubs in the afternoon, so game on!

I roasted, pureed and froze a bunch of heirloom pumpkins in November, so the pumpkin was just waiting to be used for risotto (or pasta, or quick bread, in soup, etc).

I started by sautéing shallots in butter, then adding some garlic and deglazing with white wine. Then I added in the arborio rice. I had defrosted and heated up some chicken and pork bone broth, so after the wine was cooked off, I started adding that, stirring it and waiting until it was absorbed before adding more.

I seasoned with mushroom seasoning, rosemary and thyme. Once the rice was close to cooked, I added in the pureed pumpkin and collard greens that I had chopped fairly small.

I added the rest of the broth, turned the heat to low and put a lid on it to help the collards cook.

In the meantime, I salted the pork chops, then spread a thin layer of dijon mustard on both sides, along with mushroom seasoning, coriander, black pepper and red pepper flakes.

Then I seared the chops on all sides, let them rest and topped the risotto with parmesan and asiago cheese. It was really delicious and great as leftovers for the rest of the week, too!

Orange Chipotle Salmon with Rice, Squash & Sweet Potatoes

There’s a creamy orange chipotle shrimp recipe that I really like from Pinch of Yum and I also like her bang bang salmon recipe, so I decided to kind of apply the bang bang salmon recipe concept with the orange chipotle flavors.

I seasoned the salmon filets with sea salt, garlic powder and paprika, then mixed up a sauce with diced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and added that to mayo, orange juice and zest and minced garlic.

I spread the sauce on the salmon to marinate briefly and then roasted it. I saved some of the sauce to top the salmon and rice when it was finished cooking.

We ate it with Jasmine rice, a big salad with crispy chickpeas and a creamy cashew and garlic chive dressing and roasted delicata squash and sweet potatoes. The flavor on the salmon was incredible, will definitely be making again!

Steak with Maitake Mushroom Marsala Sauce & Melting Potatoes

I had a little sirloin tip steak I pulled from inventory since it was way smaller than the new batch and I had taken a picanha steak out for similar reasons. I also also really excited to try the maitake mushrooms that Screaming Oaks just started growing!

And we had Yukon gold potatoes, so instead of the typical roasted potatoes I often make or mashed potatoes, I decided to try some melting potatoes. The method is to roast the potatoes with butter and olive oil, flipping a third of the way through and then adding broth for the last third of cooking. They get brown and a little crispy before you add the broth and then, exactly like the name says, they become meltingly soft and delicious!

For the steaks, I salted an hour or so before cooking and then seared on a high heat for a few minutes per side. Then I transferred them to a plate and covered in foil to rest while I made the mushroom marsala sauce.

First I diced the maitake mushrooms and let them get a little brown in the steak pan before adding the marsala to deglaze. I let the alcohol cook off and then added some more beef broth (which I had defrosted for the potatoes). And then I had some half and half on hand, so added a little of that and cooked just until it thickened a bit. It was a very delicious and pretty decadent combo!

Bacon Brussels Sprouts

This was the first time I cooked Brussels sprouts this season and sadly, it was a bit of a miss! I am making the other half of the portion I took home tonight and will be sure to correct my mistakes!

I started by cooking a pack of our bacon. I try to take as many “scratch and dent” products out of inventory for us versus perfectly sellable food. You can sort of tell in the first photo that this is a pack of bacon that had some of the USDA inspector’s stamp on it with bits of blue ink!

Once the bacon was nice and crispy, I removed it and poured the extra fat into a jar. I then put all the Brussels sprouts cut side down in the same cast iron pan. This was the beginning of my issue. There was too much bacon residue and eventually it made the Brussels sprouts stick to the pan and not release easily. I started them on the stove top and then transferred to the oven to finish.

In the past when I’ve done this with a clean pan, the stove top and oven method words great. This time when I took them out to flip them and check them, I realized they were stuck, so I added some beef broth. Somehow this almost seemed to make it worse because the pan was so hot it cooked off immediately and they still were stuck but the liquid helped them get kind of mushy.

I added in the bacon and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and was able to use a metal spatula to scrap them off the pan (win for cast iron, which not only isn’t toxic, but your body can actually uptake and digest the iron that may come off in the food you cook!). So they were edible and the bacon was delicious, but the Brussels sprouts themselves could have been better, for sure!

Meal Prep Shrimp Pasta with Mustard Green Pesto & Veggies

I made this for lunch on Monday in order to have lunch for most of the rest of the week and it worked out great. (Grant doesn’t like the way pasta makes him feel, so he skipped this and it was all for me!).

I did a pound of gumbo shrimp sautéed in butter with some Trader Joe’s Green Goddess seasoning. I had used some mustard green pesto from my freezer supply for pizza the week before, so needed to use the rest of the container up!

And we also had leftover roasted romanesco and broccolini, so it made this come together pretty easily and quickly. I did eight ounces of some Il Supremo radiatore pasta, along with some sun-dried tomatoes. I topped it all with plenty of Meyer lemon juice and for the leftovers I put a little slab of fresh mozzarella in each one.

When reheating, I like to only heat the mozzarella at the very end, so that it softens but doesn’t melt into globs entirely. So leaving it in slabs meant I could remove it from the containers and cube it while the pasta was reheating. It worked out great!