What's Cooking: Pork Chops & Mustard Greens, Steak Burrito Bowls, Bacon Melt, Jalapeño Popper Dip & More!
It was my second full week cooking in my new house and my amazing kitchen and it was glorious!
Pork Chops, Creamed Mustard Greens, Squash & Rice
We don’t eat pork chops a lot, because we somehow always seem to have tons of other pork in our home freezer to use up. But a beautiful pack of thick-cut bone-in chops had a vacuum seal issue and I was excited to be able to enjoy them!
I salted and seasoned and left them on a plate in the fridge for the afternoon. The drier the exterior and the more the salt has absorbed, the better the sear, I find.
And then a lovely soil customer gave us some mustard greens from his farm, so I did a batch of creamed greens with red onions and garlic, half & half and parmesan cheese. And the key for perfect creamed greens to me is a little dash of nutmeg.
We ate the chops with leftover rice, the greens and roasted Honey Bear Acorn squash. Simple but really delicious.
Grilled Steak Burrito Bowls
The main mid-week meal last week was marinated and grilled tenderized round steak and black beans for burrito bowls. The steak marinade is avocado oil, soy sauce, lots of lime juice, plus chili lime seasoning, coriander and cumin and honey. I used a fermented jalapeño honey, which worked perfectly.
I also used some yellow and green bell peppers (that had got a little too cold in the back of my fridge, borderline frozen!) and red onions. I had those in the marinade with the steaks and then sautéed them on the stove for fajita veggies.
For the black beans, I soaked them for about 36 hours and then cooked in the instant pot with beef broth, bay leaves and a little salsa.
The bowls (really plates, I guess!) came together with rice, the steak, beans and veggies and topped with chipotle almond sauce and sharp cheddar cheese. And the leftovers also made for good breakfast burritos with eggs!
Mustard Green & Bacon Melt
I cooked the pork chops on Friday, but it was only one pack, so we had leftover veggies but no protein. I dreamed this up while I was swimming on Saturday as a solution for dinner and man, did it deliver.
Another thing we rarely take out of inventory for ourselves is bacon, but I allowed myself this indulgence. I cooked a few slices on Saturday night and then layered some Bellegarde country loaf slices with leftover greens, German mustard, sharp white cheddar cheese and the bacon and smashed it all together in a skillet.
It was incredible! And the sweet squash was a perfect compliment to it.
Jalapeno Popper Dip
The rest of the bacon was intended for this jalapeño popper dip. Faust Farms had given us extra jalapeño peppers and it was time to use them up. Other than fermenting them, this is the main thing I came up with for an entire pound of jalapeños.
I roasted them whole with a few pieces of green bell pepper, then cut the seeds and stem out and pulsed in the food processor. Then I added a container of Southern Maids goat yogurt (which is strained to be so thick, I use it more as cream cheese), then the chopped bacon, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, sea salt and some sharp cheddar cheese and parmesan cheeses.
Then I topped with it more cheese and breadcrumbs and baked in the oven. It was good but super spicy, even with the seeds removed! Luckily we had some hummus to dull the spice and then we just kept going back for more anyway.
Really Good Fall Salads
We are so glad salad greens are back that we’re eating salads for lunch or dinner or both nearly every single day.
These are my keys for a really good salad:
Properly dress and season your greens. Whether it’s a homemade salad dressing or store brought, taste the greens to see if they need a little salt and pepper or other seasonings in additional to the dressing. I am working through a bottle of Church Alley vinaigrette right now, but I also love to make homemade vinaigrettes, as well as caesar, blue cheese or tahini based dressings.
Get as many varied flavors and textures in there as you can. Lately I’m big on apples and persimmons as a sweet element, of course some kind of cheese as a creamy, umami boosting element, something fermented or pickled as a salty/funky element and then plenty of crunch from nuts, crispy chickpeas, crispy jalapeños and/or bread crumbs.
Hold back some toppings to add to the top since when you toss the toppings tend to fall to the bottom.
I especially love Resurrection Garden’s corn chow chow as a salad topping, but I also use kraut and fermented radishes frequently. And fried bread cheese is a super fun addition, as well, adding a cheese crouton situation. Cannot go wrong!
Apple Peach Persimmon Crisp with Rye & Oats
We love a simple fruit crisp, crumble or cobbler and this was a really good version. As I was moving some food from my chest freezers at the old house to the new house, I realized I had frozen peaches from the 2023 season still, yikes!
I also had some Winesap apples and persimmons that needed to be used, so I sliced those up first and then filled the rest of the crisp with the frozen peaches. The fruit component had brown sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest and juice, vanilla, cinnamon and sea salt.
For the crust I wanted to use Barton Springs rye flour for a little depth of flavor, so I combined that with their Butler’s Gold whole wheat flour. Also put a little cane sugar in the crust, plus satsuma zest. I pulsed the butter and the flour sugar mixture together, then added oats and walnuts. I make a lot of fruit crisp and this one was really stellar!