Cider Braised Pork Chops

This recipe only works with very thick pork chops, or else with a LOT of thin pork chops, but I'd go with the thick ones. I learned of this recipe on the PBS show Test Kitchen and thought it sounded fantastic. Turned out, it was! When it was done, I served it with croissants and a sweet asian salad and the meal was amazing! This one takes a long time, so plan for that. Prep time is about 20-30 minutes, but cook time is about 90 minutes. I can see serving this with either rice or potatoes. I can also see adding fresh or frozen vegetables during the last half hour, but that's only if you want the apple flavor to be consistent through the entire meal. Your call. It may seem complicated at the start, but it's really very easy to do, and the results are fantastic. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you try this once as it's written so you know what you're dealing with, then start making modifications. Whenever I'm dealing with cider recipes, I do this. Enjoy!


3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1-2 pounds pork chops (cut thick or thin)
1 medium onion roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons apple butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup apple cider
1 sprig thyme
1/2 tsp basil and 1/2 tsp sage
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 (more) tablespoons apple butter

Heat oven to 300 degrees. In a dutch oven, or a pan with a cover that is both oven safe and stove top safe, heat oil until almost smoking. Pat pork chops dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Fry chops in oil to brown depending on thickness of chops 2-4 minutes each side. Remove chops to a plate and continue until all chops are done. Remove all oil from pan except 1 tablespoon trying to retain all pork solids for flavor. Cook onions over medium heat until soft, then add garlic, flour, and first 2 tablespoons of apple butter. Cook until aromatic. Add one cup of cider and herbs (thyme or sage/basil mix) and stir until smooth, scraping pan to release "flavor bits" in the pan. Put chops back into pan with any juices that have accumulated on the plate, cover, and put in oven. Bake thoroughly. This can take 2-3 hours, but the meat must reach the "falling off the bone" stage. When the meat is done, remove it to a platter being very careful not to shred it. Strain the juices left in the pan and return to the heated pan. Add the last two tablespoons of apple butter, and 1 tsp of apple cider and stir until thouroughly blended and completely heated. Serve each chop on a plate with a couple of spoonfuls of sauce over the top. Like I said, AMAZING!

Enjoy!

Tim’s on the Riverfront

What bad can be said about this place? Okay, the beef sucks. My partner ordered a steak sandwich and got something resembling steakums that had been cooked too long. But I ordered a piece of fried cod that was amazing, and our roommate got clams casino (terrific) and Caesar salad with crab that almost had too much crab. How often does that happen?
Tim’s on the Riverside is well hidden and I’d suggest that if you’d like to try it, go to the internet for directions, cuz it’s hard to find. It’s well worth the effort. It’s a drive up and boat up restaurant. You can either drive there in your car, or boat up to it in your, well, boat! They have about a dozen berths along their docks as well as a water taxi for those who want to anchor further out. It’s located where Neabsco Creek enters the Occoquan Bay. During the height of boating season, it’s the rockin’ happenin’ place. On the weekends, they have live music in the evenings, and things can get pretty rowdy. Why Guy Fierie (Diners, Drive Ins, And Dives (HGTV)) hasn't found this place is beyond me!
Tim’s is a good old-fashioned waterfront experience. Part of the restaurant seating is inside; part is on the pier; and part is on the “beach” front. They try to get as many people facing the water as they can.
It’s a seafood place. Don’t order the steak sandwich. I’ve had the fried shrimp, the fried fish, and the hamburger. All of them were excellent. My partner has had the fried shrimp, the hamburger, and the steak sandwich. All were good except the steak sandwich. Our roommate has had the crab cakes, and the Caesar salad with crab meat, and the clams casino and all were excellent. So my best advice is to stick with the seafood. It’s really good. And the hush puppies are amazing! Sweet, crunchy, the epitome of what a hush puppy is supposed to be.
During the summer, on the weekends, they have live music. The bands play on a raft out in the bay attached to a pier so they can’t float away, but it gives a sort of floating feel to the experience. The bands we’ve heard have been of the rockin’ sixties/seventies variety and have been very good. We recognized the songs and sang along. I haven't heard any bands that were obnoxious and there are many of those wandering around.
There is a bar inside and outside. The outside bar is a little louder and more “in your face” than the inside bar, but that’s to be expected.
The reason for going to Tim’s on the Riverside is to have a good time and to experience something you might not have had an opportunity to experience, namely the boating lifestyle. Soak up the amazing atmosphere; feed the stray cats wandering around; enjoy the conversations at nearby tables; and have a blazing amount of fun.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!

Braised Cucumbers

Okay, so like nearly anyone else who's seen "Julie and Julia", all I can say about Braised Cucumbers is "Yumm!" Cooking this vegetable completely changes its personality. Cukes normally are eaten raw and cold, in a salad or with a dip. Cooked and hot, they are a great side dish for anything. You can taste the flavor of the melon, but it's so much richer and deeper than it was before. It doesn't take long to prep, and it doesn't take long to cook. I modified Julia's recipe a tiny bit. And again, all I can say is "Yumm!"

2 medium to large cucumbers
2 tablespoons butter
1 pinch sugar
1 pinch salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice (white vinegar if lemon juice is unavailable)
1 pinch dried mint leaves or 1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh mint leaves

Peel cucumbers, then slice in half lengthways. Remove all seeds, then cut cucumber in half lengthways so there are four pieces for each cucumber. Cut into one inch sections.

On medium heat, melt butter in a heavy bottomed skillet until bubbles disappear, then sprinkle sugar into the butter. Add the cucumbers and stir to coat. Cover the skillet and cook for 5 minutes stirring twice during the cooking time. Add the salt, lemon (or vinegar), and mint and stir to mix thoroughly. Cover and cook for two more minutes, then remove from heat. Serves 4.

I added the sugar to the original recipe so it can safely be omitted, but it adds a nice brown crust or carmalization to we enjoyed. So to you, Enjoy!

My Favorite Wine

I like white wine. No arguements, no discussions. I like white wine. I do not like the flavor of reds, or the earthiness, or the "dirt like" quality that I taste in reds. Other people do. Not me. Now:
Having said that, I have several favorite white wines and nearly all of them are chardonnays. I'm not going to go into the whole discussion about the differences in the whites and what wine is good with what food (although I could) but I am going to offer a few selections of my favorites, and all of them are chardonnays. The chardonnay grape produces the mildest and most flavorful wine.
Several very good vineyards operate within an hour to an hour and a half drive from my house. (If you've never taken a winery tour I HIGHLY recommend it!) I recommend several of them without reservation. And if any of my local friends want to contact me for a "tour", just holler. For my local wines, my most favorite is Prince Michel. It's about an hour and half south of where I'm at but has the BEST chardonnay. They also have a viognier and a sparkling viognier (on occassion) that's beyond compare. They also run the gamut of reds, but I can't speak to them.
Much further south and east is the Williamsburg winery. I've been to several tastings there, and I've got to say that really and truly they have the best wines around. I even like their reds which I don't drink at all. But their reds, I would not say no to.
Now, for most people, the primary consideration in choosing wine is the cost. You CAN spend a significant amount of your take home pay on wine if you want to, but what for? Many of them will just go bad, and then what do you have? I've had the very expensive wines and haven't been all that impressed. Maybe it's my palate (the tasting part of your mouth), and maybe it's just that ingrained part of me that says WTF?!!
I really and truly like many of the cheaper and mind range wines. So I'll give you a run down of my favorite chardonnays. If you don't like the white wines, oh well. Go somewhere else. I'll start from the cheapest and go up.
My cheapest favorite wine is whatever is free. I have a dear friend who brings me Oak Grove every single time she comes over so for me it's free. However, for most people, it about $10-15 a bottle. It's also tough to find. I can't get it anywhere around me. So she brings it whenever she comes over. And I love her for it.
Okay, so for the real stuff. My best and cheapest wine is Woodbridge Chardonnay. It's really good and mild. I like to put it in the freezer for about two hours so when I pour the first glass it has ice crystals in it. That's wonderful for me. I drink wine VERY slowly. If you do too, you'll notice a change in flavor and texture as the wine warms to room temp. Every one of the changes can be cherished and appreciated. It's a true sybaritic experience. And if you're eating chocolate at the same time, WELL!!!
My next wine is Kendall Jackson Chardonnay. KJ (as I call it) is the wine that I order at restaurants if it's on the menu. The only other one that I'll order consistently is Copper Ridge. Both are wonderful, but both are completely different experiences. KJ is smooth and mellow and complements everything. It doesn't matter what you're eating, KJ will enhance it. Copper Ridge is a little more selective. It will enhance anything italian or fish based. Don't drink this one if you're eating a steak.
I'm not going to discuss the very expensive wines, but there's one that I do have to mention. My partner and I get this wine whenever we get brazilian barbeque (and if you've never done this, do it!!!!). It's Fess Parker Chardonnay. Yup, the Daniel Boone guy had a winery. And his whites are great. One bottle will run you about $30 on the open market, and higher in a restaurant, but it's totally worth it. It's a white that's so dry, you can almost taste the splinters from the oak barrel. Wonderful stuff.
Okay, so my two favorite whites are from other areas. They are mid-range price, and independent vineyards, and unbelievably good.
The first I was introduced to by my best friend. She and I get together about once every couple of months to get totally plastered on this wine to the point where we're setting trees on fire to enjoy the show. It's a really good wine and it's hard to find. It Oak Grove chardonnay and it's one of fruitiest and smoothest chardonnays I've ever had. When B brings it over, I drink about three bottles before it's even chilled. The other favorite I was introduced to by my sister a few years ago, and I would pour this over corn flakes for breakfast and go to work and have it for coffee break. I have done so many things with this wine that I can't even count them. Primarily, I drink it. Lots of it. All the time. It just doesn't get un-good. Nearly anyone who knows me, knows that if they show up at my house with a bottle of this stuff, they are going to be more than welcomed.
It's call Five Rivers. It's bottled out of Washington state in the Pacific Northwest and I have no idea how they keep the grapes from spoiling with all the rain, but it's the BEST!!! Everyone I've recommended this wine to has fallen in love with it. And a couple of restaurants in the area have added it to their menus based on my recommendation. AND their reds are just as smooth and flavorful as their whites. And I don't drink reds. But theirs are GOOOD.
I love wine. It's good stuff. Please feel free to comment with a question or comment. I'll share anything I know or experience about wines anytime.
Enjoy! (and drink up!)

Burger Boys

If you're ever on rt 234 and Hoadly Rd. look for the Bloom grocery store. Right next to it is Burger Boys. What a GREAT place! It's within "spitting" distance of where we live and we've never gone there till yesterday. It's a small, locally owned place and the atmosphere is great! Prices run about five bucks per whatever you order. They have burgers, and just about anything else you'd want. And an ice cream counter. The burgers are grilled to order, not made ahead. The buns are grilled/toasted and everything tastes GREAT! (to quote an infamous tiger) I had a bacon cheeseburger with mustard, mushrooms, pickles, and my choice of cheese (sharp cheddar, by the way.) I had the half pounder! I ate so much, I was sick! I couldn't stop. It was so good! One of the best things about the place was the atmosphere. The old guy who runs the place has more personality than should be legal. There's TV screens around, and a place for the kids to play. There's even an original Star Wars poster on the wall, safely behind glass, of course. Anyway, hope you all can make it there and enjoy it as much as we did!

One Skillet Chicken and Spaghetti

This is an easy, cheap, and filling meal that can be made in a short time with a minimum of fuss in one single pan.

Four chicken breasts (or any other piece of chicken you like)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic minced
1 tsp italian seasonings
2 cups fresh spinach
1-2 cups frozen spinach
1 tablespoon oil
Half box cooked spaghetti

Heat oil in a skillet. Brown chicken on both sides. Remove to plate. In same pan, lightly saute garlic and onion until tender. Add canned tomatoes with the juice, one full cup of water, and seasoning. Place chicken back in pan and any juices that have accumulated. Simmer until reduced by half. Add spinach and cook thoroughly. While sauce is simmering, cook spaghetti or used already cooked spaghetti. When sauce is ready, remove chicken pieces, add spaghetti to the pan and mix thoroughly. Place chicken back in pan, reduce heat to very low, cover, and keep hot until serving. Serve hot with parmesan cheese if desired. A tossed green salad and/or garlic bread go very well with this.

Potaytoes Potahtoes

My mom was 100% Irish and knew potatoes inside out. She made potatoes at nearly every meal, and seldom made the same potato dish twice in a week. And I hated potatoes a lot! There were only two kinds of potatoes I'd eat: potato chips and french fries! Like every other little kid. When I started cooking for the family at age 15, I took us off a diet of potatoes and taught us about other starches. It went okay for a while, then I started missing potatoes. Weird, huh?

Potatoes are one of the most versatile foods, and certainly the one where it's easiest to impress people. From something as simply boiling them with a little salt, to mashing and adding eggs and cream and piping them onto a hot cooking sheet, potatoes can be as simple or as complex as you choose. I usually choose simple, but even that offers close to a thousand choices.

In this post, I'm going to offer two of my favorite recipes for cooking potatoes. Before I do that, I'm going to talk about a few varieties of potatoes. Nearly everyone is familiar with the russet. It's a huge brown potatoe, usually from Idaho although that's been changing. It's got a distinctive starchy potato flavor and is usually baked or french fried. It has a lot going for it due to its size. It make a heckuva lot of french fries and potato chips. Also, as a "loaded baked potato", it can hold a TON of toppings. Then there are the "new" potatoes, the small, barely formed babies. They tend to be very tender and tasty. Usually these come in a red or white skinned variety. A white skinned potato usually looks light brown. New potatoes have a very thin skin that is barely there, but the overall taste tends to be sweeter. The red skinned potatoe can be interchangeable with every other variety due to its medium texture and flavor. Redskins are used quite often in "dirty" mashed potatoes since the red skin can be very easily seen. One of my favorite potatoes is the Yukon Gold. It's a medium size and typicaly very round. It's name comes from the color of the inside of the potato which is a pale yellow or gold. It has a very sweet and very creamy texture to it. It can be mashed quite easily and needs very little extra moisture added. I usually just add butter. The final variety I've used is called the Peruvian Purple. It actually is purple, though sometimes looks black. The only way I've used these little guys is steamed, and they looked an awful lot like dog poop. They tasted okay, but I'm not certain what the average home cook would use them for except the shock factor.

Two things to note before going any further: Potatoes continue to grow even when they're above ground. Sunlight can turn the skin green, and can also start the "eyes" growing. Cut these parts out of the potato before cooking. They contain a chemical that some people are sensitive to and can make some people ill. When in doubt, cut it out!

My two favorite recipes for potatoes are oven fried and twice fried. Fried potatoes have a wonderful crispiness to their skins and softness to their inside. And they go great with ketchup!

Oven Fried -
Preheat the oven to 425. Take your favorite potatoe (I usually use red skinned) and cut them into chunks of the same size so they all cook consistently. Put them into a bowl and toss with 1 tablespoon olive oil, salt, pepper, and various herbs if you want them. Spread the potatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake for 25-35 minutes stirring every 5 minutes. The potatoes should brown and crispy and have a wonderful flavor from the oil salt and herbs. Serve immediately.

Twice Fried -
Slice your favorite potatoes lengthwise into french fry size. Heat a pot of vegetable oil to about 350 or 375. I typically use canola oil since it heats better. Add the potatoes a few at a time and try not to overfill the pot. Fry the potatoes for about five minutes until the outside is starting to turn opaque and white. Remove from the oil onto a baking sheet that's been lined with paper towels. Let the potatoes cool down completely. Reheat the oil, and fry the potatoes again in small batches trying not to overcrowd the pot. Once the potatoes are browned and floating they are done. Remove to either a bowl or a baking sheet lined with paper towels. Season to taste and serve hot.

The first recipe uses significantly less oil than the second, but both are delicious.

On a completely different note:
I'm looking for a top-of-the-line professional grade cooking knife brand. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'd rather not have wooden handles; I want to be able to hone them by hand; and the only one that should be serrated should be the bread knife. Any and all suggestions will be welcome.

Enjoy!