Friday, November 3, 2017

Pork Chops In A Worchstershire and Red Wine Reduction

It's been awhile since I've blogged, I hope I remember how! My friend Amy was drooling over my pictures of the Pork Chops I made last night and I told her I'd share with her my recipe and so I have decided I'm going to share it here because I HAVE MISSED THIS BLOG SO MUCH and since I'll be typing it already, I may as well type it here and then share my blog with her. I know, I am SO SMART!

Get a bib, y'all....you're gonna need it!

Here we go!

Disclaimer: I rarely measure anything, so I'm ball-parking here people...it's not rocket science, but it's just something I came up with once and it was a hit so I keep making it! :o)

I tend to buy thicker pork chops or the pork loin steaks for this recipe.

You'll need on hand:

Stove top burner
Oven (preheat to 400)
Large oven proof skillet
Pork Chops/Pork Loin Steaks
One onion
2-3 cloves of garlic
Garlic Press
(Please use fresh garlic and use a garlic press - it's the best and cheapest tool I have in my kitch - except for the microplane I bought and spent waaaaaaay too much money for at one of those fancy kitchen stores...but I digress...)
1/4 - 1/3 Cup Worchstershire Sauce
1/2 cup - 3/4 cup Red Wine - I use Merlot a lot, but hubby drinks some nice Cab sometimes, so I use whatever is open or handy.
Flour
2-3 tbsp Johnny's Seasoning Salt (to lightly season the chops before you flour them up and also to add to the flour)
1-2 tbsp Cayenne Pepper (to add to the flour)
4 tbsp Olive Oil
1 1/2-2 C water

To start, you'll get your oven safe skillet heating on the burner med-high heat and add olive oil.
While that skillet is heating, you'll prep your plate with the flour and Johnny's and Cayenne and you'll dredge the pork coating it lightly and completely.

Your skillet should be pretty hot by now and you'll place the pork in the skillet - be careful, the oil will splatter you - it's just a given - us amateur cooks just need to deal with a little pain every now and then, amirite?

While the first side of your pork is cooking, you can now dice up your onion and use the garlic press on your garlic.

Flip your pork to the other side - feel free to add more olive oil at this point - we want the flour coating to sort of fry, I guess is the right word. We don't want to submerge it, but there needs to be a bit of oil to help with the crust on the outside of the pork as it cooks. Cook for about 4-5 minutes on the second side.

Add your onions and garlic to the pan. Cook for just a couple minutes - making sure you don't burn your garlic...it gets bitter when it burns and will permeate the entire dish.

Add your Worchestershire Sauce and Wine to the pan. Let this liquid reduce by about half. You may experience some thickening of the sauces because of the flour crust you've been creating - that's great!

Once your "sauce" has reduced by about half, you can add the water, give it a gentle stir to mix the water and sauce together and pop the whole skillet in the oven for about 45 minutes. You could push it by only leaving it in for 1/2 an hour, but trust me when I say that extra 15 minutes will make that pork melt in your mouth!

Remove the pan from the oven - BUT ....don't do this.... I mean it...just don't.

At some point during this process, you should really boil some potatoes to make mashed potatoes, because I'm about to blow your brains out with my next steps...seriously...let's just agree right here and now that you're going to make mashed potatoes, m'kay? Great. Glad that's settled.

Remove the chops to a plate. Place the skillet back on the stove - bring to a boil.

1/4 cup flour.
2/3 cup milk - maybe a little more depending on how you like to make your gravy. Milk and flour added to the sauce that has been simmering is how I roll...but you do you. Whisk the holy living LUMPS out of this mixture - if it's too thick, add a little more milk. No big whoop.

While whisking the sauce mixture that has been brought to a boil on the stove top, slowly drizzle in the milk/flour mixture until you achieve the desired thickness for your gravy.

DISH UP YOUR PLATE, Y'ALL!! I like to drizzle some of the gravy over the pork and on my mashed potatoes.

Serve with your favorite veggies or not...totally up to you.

I hope you try this one!! It's pretty spectacular and a great dish to have when you're craving Thanksgiving foods but it's too close to Thanksgiving to really want to go through the trouble, ya know?








Monday, April 9, 2012

DDITK Chocolate Pie

Ever since I saw Keri Russell in "The Waitress"...I've get on these:
I GOTS TA MAKE SOME PIES
crusades. Only...I never get enough inspiration of my own to get off my butt to make something. UNTIL  YESTERDAY!

The whole family was on it's way over for Easter Dinner. We had the ham, scalloped AND mashed potatoes, fresh homemade rolls, fruit salad, deviled eggs and all the little snacky things you could ask for - JELLY BEANS A'PLENTY - only...no dessert.

This is where it gets exciting, y'all!! I GOT OFF OF MY BUTT AND DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

I knew I could make a killer pie crust. CHECK! Then I got to thinking about what we had in the way of pie fillings...I thought...how do you make a chocolate pie from scratch? Then I thought - SCREW THAT! I HAVE A BOX OF CHOCOLATE PUDDING RIGHT HERE!!!!!!!! Then I was thinking - How can I jazz this up a bit? Throwing hot pudding into a baked pie crust is sort of a cop-out. I didn't want to be LAME..afterall, we had quite the spread planned...I didn't want the final thing people ate in my house to be an underwhelming, boring, uninspired dessert. NO SIREE BOB!

I was thinking - frozen strawberries (only because I didn't have FRESH ones) - meh...I don't want LAME frozen strawberries all limp and soggy in my chocolate pie. NEXT. Then I saw it. BUTTERSCOTCH CHIPS!!!! As I was cooking the pudding, I dumped 1/2 a bag of butterscotch chips in that mix and melted them in. I was looking about about 2 cups worth of filling for my beautifully flaky pie crust when it it hit me! WHIPPIN' CREAM! I whipped some up and folded it into the pudding mix after it had cooled a little bit.

THEN I HAD ANOTHER GREAT IDEA! Melt some more of the butterscotch chips and "paint" the pie crust with it and let it cool so that the pudding wouldn't make the crust soggy. BRILLIANCE!!!!

I dumped the pudding mixture into the pie crust and let it get all happy and Jello-ey in the fridge until after dinner.

IT. WAS. PERFECT!!!!! Also - it was super easy. Just use a refrigerated pie crust if you're not the type to throw a quick pie crust together. :o)

I would LOVE to hear about any quickie side dishes or desserts that you've thrown together that just turned out KILLER!! Leave me a comment. Let me know you're out there.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

When your Kitchenaid Mixer decides to be a Jerk Face...

About 3 months ago my glorious and fabulous husband was making bread - as he typically does - yes, I'm spoiled...and he's MINE!!!!

As he was pouring the ingredients into the mixer bowl and set it to mix the dough...the unimaginable happened! IT. STOPPED. SPINNING. This is not good, people. NOT GOOD AT ALL!!!!

Our knee-jerk reaction was, "Shit. Now we have to buy a new one." Okay...I'll be honest...maybe that was MY knee-jerk reaction. But you can be sure that hubby's heart sank a little and I'm sure the thought entered his mind that we'd have to drop another $300-$400 smackers on a new one. But he did something pretty brilliant. He lit up the computer and went straight to YouTube.

YouTube is pretty freaking awesome - for a lot of reasons - but right now? I'm telling you it's awesome because there is a video there that explains step-by-step how to fix the little nylon gear that typically gets stripped and for about $10 you can get it operating again - JUST. LIKE. NEW! Yep...you read that right. TEN SMACKEROOS!!!!

So, I'm going to go ahead and link the video here because - let's face it...if you HAVE a Kitchenaid mixer, chances are this will happen to you at some point. It will. It's designed to make this particular part fail after time. But when you take your Kitchenaid mixer apart, you'll realize the rest of the machine is built like a brick shit-house. It's one SOLID piece of machinery. If you ever doubt spending the money on one of these kitchen gadgets...DO IT!

Friday, January 27, 2012

The Chestnut Adventure

Today I asked one of my friends if she would like to be a Guest on the Delish Dish in the Kitch blog. To my extreme pleasure, she said yes. Her name is Beth and she always has something witty and funny to write about and I adore her. Without further ado, I present to you:



The Chestnut Adventure - By Beth a.k.a. Wearmanyhats

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” I sang to my hubby one day long ago. We had just been given a 10 pound bag of chestnuts, and both hubby and I were staring it down.

“What do we do with these?” he asked dubiously.

“Roast them!”

“How? You ever had them before?” 

“Nope,” I answered, confidence filling me up to a ridiculous level.  “But I’ll put them on a tray in the oven on 350 degrees and then we’ll try them.”  I had no idea how crazy that plan would turn out.

The next day I spread them out on a tray and placed them in the oven. 350 degrees was the magic number my mother had always baked everything on, so I figured this was the best heat to turn these little chestnut nuggets into ambrosia. 

My Oldest son, who was four at the time, was playing on the floor in the kitchen at that moment, and I turned and winked at him.  “Pretty soon we’re going to have a great snack, son.”

All of a sudden I hear a loud POP! inside the oven.   

“What the…?” I asked, flipping on the light and peering through the little oven door window.
BANG! I saw a chestnut obliterate itself into thin air. Horrified that my chemistry project was going awry, I hurriedly opened the door and took out the tray.

Dumb move.  

Another loud bang and I felt shards of shell go flying past my cheek. In a second I scooped up my son and hustled both of us around the corner into the living room. 

BANG!  

Oldest and I peeped around the corner like two bystanders in an 1880 gunfight.  BANG! Another chestnut exploded, sending a hail of chunks flying in all directions. 

“Damn!” I exclaimed, covering my son’s ears. That’s never a good sign. Swearing and cooking should never accompany one another. When the noise finally stopped, I approached the stove cautiously. Over a third of them were gone, their remains in clumps around the kitchen. I felt like a survivor of a Blitzkrieg. 

I called my husband and explained the problem.

When he stopped laughing (darn man), he said, “Good thing you didn’t get any shells in your eyes.”
Darn. I hadn’t thought of that.

“Why didn’t you just leave them in the oven?” he asked.

Armchair coach.

When I didn’t reply, he said, “Why didn’t you call the County Extension Agent?”

What a brilliant idea! 

In a moment I was on the phone with the Angels of God that are better known as the County Extension Agents.  I asked to speak to whoever was in charge of foods, and soon a lovely, innocent voice came on the line.

While I explained the failed experiment to her, I scrubbed down every dead chestnut body I could find. Once I even glanced up and made a mental note that Hubby would have to help me scrub the dead ones off the ceiling.  

When she stopped laughing (must have the same sense of humor as my husband), she asked me to hold while she looked up “Chestnuts” in her resource book.  Moments later, she explained that before roasting chestnuts on 325 degrees (close enough) you should cut a slit in the shell. “That way the steam can escape,” she explained. Roast fifteen minutes.

Armed with this new information, I roasted ten in the oven. When they came out, they were rich, sweet and filling. I could only eat two.  Later we used them for snacks, and they were lovely. Turns out those chestnuts do not only taste great, they are excellent in nutrition. They are high in iron, and possess a similar nutritional value as foods like corn, sweet potato, or regular potatoes, plus they have a high quality protein. The health benefits go on and on. Unfortunately blight wiped out most of the chestnut trees here in the United States, but hopefully growers will bring the trees back into production so we can see them more commonly on our tables in the future.

No one in our family has ever let me forget my chestnut adventure.  Even when I called the County Extension Agent after that with any questions, I identified myself as the person who blew up the chestnuts in the oven. Funny thing, she never forgot me, and she always laughed before I could ask my next question. Sometimes cooking experiences are just way too memorable.



To read more of Beth's writing, visit her blog here.  

Monday, October 17, 2011

TRICKS or Treats? I say TRICKS!

Happy HALLOWEEN, DDITK readers!!!

Halloween is my FAVORITE holiday. You have no idea. We started quite a trend for over the top decorating in our neighborhood and our entire block gets into it! We've got fog machines on both ends of the street, from our speakers runs a continuous loop of "Thriller" and my personal fave "Superstitious" by Stevie Wonder. You can hear it from 2 blocks up.

Here's a photo of our house:




As you can see...we get a little nutso and yes, that's a 20' spider on the front of our house.

We're not a typical house to visit while trick or treating, we like to raise the bar a little bit. Let me explain.

When I was a little girl, one of my most memorable trick or treating experiences was when this lady who was dressed up like a nasty old witch, made me dig in a slime filled bowl for my treat. I was forever changed.

Today, when my house is visited by the many ghosts and goblins and Snooki's, I, too play a trick on my t' or t'ers. I make them dig in a bowl full of jell-o to get their treats. We buy full sized candy bars at costco and shove them in a bowl that is about 2' wide and about 9" deep - and it's FULL of JELL-O!


The kids love it! We have over 200 trick or treaters every year. For those that are too cool or are too little to dig in the slime, I hand out non-slimy fruit roll-ups.

I keep a bucket of warm water at the bottom of our stairs and keep two towels on the railing so that hands can be dried as well as the candy can get dunked into the bucket. The first year I bought some cheap-o ziploc bags and had each t or t'er place their candy in the baggie...but the warm water and towel works much better and is MUCH more cost effective.

There's no reason you can't switch it up on YOUR trick or treaters this year and when they say, "Trick or Treat?" you can let out your spookiest giggle and tell them TRICK!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

We're on Facebook AND Twitter now!!! Oh, and a recipe, too!

Hi Everyone!!

This summer has been DRIPPING with anticipation because in approximately 16 wake-ups I'll be heading to MAUI for the first time ever with my Hubby to celebrate our 20th Anniversary! As if that wasn't exciting enough, we're going WITHOUT the kids!!! AAAAAHHHH!!!! It's gonna be AWESOME! I'm going to miss them so much!

One of the few things I've done this summer to help along this humble little BLOG is to create a Fan Page on Facebook as well as create a Twitter Account. I've linked each of the accounts here so that if you wanted to...oh, I don't know.....POP ON BY AND SHOW SOME LOVE, you're more than welcome to do that!!! Following on Twitter and clicking "like" on the Facebook Fan Page are HIGHLY encouraged so that you can be notified and participate with us!!



One of the things my hubby and I are trying to do - in the State of Washington - is grow some Tomatoes this year. We have about 12 plants of various varieties. Our problem is that "Summer" came in AUGUST, July was a total bust in the sunshine department and I just really fear for my little greenies. August came on like a Lion, though, so we're hopeful that at least we'll get some decent Cherry Tomatoes before we leave for our trip!

If all of the tomatoes that are on our vines actually progress and ripen? WE ARE IN FOR A WORLD OF HURT!

Fresh Salsa, Spaghetti Sauce and Bruschetta are in my future in a BIG WAY!

In light of my impending TOMATO DOOM, I wanted to share with you my much sought after and IN DEMAND dishy that I bring to all the parties we're invited to. There's not ONE party that we've gone to and brought this yummyness that I haven't been asked to jot down the recipe. So: FOR YOU, my DEAREST DELISHY DISHY READERS...here is my Bruschetta recipe:

5 Medium sized tomatoes
1/2 c. good quality Balsamic Vinegar
1/3 c. good quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil
4 tbsp. dried basil
3 cloves of garlic (use a garlic press) *
1 tsp. salt (or more to taste)
1 baguette of French Bread sliced to about 1/2 inch and toasted under the broiler in your oven.

Dice your tomatoes into whatever sized "hunk" you want them to be in. Mix the vinegar, oil, basil garlic and salt in with the tomatoes and stir. At this point you can slice your French Bread and try a little of the Bruschetta. If you feel that you want it a little more zippy add a little more Balsamic Vinegar.

*One thing to caution you on with this recipe. You CAN add too much garlic. Raw garlic can be SPICY. Also - share this with your friends and if you eat it - make sure THEY DO. Let's just say that there's a rather large chance that you will offend those around you with your breath. OH!! And this stuff is like CRACK! It's hard to stop eating it.

Have you followed me on Twitter or "liked" me on Facebook yet? C'mon! Whatcha waiting for?!?


Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Pasketti Noodle Surprise!!!

We had just gotten back home from camping for two days. We unpacked and had to go to work the very next day. Cupboards were slightly sparce and the dreaded question arose...you know the one. The question that makes those tiny little hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Yep!

What's for dinner?

Ugh. Sometimes I think to myself, "I DUNNO, why don't you figure it out and bring me dinner in bed?!?!"...but then the good wife and mother in me rears her ugly head and before I know it, I spout off something like, "Let me think about it. I'll call you in an hour when I've got something ready." And with that, everyone carries on with their video game playing and text-a-thons.

Last night I looked through the refrigerator and pantry and came up with something REALLY YUMMY!!

Here's what you need:

1 pkg. Turkey Keilbasa (The ones that are shaped like a horseshoe in the plastic package. Whatever type you like best - doesn't have to be turkey - or even Keilbasa for that matter...)
1 can tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes
2-3 cloves of garlic (pressed or diced up really finely)
1/3 of an onion, diced.
about 3 tbsp olive oil
1/4 - 1/3 cup of your favorite red wine
1 1/2 tbsp dried basil
1tsp dried oregano
6 1/4" slices of mozzerella that you've diced up to about 1/4 to 3/8 dices. You'll end up with about a cup and a half of the diced cheese.
1 1/2 cups of shredded mozzerella cheese
1/4 c parmesan cheese - grated.
Salt (about 1 1/2 tsp)
Pepper (1 tsp)
1 pkg Spaghetti noodles (cooked)

I started with browning the sausage after I sliced it - then sliced the slices in half moon shapes.
Once the sausage is browned, I added the onion, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, red wine, basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Bring it up to a simmer with the lid off - I know, I know...it splatters over everything. Just chill and get a rag ready to clean it up, m'kay?

Once you get a decent thick red sauce out of that, dump the cooked noodles into the sauce skillet and mix it up. Then I tossed in the cubed mozzerella cheese and mixed it up really well.

Spread it into a glass cake pan. Spread the shredded mozzerella cheese over the top, then the shredded parmesan and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

TALK ABOUT A DELISH DISH!!!! YUMMMMMYYY!!!!!

You can vary the dish depending on whether you like fungus or not - I'm talking MUSHROOMS, PEOPLE! Also you can get fancy with the pasta if you want. Bow tie is fun for the kids, Penne is yummy because the sauce works it's way into the tube part of the noodle and it's awesome!

Let me know if you try this one out. I'm anxious to know what you think. And as an extra bonus, you can use this sauce recipe for some of the most YUMMIEST PASKETTI KNOWN TO MAN! Just add mild italian sausage (Sold like ground beef packages) if you want something really good too!!!

Enjoy your Delishy Dishy!!