Sunday Dinner, Nigella Style

It feels strange to be writing again. To be doing much of anything again. I’m going to depart from the usual topics and write about cooking, specifically, what I made for Sunday dinner recently. I’ve been watching Nigella Express on the Food Network the last few weeks. In one episode, she made pork chops in a creamy mustard sauce, the base of which was hard cider. I liked the idea of it, but didn’t want to look for hard cider or to cook the thin chops she did. I’ve always thought that thin chops can be overcooked too easily to make them worth bothering with. I bought thicker, bone-in chops—aren’t I sounding just a little Nigella-ish—and sub stituted a can of low-sodium chicken broth for the cider. After searing and then cooking g the chops for a few minutes on each side, I removed them from the pan, covered them with foil, and set them aside.

Then the real work—and fun—began. I had to make the gravy. As the daughter of the world’s best gravy maker, it is embarrassing to confess to having mediocre skills in that area. Gravy making is one of my cooking weak spots, sorto like pie pastry. I can make good sauces, breads, cakes, cookies, candies, etc. But something about pie crust and gravy is beyond my skills, such as they are. Nevertheless, on that day, I felt unusually confident. I added about a tablespoon of canola oil to the pan along with maybe a quarter cup of flour, scraped up the browned bits, then cooked the roux for a couple of minutes. Into the pan went chcken broth and a couple of generous squiggles of Dijon mustard, while I stirred manically with a slotted spatula (my cool whisk made specifically for non-stick pans has long since bitten the dust. Oh, and by the way, despite tales you will hear elsewhere, you can a good sear and browned bits in a non-stick pan. Another bit of “kitchen wisdom” that experience has proven to be false.) While stirring, less manically, the gravy thickened. As it came to a simmer I added a small can of evaporated milk. With the exception of Christmas time, I don’t usually have heavy cream in the fridge, so the evap has to do for cooking purposes. It does work very well in place of cream, at least in cooked dishes such as gravies and sauces. I then poured the juices that had accumulated on the pork chop plate into the gravy and stirred some more. The chops returned to the pan to cook for a few minutes.

Well, without bragging too much, it was a silken smooth gravy with wonderful flavor. No, it wasn’t exactly Nigella’s recipe, just the idea of it, taken in slightly different direction. I haven’t made Sunday dinner for myself for quite some time, and it was nice to sit down to a real meal cooked by my own hands on a glorious fall afternoon.
As for Nigella, I’ve only watched her since she has been on the Food Network. She is interesting, to put it mildly. Very sensual, very seductive (to men, I suppose), but also has a way with food that seems authentic and charming. It would not be a proper blog entry without at least one link to another site on the web. So here’s where you can learn about all things (maybe most things) Nigella.