Richard Olney's Pork Chops with Mustard Apple Sauce

I noticed recently that some of my twitter friends had posted adaptations of a pork chop recipe from Richard Olney, one of the first and still maybe the best American food writer on French cookery. His work studs my cookbook shelves, for he was prolific and brilliant.

From him I and many others became inspired to cook real French food with an emphasis on Provence and on good wines. He mentored Alice Waters and Kermit Lynch, among others.

I never met him but I feel like I did after having immersed myself in his books for years and cooked hundreds of his recipes and techniques.

We have a really cool fireplace grill that was marketed here by Alice Waters, made in Italy of very sturdy iron. We use it to cook all winter over oakwood fires. I thought I would do one of our typical evening’s meals adapting this Olney recipe:

Pork Chops with Mustard Apple Sauce

Adapted from Richard Olney Simple French Food

4 thin pork chops, rib or loin, brined

2 T. butter

2 lbs. cooking apples, peeled, cored, sliced thin

Pork brine*

8 oz heavy cream

5 T. Dijon mustard

4 T. white wine

Freshly ground black pepper, sea salt

Brine chops for 1 hour. Pat dry, moisten with olive oil. Heat grill in fireplace over high heat. Put apples in buttered earthenware vessel uncovered (tajin or cazuela) in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Grill chops for about 7 minutes on each side over very hot coals while apples roast. Put chops on top of apples in earthenware dish on front of grill over lower coals. Add splash of white wine, place back over coals, reduce. Mix mustard with cream and pour over chops and apples, shaking to let it sink into apples. Grind pepper over top. Simmer over coals for 15-20 minutes or until sauce is reduced slightly.

*brine – 1/4 c. kosher salt, dissolved into 1 qt. Warm water. 1 T. ground sage, 1 crushed garlic clove, 1T. Steens Syrup or brown sugar. 1 T. dried thyme.

It is snowing in Austin! I know, for you living in cold climes snow is a big drag once the intitial prettiness wears off and it turns to gray slush.

view out the back door of the wine cellar and studio

For a Texas kid however, snow is a rare thing known mostly from books and Christmas carols and movies. We actually took our daughter Jolie to Switzerland just to see some real snow. So when it snows here in Austin, this far to the south in Texas (we can grow olives and palm trees here) it is a large deal. It never stays more than a day or two, and the roads almost never freeze, but people here start driving like bloody fools and running into each other every time.

§

We just got back from a nice little tour around the UK and then finished up in Rome for some rest and Culture. I still can't eat due to the tiny little opening in my new esophagus, but I can eat pasta y fageole and nibble on some things a bit. The amazing thing about Rome is that no matter how well you think you are prepared for it, you are not. I mean, after all, we've all seen a jillion movies, read the books, watched the travelogues on TV. We've seen the Pope creaking around St. Peter's in his silken robes waving his hands around in the air like an old man on the front porch shooing flies (speaking of which, one curious fact about Ireland is there isn't one single front porch on the island- I think a saint must have banished them a long time ago). But until you get down there on the ground in front of the Colosseum and gawp up to the top, or walked softly around in St. Peters listening to the ghostly choir reverberate against the stone and then run smack dab into Peter's tomb right there in front of you you just can't know how vast it all is. So big that you almost can't cram it all into your eyes and brain. These guys build big, and they build to last. We can't wait to go back.

Had great gigs, and some surprisingly good meals in England. More on that later, if I can ever jar my anesthesia brain back into reality...good to be home again.

Well, here I have landed. After a thirty-year cancer recurrence last May, a bunch of surgeries and follow-ups and dental implants, new teeth, new speech prosthesis (for an example of what I am doing, click here), some triumphs and some blasts of disappointment, I have landed here yet again.

Lots of dentists and doctors over the years said, “nope, no dental implants for you buddy- too much radiation, too risky, might bust the jawbone and ruin your life forever” so I gave up on that. One day the BLD (Brilliant Lady Doctor/Dentist at MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston) said, “oh, yeah I can” and she proceeded to do so and now I have implants and new, functioning teeth and a smile.

Lots of doctors over the years said “I wouldn’t operate on that neck flap area, too risky, might not heal. Sorry you look funny, but that’s just life.” One day the BCD (Brilliant Chinese Plastic Surgeon Doctor at MD Anderson) said “hey, let me do your new flap and I will fix that old ugly stuff too” and he did. He said I had plenty of good blood supply to the area, healing no problem. I’m fully healed, I look much more normal, and I can go to the grocery store without small children running screaming into their mother’s arms pointing open-mouthed and speechless at the monster-man carrying the pigs’ feet.

First thing the BLD surgeon said to me on my first day there was, “Hey, how long has it been, we should get you talking”. Not “sorry, this is going to be long and hard and may not work” or “not sure what to do about this” or “half your head and jaw are about to disappear”, but “hey, you should be talking”. And now, I am. It took her three tries, the first two failures, third time the charm, and today I am talking. After thirty years of silence, writing pads, frustration, sadness, you name it- I am talking. Not pretty yet, kind of gurgly and burpy, but saying words and cussing my brother on the phone. He said I sounded just like "the old me, drunk". She didn’t give up, shook off the advice from one doctor not to bother, kept on trying, and never stopped smiling with me.

I still can’t eat solid food because I can’t open my mouth wide enough to get any in there, or chew it once it is. But, the BLSpeechTherapist is getting me a device to exercise my mouth, stretch the scar tissue in there, and one of these days I am going to inhale a bratwurst, a tamale, and an entire roast chicken, and then I am going to commence to eat some by-God food like a real Texas man.

I am not saying bad things about those doctors who wouldn’t or couldn’t fix me. They were giving what was the best advice they had to give. I guess I am saying that if you want to get something done and you have cancer, you should go where they are going to fix it, and usually can, and if they can’t that day or that year they probably will have invented a way to do it by the next.

Speaking of soup, this is a basic idea that I have been doing variations on this week:

Winter Vegetable Soup

1 Russet Potato

1 Carrot

1 Sweet Potato

1 Celery Stalk, ends put into the stock pot

1 Yellow Onion or a couple of leeks, peeled, washed, chopped, green parts into the stock pot

Chicken Broth that you made from scratch from said stock pot

Dried wild Thyme gathered in the Minervois in your Secret Spot

Bay Leaf from your tree out back

Parsley from your potted plant that never freezes

Winter Squash, roasted and scooped out. (Place in a 350 oven for whatever it takes to cook the flesh.)

2 or 5 pieces of good bacon or dry-cured pork or whatever you feel like along that line

Couple of tablespoons of good butter or some heavy cream to tas

te

Bread

Gratitude

Good wine from Domaine Sainte Leocadie down the road

Good mess around music going in the background

Peel the potatoes, cut into chunks. Chop celery, onion, add all vegetables and herbs to heavy pan, cover with cold clean water, simmer until done, about half an hour. Add three pinches of coarse sea salt, a couple of grinds of pepper. Use an immersion blender or food processor or blender to puree the vegetables. Remove the bay leaf unless it is too late, in which case it didn’t matter anyway. Add the butter and stir, or add some cream and stir until the color is inviting. Serve it forth with bread and gratitude.

You can use any combination of potatoes, squash, celery or

no, pork or no, thyme or oregano or sage, butter or no. Just feel it, baby, feel it. Good for the soul.

Peace and Love,

Joe Gracey December 2009