After a late evening shearing sheep with the help of neighbors, we reentered our home with well-earned appetites. I had done the prep work on this recipe hours earlier. So it was the matter of about thirty minutes before we set down to a late meal.
This is a favorite recipe, using ingredients produced on our farm.
Season a couple of inch-thick pork chops with salt and pepper and any herbs you like. Heat up a cast iron skillet and throw a knob of butter into the pan. Cook the chops about ten minutes a side. I’ll usually throw more butter into the pan when I turn them over. When the chops are done put them into the oven to keep warm.
Fry a few strips of bacon in the same skillet. Remove the bacon and add one chopped onion, sauté until soft. Add two diced garden tomatoes, a bit of wine or balsamic vinegar and let cook for a few minutes. Add some chopped homemade dill pickles (capers or olives also work well) and a large bunch of greens (about a pound). We used turnip greens last night but any garden greens would work.
Cover your skillet; turn the heat down to simmer for about five minutes. The greens start out bulky and piled high but quickly lose their volume within a few minutes. Uncover, crumble the bacon into the mixture and toss the ingredients. Spoon the ingredients over your pork chops so that it forms a nice pile on top. Make sure to spoon some of the pot liquor from the greens over the dish.
Before eating say a note of thanks to the pig (the one on your plate) and dig in. You might also thank me for turning you onto one of the best, and easiest, dinners in your repertoire.
Thanks to Mr. Reynaud for this recipe, from his French Feasts cookbook.
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Reading this weekend: Plato’s Revenge: politics in the age of ecology by William Ophuls. I should, however, be reading the manual on our ancient New Holland manure spreader. A tension bar broke and I’m not sure if that might not signify something more technically advanced than my duct tape approach to all things mechanical would solve.
I can attest, this dish is amazing, one of my favorites!
New Holland? That should last your lifetime. Unless its already outlived someone else’s. Any bailing wire on the place? At home, our ‘tool box’ always had a screw driver, an adjustable wrench, a hammer, duct tape, and bailing wire. There was often a can of WD-40 or the like, and if your brother’s were careful there might even be couple handfuls of spare nuts and bolts in the bottom. If that wouldn’t fix it – it was seriously broke.
I’m guessing those pork chops disappeared? As much as offering a word of thanks, putting the dish to good use is another way of acknowledging the piggy’s contribution.
Clem,
Yep, you’re right, shouldn’t be a problem to repair. Not sure of the specific model but it is pto driven and probably dates to the 60’s. The bed has been replaced at some juncture. But I like your description of the typical tractor toolbox. Might add the following to our collective toolbox? a wide assortment of shear pins that fit all equipment except the one you are looking to replace.
As for the pig, we recently put one in our freezer so it seems all of our recent meals are somewhat pork-centric. So I’m offering up lots of praise for him. He was about 350 pounds live weight, a Danish Landrace sow crossed with a Yorkshire boar. Beautiful animal, he was raised in our woods and lived the good life…up to a point.
Yep – always have an assortment on hand… and invariably the one size you need is the one missing. Of course – as its probably for the piece most commonly used (and broken)… in the pace of life we often get caught without.
I got caught while baling hay. Toward the end of a long hot day I ran something up into the compression chamber and broke the shear pin. I knew what had happened and knew I needed to find and remove the offending blockage… and that accomplished I went to the tool box for a replacement shear pin. Nadda. I was tired, the field nearly finished, the shop much farther off than I wanted to walk (twice)… and there lies a nice fat cotter key. This puppy is made to order – long enough to span the shaft and almost thick enough to completely fill the diameter. Wiggle that dude in there, spread the ends with a screw driver to prevent it wiggling back out, push the fly wheel back and forth to see if this makes any sense… looks good to this tired young man. Of course you’ve promised yourself you’ll get a real shear pin as soon as you get back to the barn. And the road to hell, as they say…
So the next time we’re getting ready to bale hay Dad is greasing the baler and as he goes across the PTO he spies my little repair. Ooops. Herewith follows a lecture on why shear pins exist in the first place, the value of a bailer, and so on and so forth. Protests about how it was hot, I was tired, and the obvious lack of total destruction (no harm, no foul… right??) met with no quarter. Could I at least get some recognition for ingenuity? That did get a squirrely little curl at his lip… but only for a second. I was then made to fish out the offending cotter key and make the appropriate repair, and to acknowledge that ingenuity doesn’t pay if costs the price of a bailer.
Yep, about ten years ago we bought an ancient and well-preserved side delivery hay rake. The elderly farmer had maintained it for over fifty years and still had the original manual. One of the two wheels sprung a leak the first time I used it. Instead of repairing the leak I bought a replacement wheel…that fit a wheelbarrow. Same size, so what could go wrong?
About thirty minutes into cutting the engineering tolerances for a wheelbarrow wheel vs. one for hay raking became evident. The wheel assembly blew apart, the rake dug into the sod and the support bars for the rake snapped. Fifty years of careful nurturing undone by one idiot in a day. I never had the heart to tell the old man.
I bought a new Tonutti wheel rake and have been happy ever since. But don’t tell anyone.
Your secret is safe with me… but the rest of the internet??
Damn, I forgot. 🙂
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