It's a sad thing to admit but I've never really been a fan of pork chops. I've never for my sins cooked with one or I think ever ordered one in a restaurant. I think I've always looked on them as a poor man's steak. Why order a pork fillet when you can have a beef fillet and why order a pork chop when I can order a rib eye steak. What an arse I am sometimes.
I recently bought a whole bunch of cookbooks including one by Bridisa genius Jose Pizarro on seasonal spanish food . It's cracking book if you have the chance to read it and it contains loads of straight forward inspirational recipes. One of which was a very simple and almost obvious mixture of spanish black pudding and caramelized apples. Lovely I thought, and what would go well with such a wonderful concoction...well a pork chop maybe ? Yessir!
The dish needs little instruction. Simply start with some butter a sugar in a pan and when it turns a golden brown add your chopped apples and cook for a few minutes until the apples are cooked but still have some bite. Add some good quality finally chopped black pudding and cook for a little longer. Really I just wanted to warm the black pudding though and keep it nice a soft in texture without loosing too much moisture.
The sauce is basic. Chopped red onion, chopped chili, microplned garlic, chopped mint, sherry vinegar and olive oil. Make it how you think works but I think it needs to be quite acidic and quit heavy handed with the mint.
For the chop please dont over cook it. It's the death of pork fueled by our unnecessary fears over food poisoning. Get over it. You'll get over food poisoning if the unlikely event ever happens. You may never get over the experience of never having had a decent pork chop.
Good pork steaks are far harder to cook than beef but it's all a matter of good temperature control. Get you pan or griddle nice and hot and have a warmed pan of the heat to one side. Season the steak really well with Malden salt and pepper ( I use green pepper but black will do).
Fry the fat on the steak first and render it down as much as possible plus giving the pan or griddle some lovely pork fat to fry your steak in. When you fry your steak turn it once you get some nice colour on each side but now and again bring it off the heat onto the warm pan. Also keep a basting liquid of oil and melted butter at the side of brush it on when the steak gets too hot. You can add old dried herbs, garlic or anything you like to give extra flavour to the oil. The general idea is to keep on cooling and cooking the product so that the internal temperature doesn't get penetrated too far with the intense heat of the pan. Your looking for an internal temperature of about 60oC and the temperature of a pan that will give good colour is way over 140oC. So if you simply fry the steak until at 140oC until the central temperature reaches 60oC at least 60 percent of the steak will be over cooked.
Once it is cooked give it a good rest for at least 5 mins to let the whole thing relax and once you've eaten this I recommend giving yourself at least an hour. It is worth it though.
