Friday, January 21, 2011

Pork Chops with Capers and Mustard

This is one of the very first recipes we would make when Evan and I were first married. It's still one of my favorites (except when I was pregnant with Julia and all smells of mustard made me want to rip my nose off permanently).

This recipe is simple yet delicious!! My girls love it.

The ingredients:
Four pork chops; salt and pepper; 1 Tbsp. olive oil; 1 1/2 C. chicken broth; 1/3 C. capers, drained; 1/2 tsp. rosemary; 2 Tbsp. dijon mustard; 2 Tbsp. butter, melted.

(Disclaimer: We do not like rosemary. It makes us wish we'd never been born. We rarely use it in recipes. We omit it completely from this recipe, but if you are also adverse to rosemary, you can always substitute it with another herb. Unless you like rosemary...to which I need to rethink our whole relationship.)

Start by heating the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season the pork chops with the salt and pepper on both sides of the chops and then cook the pork chops for 5 minutes on each side.
I must show you this fantastic contraption Evan and the girls bought me for Christmas. It is a splatter screen. Now, my clothes will be spared from the splatter of grease and oil!!! It is one of the best things I have ever gotten and it totally works.
Once the pork chops are cooked, place them on a baking dish and tell them to take a break. We'll need them again in just a few minutes.
In the same skillet you used to cook the pork chops, add the chicken broth, capers, rosemary (if you so wish) and boil this down until it's reduced to around 3/4 a cup.
Once it's reduced, return the pork chops to the skillet and cook with the broth mixture for about 3 minutes.
While it's cooking, whisk together the melted butter and the mustard.
Place the pork chops and the liquid from the skillet on a warm platter. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don't leave those capers to waste away in the skillet! They are too delicious for that. Make sure every last one of them makes it to the platter. Thank you.
I gave the girls the option of having a pork chop without the mustard sauce. Julia likes it much better that way and sometimes Elisabeth does too. Once I gave the girls a chop to split, I slathered the other pork chops with the mustard sauce.
We ate our pork chops with salad and baked beans.
What I like about this recipe is that the pork chops stay so juicy. They are not tough as leather when they are done, and that is one of my biggest fears about cooking pork chops on a skillet. The capers and the mustard are so tart and tangy and they bring a lot of fabulousness to the pork chop. Definitely a meal I would serve to company, too.

Enjoy!

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