Cooking

I forgot how much I love to cook. The past couple of years, as I've devoted more energy to B-School, cooking kinda fell by the wayside. Oh I still cooked, but my time for picking new dishes, shopping for fresh ingredients, and taking the time to do it all right, well - I was reduced to heat 'n' eat.

So, now that I've been away from classes three weeks, and graduated, and had a friend in town, here are some pictures of my latest work.

D brought down lamb chops from some animals she had to slaughter. They weren't really raised as farm animals, and weren't strictly organic because they'd been given hormones as part of an experiment. OK, that sounds scary, but in retirement, these critters only at grass.

What I did: salt, pepper, braised in olive oil. Also, I rolled the wide in in black pepper. It's my new thing - so easy, so good, I've done that with tuna steaks and pork chops.

Served with cous cous and, at D's suggestion, wilted spinach. That is my new easy fresh vegetable treat.

I made a pan sauce using the drippings, butter, rosemary, orange juice, and orange rind. The recipe said zest but read like that meant rind. Sure it looks disgusting, but except for lightly overcooking, it was superb.

A couple of nights later, I returned to an old favorite: pork chops stuffed with goat cheese.

The original recipe I followed also had me stuffing slices of granny smith apple in there, which is great. I was out of granny smith, so I cut up part of a red apple (Rome, I think). The main different is that I blended basil and andalusian paprika into the goat cheese before stuffing the chop. Also, I broiled this, instead of braising in a pan, and I was really happy with the results - so much so that I forgot to take a picture until after I'd had a couple of bites.

And - here's the food porn shot - the best I could do with my little pocket camera: