Porky Goodness

On the menu tonight was a pork chops, scalloped potatoes, and an almost-caprese salad. The pork chops were a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that only kind of worked. Basically, you're supposed to rub them in salt, pepper, a touch of oil, then put sugar on the one side to make it brown. You cook it at such a low heat, it wouldn't brown normally, or so the recipe says. It also says that if you have an electric stovetop, you should put the pan on medium high *before* you season the chops, to let the pan heat up... which seared the everloving crap out of my chops. It was okay, I brined them prophylactically, but they were still tougher than I'd like.

It was a day of minor muff ups. The caprese was almost-caprese because I ran out of fresh basil, and didn't realize it until I was serving. I also forgot to add cornstarch or tapioca flour to the potatoes, which would have made the milky sauce a lot more clingy on the potatoes. It was still good, just kind of d'oh. It would have been a lot better. Eeeh, it happens. I should have had better mise en place going. I will tomorrow, after I force(read:bribe) Dorkus to help me clean the hell out of the kitchen.