Piquant Pork Chops

Piquant Pork Chops - MS Word document for downloading

Trust me, this is a lovely dish. It comes from “The Dairy Book of Family Cookery”, (published in 1983!). I tried it for the first fairly recently and was quite intrigued by the unusual combination of ingredients. Just before I started this blog, I gave the recipe to a couple of friends. I think both thought I was teasing when I said it was delicious. They soon realised I wasn’t and this has now become a firm family favourite. You can’t really taste the mustard, even though it sounds like a lot. Children eat it happily, (particularly if they don’t know it’s there!)

Serves 4

I’d used all the mushrooms in the Soup so didn’t have any to fry to go with this! To begin to make room for Christmas foods, I wanted to use up some frozen Broad Beans which had been in the freezer for ages. They were very pleasant with the sauce, but as you can see a more colourful vegetable would have looked better in the photograph.

Piquant Pork Chops.

Preparation time: 5 minutes at the start and then 5 minutes at the end to make the sauce, fry the mushrooms etc

Cooking time: 45 minutes

You will need a flameproof dish.

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Ingredients and Shopping List

• 4 lean loin pork chops
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 15ml (1 level tablespoon) prepared English mustard
• 30ml (2 level tablespoons) soft brown sugar
• 450-560ml (¾ - 1pt) milk
• 25g (1oz) cornflour
• 100g (4oz) mushrooms, wiped (optional)
• 25g (1oz) butter (optional)
• 4 peach halves, fresh or canned (optional)
• chopped fresh parsley, to garnish.

To serve:

• Creamy mashed potato (or an oven baked potato dish, which I’ll give you soon!)
• Seasonal vegetables

Method.

1. Pre-heat the oven: 200C- Gas Mark 6.
2. Wash and dry the chops and season.
3. Place in the flameproof dish and cover evenly with the prepared mustard.
4. Sprinkle evenly with the brown sugar.
5. Surround the chops with some of the milk, but do not cover them.
6. Bake at the above temperature, uncovered, for 15 minutes.
7. Then, reduce the heat to 180C - Gas Mark 4.
8. Cook for a further 30 minutes, uncovered, until tender.
9. Place the chops on a warm serving plate and keep warm. (The milk in the dish may look as if it has curdled. That’s normal-just use it to make the sauce).
10. Blend the cornflour with a little of the left-over cold milk.
11. Stir this paste into the cooking juices, adding the rest of the cold milk, (if any).
12. Heat gently on the hob until the sauce thickens.
13. Fry the mushrooms in the butter.
14. Serve the chops garnished with the peach halves, fried mushrooms and chopped parsley.

Serve the sauce separately.