Stuffed Pork Chops Florentine

Sometimes I get bored, very bored, with my food. To switch things up I look to a new locale or a new ingredient, but sometimes I look in the fridge and decide it is time to deconstruct. So instead of adding spinach served on the side of the pork chops that I had picked up on sale, the green leafy goodness went right inside the main event. Add a little mozzarella (on sale, but of course), some garlic and some acid with a white wine and roast pepper sauce and it's a Florentine feast.

Stuffed Pork Chops Florentine

2 pork loin chops (there was no bone, but you could do this with bone in)

Olive oil

3-4 cups spinach

1 clove garlic

3 oz mozzarella, cut into thin slices

Salt and pepper

nutmeg, freshly grated

1 roasted red-orange-yellow pepper

1/3 cup white wine

Preheat oven to 375F.

In a saute pan heat 1 Tablespoon olive oil and saute 3-4 cups fresh spinach, chopped and dried along with one clove garlic grated. Cook until spinach has wilted down and is a dark green, but before it gets slimy. Remove from pan, drain on paper towel and squeeze out extra liquid.

Reheat the same pan with olive oil, about 1 Tablespoon, depending on how much oil is still in the pan. Turn it up high. Meanwhile, slice 4-6 thin slices of skimmed mozzarella.

Take two thick pork chops and make a deep pocket. Here's what this means: on the side that doesn't have fat, use a paring knife and make a thin slit. Then insert the knife and move back and forth on each side to make a larger space inside.

Stuff spinach and mozzarella into pocket. I placed the mozzarella in, then the spinach and closed the "gap" between sides with another thin slice. Season chops with salt, ground pepper and freshly grated nutmeg.

Fry those chops till they are browned on each side. That's about 3 minutes a side. Turn over gently with a spatula. Then transfer to a baking sheet and roast the chops in the oven for 15-18 minutes. I went with 18 minutes and was very happy with that decision.

Meanwhile, make a sauce: Chop some roasted peppers and cook them in the drippings and deglaze with about 1/3 c of white wine. Salt and pepper.

While stuffing pork chops with greens made them seem only a little bit healthier, it certainly made the evening meal a lot less boring.

Cool and Collected

It's mid-summer and the celebrations seem to be piling on faster and faster, squeezed in before the dreaded end-of-fun-times, Labor Day. That means that the weekend found us sharing steak at an unexpected sibling reunion, ribs to celebrate a boys' night in (and this girl's night out), and a burger in honor of a bachelorette.

It was time to detox. I'm not a big fan of "green" juice. I leave the wheat grass for cats.

But much tastier and in a similarly healthy vein of the vegetable mash-up is gazpacho. I make a version that is no where near authentic, but I'm going to call it gazpacho all the same. So there.

Mostly I go for a proportion (so you can make more or less):

3 parts tomato : 1 part green pepper : 1 part cucumber.

So that's 3 medium to larger vine-ripened tomatoes, 1 green pepper, 1 medium cucumber (or 1/2 a big one)

I throw in 3-4 cloves of garlic, a hefty grind of black pepper, salt and 2 Tablespoons each red wine vinegar and olive oil.

If you want a richer tomato flavor, you can add a cup of v-8 juice (I usually don't have any.) A dash of hot sauce can also be nice.

Put all ingredients in the Cuisinart and that's it. Serve cold.

Cool, collected and completely ready for the next end-of-summer chowdown.

Tally:

CSA now stands for Cool Soup Always

So many veggie servings I stopped counting

With some salad or greens, a quick and light dinner

Fish Tail(ends) at Twilight

I feel sorry for leftovers. They get such a bad name.

I prefer to view them as a reason to party. What better way to use smidgens of ingredients than to turn them into nibbles for cocktails? In fact, maybe they should be called invite-overs, because that's exactly what we did last night when a dear friend came over to celebrate the beginning of a new week and watch the sunset from our terrace.

We still had 3-4 small pieces of the poached salt cod from our Baked Cod Cakes. Just enough to turn out some Brandade, a French cod-potato spread:

No, these aren't blue--that's the lovely outdoor light at 7pm last night. I love that it is still light out so late in the evening! Summer is so close I can taste it.

Brandade Toasts

1 cup poached salt cod

1 medium potato

4-5 garlic cloves

1/4 cup olive oil

Ground black pepper

1 baguette

Shred salt cod into small pieces and set aside.

Meanwhile, boil potato until very well done. While the potato is cooking, place 4 cloves of the garlic and olive oil in a heavy saucepan and over low heat cook until the garlic cloves soften (but are not brown.)

Peel the potato and while still warm mash it together with the garlic. Add 2 1/2 Tablespoons warm olive oil a tablespoon at a time.

Add the cod and combine well. If not garlicky enough, grate in half a clove of garlic raw. I did this because I love garlic. Keeps the vampires away. Refrigerate if using later (can be made ahead.)

Cut a baguette into thin slices. Spread brandade on each slice to cover fully. Sprinkle with remaining olive oil and broil on low for 3 -4 minutes. (These burn easily, so you'll want to watch them.) They will be golden on top. Serve warm.

We also enjoyed crudite with Herb Yogurt Cheese Dip (so easy!!) and some very fruitful Pear White Sangria. I'll put those recipes up soon.

Tally:

Not totally FRD-friendly nibbles (white bread, potato): Bad.

Omega-3 rich fish and olive oil provide healthy fats: Good!

Leftovers find their purpose and only one $2 purchase

Great excuse to invite a friend over

Fishing for Recipes

At the crossroads of thrifty and lazy, I often find myself trying to find a recipe that will work with what I already have in my (healthy) larder. What usually happens is a sort of food mash-up, if you will, as I compare a few recipes based on ingredients and then take away the instructions I need to make it happen.

So when I was a bit wistful for a long ago Caribbean sailing trip and wanted to eat something healthy and high in omega-3's, the answer was Baked Salt Cod Cakes.

Epicurious turned up Portuguese Style Salt-Cod Fritters and a little Googling led me to Baked Codfish Cakes. The former provided instruction on poaching the cod in milk and the latter provided a baking temp and time, and the much-needed baking powder-to-potato proportion. Then I added in some of my own ingredients to invoke the salty treats we'd had in the British Virgin Islands. Yum.

Makes 12 small cakes

10-12 inch filet of salt cod, rinsed and soaked for 2 days

1-2 cups milk

3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced in half

1 bay leaf

2 medium-sized potatoes

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1/2 small onion minced

1 sweet red pepper (small) minced finely, or 1/4 of a regular red pepper, minced

3 sprigs cilantro, chopped

3 sprigs thyme, leave pulled off

2 sprigs parsley, chopped

ground black pepper

This recipe starts 2 days ahead of time, but is well worth it. Rinse and submerge salt cod filet in in water and refrigerate for 2 days. Change the water 2-3 times. Rinse the cod before cooking.

Place the cod, bay leaf and garlic in a saucepan and cover with milk. Add water until the cod is covered. Bring to a boil, turn back to simmer for 20 minutes.

In the meantime, boil the potatoes until very well done. After the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel and mash in a large bowl.

Remove the cod and once it is cool pull away any remaining skin. Flake the cod (a nice way to check for bones, for us neurotic cooks!) and add to the potatoes. Add 4 teaspoons of the milk-water cooking liquid and the olive oil. The mixture should start to stick together.

Add in remaining ingredients. Form into cakes and place on a greased (olive oil), foil-covered baking sheet. (Parchment paper would be better and might not require the olive oil.) Bake in 375F oven for 15 minutes. Turn over and bake 8-15 minutes more. **My baking sheet is thick, so a thinner sheet may cook the cakes faster.

In terms of health, the potatoes aren't great, but in this amount they aren't a huge carb intake either. Plus, baking the cakes offers the crispiness of cod fritters without the fat. I made these small so we felt like we were eating more and the smaller cakes would also be great for entertaining. Larger cakes might need some more "glue" in the form of more oil or an egg. I'll have to try that next time. This recipe was meant to have leftovers, but of course we ate them all.

I served the cakes with some roasted broccoli to make the meal healthier and a little rum cocktail to complete the Caribbean escapism. The cocktail was another mash-up, landing somewhere between a Painkiller (the drink we had at every port of the BVI) and a banana daiquiri. I had coconut milk to use up from a previous recipe, so this wasn't exactly healthy. In fact, you could call this the Diet-killer: 2 ounces coconut rum/rum + 1 banana + juice of 2 oranges + 2 Tablespoons lime juice + 1/2 can coconut milk + 2 cups ice. Blend it. Drink responsibly.

Tally:

Omega-3's from an inexpensive pantry item

Fried fun without the fat

Fruity cocktail on the terrace -- worth every fattening sip