Inspiration at the grocery store

So, I’ve had bronchitis for what seems like forever and I haven’t felt like cooking or eating and I certainly haven’t felt like writing about it. But, aside from a lingering cough, I’m feeling better, so on the way home from work today, with no students waiting for me, I stopped off at this wonderful store which sells local meats and produce to see what I could get to throw together something for dinner. The only problem with a local produce place is that it is the depths of winter, so the pickings are fairly slim. But they are getting some lettuces in, and they had some wonderful sets of three big plants of leaf lettuce bundled together. They also had some nice red bell peppers – greenhouse grown, I assume – and some pears. So there’s a nice salad.

The meat cooler was full of all sorts of choices of local meats – lots of different cuts of steak, hamburger, some gorgeous chicken, sausages, country ham, bacon, different cuts of pork – but I wasn’t really sure what I wanted. The next cooler over had eggs, butter and cheese. And then I saw it – truffle butter. North Carolina actually has the beginnings of a truffle farming industry, and these were local truffles. There were also some very nice portobello mushrooms. And I had some Arborio rice at home. So I decided to make risotto.

So I had two dishes – mushroom and truffle risotto and a salad. Along with that, I thought I’d serve pork chops. I like the way pork tastes with mushroom risotto, and there’s a simplicity to grilled pork chops that would nicely balance the complexity of the risotto.

So I had my menu. I got two pork chops, the truffle butter, two red bell peppers, a group of three lettuce plants (different varieties), a pear, and a portobello mushroom. At home, I had the Arborio rice, half an onion, some Parmesan cheese, frozen homemade chicken stock, some white wine, and the ingredients for a balsamic vinaigrette.

For the risotto, I chopped the onion, one of the bell peppers, and the mushroom, and thawed the chicken stock and brought it to a simmer. I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter and threw in the onion for a couple of minutes. Then I tossed in the red bell pepper and the mushroom and cooked them until the mushroom had released all its juices. I then poured in probably half a cup of white wine and let it cook down until it was almost gone. I added a cup of rice, stirred it all in with everything, and added half a cup of simmering chicken stock and stirred it all up again.

Then I followed the standard risotto technique of adding in another half cup of stock each time the risotto got dry, stirring frequently. The risotto absorbs stock quickly at the beginning, then absorbs it less quickly as it cooks. After adding the first bit of stock, I put the pork chops on my little cast iron stove top grill to cook.

After about ten minutes, as the risotto needed less attention, I put the salad together. I pulled leaves of the three different kinds of lettuce off the bunches, washed them, tore them into bite sized pieces, and spun them dry in my salad dryer. I washed the second red bell pepper and cut it into bite sized pieces, discarding the seeds and ribs. I washed, peeled, cored, and seeded the pear and cut it into bite sized pieces, then put all the ingredients into salad bowls.

To make the balsamic vinaigrette, I put salt and pepper, balsamic vinegar and olive oil into a half pint sized canning jar, closed it and shook it to combine, then poured the vinaigrette over the salad. I took the pork chops off the grill and put them onto the plates. When the risotto had cooked for about 20 minutes, I tasted a little bit to make sure that the rice was cooked until it was done, but still had a little bite to it. I then put the truffle butter into the risotto, stirring it until it melted and was thoroughly mixed. I then threw in a handful of Parmesan cheese, again mixing it in thoroughly, then plated it with the pork chops.

This actually turned out to be the best risotto I’ve ever made. I hadn’t used bell pepper in risotto before and it worked really well. The sweetness of the pepper was good, but the tartness also worked well to balance the earthiness of the mushrooms, truffles and the rice itself. It really brightened the flavor of the dish and rounded out the flavor very nicely. I’ll do that again.

Here’s the salad:

And here’s the risotto and pork chop:

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