I spent the day catching up on laundry, wrapping presents, mailing presents, and running my daughter to Girl Scouts. I didn't have time to think about dinner until about a half hour before I cooked. Hmmmmm. I saw pork chops in the fridge. Pork chops it is. Now what do I do with them?
I remembered a friend telling me a few weeks ago about a pork chop recipe that she made and it was "lick the plate" good. I asked for the recipe and the sauce was made out of maple syrup, dijon mustard, and rice wine vinegar. Uh oh. I do not have dijon mustard or rice wine vinegar. Run to the store? Nope. Make a different recipe? Nope, I'm craving this one. I decided to wing it and try to come up with a similar sauce.
I started off by cooking some onions and mushrooms in butter and olive oil and then adding in some white wine. I set them to the side and then added pork chops to the pan. I used our usual seasonings of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and adobo (if you don't know what that is, go buy it!! It is amazing on every type of meat.). For the sauce, I mixed 1/4 cup of regular mustard and 1/2 cup of my father in law's homemade maple syrup. I looked around to try to find something that would work as a substitute for the rice wine vinegar. Red wine vinegar? Nope, I used that up the other day as another substitute. Hmmmm. I needed something to cut the tang of the mustard. How about some white wine? I poured the sauce over the pork chops. It seemed to need a little something added to it to calm it down (it was bubbling like crazy). I had chicken broth in the fridge leftover from when my daughter made soup. I just put a little splash in the pan. Simmered until pork chops were done. As the pork chops rested, I boiled the sauce a little bit to thicken it. Side dishes. I had cauliflower cut up from when we had veggies and dip a few days ago. Into the steamer pot it went. I grabbed a box of wild rice. Geez, my rice a roni stash is getting low. Funny that 7 boxes seems low.
Ok, time for some trickery. My kids are iffy with mustard. Sometimes my son will have it on a hotdog but my daughter isn't very fond of it. I dug out some really adorable shot glasses that look like wine glasses (thanks mom!). Who can resist sauce if it is served in such an adorable glass, right?! Evidently my daughter can. Ha. However, she asked if the rest of the pork chops were in the pan along with the sauce. I said no that the rest of the pork chops are on a platter and the sauce is in the pan still. Why? She wanted to bring the "plain" pork chop to school tomorrow for lunch but she didn't like the sauce. Uh, daughter dear... your "plain" pork chop was smothered and cooked in that sauce. Ha. I guess maybe I shouldn't have told her ahead of time what the sauce was going to be made out of. I don't think she gave it a fair shake. My son loved the sauce. He stole my daughter's sauce glass. He must have had third's of the meat and then he also was putting the sauce on his cauliflower. Think it was a winner recipe.
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