Another Classic - Pork Chops with Apples

What's a chop? What's a steak?

A bone in beef rib-eye is a steak. A pork loin cut is a chop.  A beef T-bone is a steak, a lamb T-bone is a chop. Huh?

The pork in this recipe is a sirloin chop. Or steak. Who knows. It depends on what the butcher thinks he can get more money for.

Another great, fast, inexpensive meal

Here we have a great lunch, spicy pork chops with apple and yellow beet salad.

The pork is seasoned simply with olive oil, chipotle powder, garlic powder and salt and pepper then grilled in a cast iron pan.

The salad is dressed with walnut oil and this great French cider vinegar. Each of these is expensive but the amounts used  on this plate costs pennies.

The bread is a ciabatta toasted over a gas burner. It stays soft in the middle but the outside gets crusty and smokey.

The beets are raw yellow beets that I sliced so thin you can see through them.

The pork is easy to make if you have a heavy bottomed frying pan. You can use a non-stick pan too if the bottom is not too thin.

You want to take the pork chops out of the fridge at least ten minutes before you cook them. If you take them right from the fridge they won't be as tender.  Cook them over medium heat so they brown and take them out just as they firm up. Let them rest for a couple of minutes before you eat them.

A hunk of meat, crusty bread and a flavor salad in about 15 minutes. Total cost for the meal: about two bucks!

Family Favorite - Orange Chicken

We have this huge Valencia orange tree in our backyard, which means lots of free food to a cheapskate like me.

We juice them. we eat them, we use the zest. I throw them into sautes and the things I brown on the stove then finish in the oven.

This is not a difficult dish to make although it might take some practice to get the timing down.

Orange chicken, brown rice risotto and dry fried asparagus

I put some of my spice rub in a big mixing bowl and added a couple of tablespoons of the old extra virgin. I had bone in, skin on chicken breasts. You can use boneless and skinless if you want.

The chicken pieces were large so I cut them in half with a big knife. Then I used one of them to mix up the spice rub and olive oil. I got my big cast iron pan hot on the stove and turned the oven on to 350°.



I rubbed all the chicken in the spice mix then laid the pieces skin side down in the pan.

After they had browned a few minutes I tossed a couple of oranges in the spice oil and threw them in the pan.

While the chicken was cooking I made dry fried asparagus. Dry frying is using a hot cast iron pan with no oil, butter or fats to cook vegetables. They cook in a few minutes, steaming in their own juice.

As soon as they are just done they are seasoned with salt, pepper and (optional) a tiny bit of butter.

Dry frying works great with many vegetables like green beans, squash, carrots, etc. It imparts a slightly smoky flavor.

Along with the chicken and asparagus I had leftover brown rice risotto and one of the cooked oranges, which I squoze over the chicken and rice.

Low in fat (especially if you remove the chicken skin) high in nutrition and cost about $2.50 for the whole shebang.

If I am so Frugal why do I use Truffles?

I am frugal; I like to think I got to retire from high tech because I was cheap, not because I was rich. But I also think life is too short to eat bland food.

I have a nice little collection of fine ingredients that I use on a regular basis. Truffles, nut oil, salt packed capers, Greek olives, fine cheeses and expensive vinegars frequently find their way onto my plate.

A fourteen dollar bottle of walnut oil might seem like an extravagance but if it enhances fifty meals out of it it works out to 28 cents per meal. And it tastes great.

I love condiments made out of boiled down grapes, from the balsamico we know to unusual items like must, which is simply boiled down grape juice. A drop of that on a plate packs a lot of flavor. I love putting just barely a drop on a piece of apple or cheese or a slice of beef. Sweet and sour with a lot of depth it's really worth looking for.

Truffles are the sign of a special meal here. They have the cachet of being rare and expensive but if you use them right they can be a very cost effective way of packing some powerful flavors. I buy jars of truffles or peelings to make sauces for beef or chicken or vegetables. Just a dollars worth sauteed in a little butter in a pan where a steak had cooked will make your whole house smell like truffles and with a few drops of cream you have as good a sauce as can be made.

One area I don't suggest spending a lot of money on is fancy salts. I have tried grey salts, pink salts, sea salts from all over and cheap salts. Use a good brand of kosher salt for most things or everything and you'll do well. There are some fun salts like Maldon, which are little crystal pyramids and crunch when you eat them, but is that worth the bundle of money it costs? Maybe, but it's hardly frugal and doesn't pack a flavor punch.

So if you don't know what to get or how to use it I suggest you start with a single item like a good nut oil or maybe an aged balsamic vinegar. Spend ten or twelve bucks. Then taste what you have been missing!