JOANNA'S FOOD: family cooking, from scratch, every day


Friday, September 12, 2008

Pork chops with plums and spices

Here's a lovely seasonal recipe, hard to beat when the plums are on the trees (although all ours were barren this year, frost I think). It's adapted from Diana Henry's lovely book Cook Simple. Despite the chilli and ginger, it's flavoured rather than hot, and was fine for my family of spice-haters. This amount of sauce will do for 4-6 chops

450g/1lb plums, stoned and halved
4-6 pork chops

5 tbsp runny honey
1 tsp Chinese five-spice
1 tsp ground ginger
a little red chilli, chopped fine
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
juice of an orange
1 tsp wine vinegar

Arrange the chops and plums in a single layer in a casserole, then pour over the mixed sauce ingredients. Cover and cook at 180C/365F for 45-50 minutes. Diana Henry cooks this in an uncovered pan in a slightly hotter oven: hers is crisped and brown at the edges, mine is soft and succulent.

I cooked this in the oven of our new wood-burning range ... I'll post about that soon, when I'm over the euphoria of cooking entire meals using a couple of small logs for fuel.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting that your plums did not perform this year. Mine produced well but last year the yield was poor. I think that plums have alternate years when the produce well and others poorly.
John

Anonymous said...

We have a plum tree and some years it yields good and others not. Do not know why. I must try this pork chop recipe. It sounds so easy yet so yummy!
Thanks Joanna

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

Gosh, I used to do pork chops and haven't for a long time. Love the plums!!
Look forward to hearing about that oven.

Angela said...

An appreciative follower of your blog, I am really looking forward to hearing about your new stove!