Pork Chops and Dijon

Before we begin, a confession: I had every intention of writing this last night. Somewhere along the way, my brain died. I got a paragraph written before I finally accepted the fact that the rough day I had yesterday slaughtered my creativity. To be fair, it was the kind of work day I dread. I'm a customer service representative for an insurance company, and to say that the level to which people do not understand the services that they pay for is astounding would be the understatement of the year. I have a rare opportunity to educate people into being better consumers, but sometimes it comes at the price of all of my patience being spent by the time I walk in the door, drop my purse, and greet my dog. So now, coffee and breakfast in hand (Yes, it's avocado toast. Yes, I am a one-trick breakfast pony. Judge me now.), let's begin

One of the most fabulous combinations on planet earth is Dijon mustard and pork. Dijon mustard has been one of my father's favorite compliments for pork roasts for a long time. We had a great deal of memorable Sunday pork roasts that began their short lives as Dijon mustard, herbs, and several delightful hours roasting away. Dijon and pork have history for me, so it's surprising that it's taken me this long to utilize it in cooking. In fact, I had not even purchased Dijon mustard as an adult until earlier this year!

Here's the thing about my relationship with mustard: I don't always love it. I like certain kinds of mustard in moderation and on certain foods, but the tanginess can often make my tongue hurt a little bit. As you can imagine, this makes me somewhat picky about the when, what, and how of my mustard consumption. Before you ask, yellow mustard is always in my fridge, and I do include it on the usual mustard-bearing foods (hamburgers, hot dogs, tuna salad--if you believe in the New York way, which is the right way, just to be clear). I just tend to prefer that it be used sparingly. Some mustard combinations make no sense to me at all. (Pretzels? Really? No. A soft pretzel begs for cheese, you heathens.)

That said, I made a successful pork roast back in January that was Dijon glazed, so I thought that last night for dinner, I'd repeat the process but with pork chops. I wanted to have the flavor combination that comes with rosemary, Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, garlic powder, pepper, and parsley again, but I didn't want to make a whole pork roast. It's just not practical for us to make large roasts since our fridge is a veritable left-over oubliette. So I opted to experiment a little bit and just use my mustard mixture on pork chops which I then cooked over medium-high heat in a pan. There wasn't really any measuring--a lot of my experimentation with foods is more intuitive. I threw together a mixture of the aforementioned ingredients, tasted it, liked it, used it.

The results where actually really good. The mustard mixture ended up looking slightly lumpy from the heat in the pan, but it tasted wonderful. The interesting thing about this mixture is that the vinegar tends to keep the meet from firming up in the way a pork chop normally would when pan-frying, so the texture ends up being just a little softer. I'm actually quite fond of it because one of the things I look forward to in a meal is a variety of textures. 

We had our pork chops with boxed rosemary herb potatoes, similar to au gratin style boxed mix, and salad. Like I said, by the time I got home yesterday, my creativity had been sapped from me. We're lucky I manage to feed myself at all on days like the one I had yesterday. I will say that coming home after a long day and spending a little time in the kitchen creating something does help to take some of the stresses of the day away. It was nice to unwind by creating something that I could enjoy. This is what I understand about Julie Powell and Gabrielle Hamilton. This solace that can be found in cooking. It's good.