On the menu: Beet Rosti, Pork Chops with Pan Sauce, and Roasted Cauliflower
Kevin finally caved and purchased the iPad app How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, and the recipe for Beet Rosti was one of the featured recipes last week. We’ve been spending a lot of time in the produce section lately and had been eyeing up beets for a couple of weeks. The rosti was basically destiny.
What in the heck is a rosti? It’s a Swiss dish made by grating a starchy vegetable and frying it in a skillet like a giant pancake.
The next question, naturally, was what should we serve with the rosti? Our last big meal was a delicious (and enormous) steak, so we knew we needed to go a little lighter. We chose to make pork chops because we hadn’t made them in a while and also because Ol’ Reliable Mr. Bittman had a panfried pork chop recipe we wanted to try. Kevin and I have been interested in pan sauces lately, and HTCE has eight different pan sauces for pork chops! We chose the sauce with butter and scallions.
Our dinner was still missing one thing…the vegetable. The rosti was a pancake-like dish, so we were considering it the starch of the meal. There are a few reasons why I convinced Kevin that we should make roasted cauliflower. I had seen it on an episode of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef on FoodNetwork.com a few weeks ago, I had read about it on Epicurious, and…well…it was white, and red and white side dishes would make a super cute Valentine’s Day themed dinner! Kevin did not know about that last reason.
We got all of the ingredients together and got to work. We started with the cauliflower, since it takes 45 minutes in the oven. I tossed it with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put it in the oven at 425 degrees. While it cooked, I stirred it a few times. I ended up turning the heat down halfway through to prevent the florets from getting too brown.
Once the cauliflower was in the oven, I grated the beets, then tossed them with salt, rosemary, and some flour. We browned some butter in a skillet and then put the beets in, patting them down into a pancake. They cooked for about 8 minutes on medium heat, and then we flipped the rosti with the help of a dinner plate. The rosti burned on the first side, so we turned the heat down a bit and cooked it on the other side for about 6 minutes.
Kevin made the pork. He seasoned the chops with salt and pepper and put them into a preheated skillet. They browned for a few minutes, then he added white wine and shallots. Once the wine was reduced, he added water and let everything simmer for 12 minutes. The liquid reduced enough to make a simple, flavorful sauce.
Dinner was finally ready. It took a lot longer to make than we thought it would, and there were a few hangups along the way, but everything tasted amazing! The rosti was sweet from the sugars in the beets caramelizing, and the rosemary was a nice herbal addition to the dish. Neither Kevin nor I had eaten beets cooked this way before, and the flavor of the beets themselves was almost overpowering. The flavor of the cauliflower was absolutely unexpected, and it was a very pleasant surprise! It was creamy and delicious. If you’ve never made roasted cauliflower, you should. The pork was a little dry, but the sauce added a little moisture and had a nice tangy flavor.
It was a great meal!
Roasted Cauliflower
adapted from a lot of sources (including How to Cook Everything)
1 head of cauliflower
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cut up the head of cauliflower into florets and toss in olive oil to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Roast in the over for 45 minutes, stirring a few times to prevent sticking and overbrowning.
Beet Rosti with Rosemary
from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything
1 1/2 lbs. beets
1 t. fresh rosemary, coarsely chopped
1 t. salt
1/4 c. all purpose flour
2 T butter
Trim and peel the beets as you would do for potatoes; grate them in a food processor or on a box grater. Put a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat.
Toss the grated beets into a bowl and add the rosemary and salt, then add about half the flour. Toss well, then add the second half of the flour and toss again.
Put the butter in the skillet and heat it until it turns nut brown. Put the beet mixture into the skillet and and press it down with a spatula so it fills the pan. Adjust the heat so that the pancake sizzles without burning and cook, shaking the pan occasionally until the bottom of the beet cake is nicely crisped, 6-8 minutes. Slide the cake onto a plate, top with another plate, invert the two plates, and slide the cake back into the pan. (We just flipped the skillet onto the dinner plate and saved a dish. Hey, it worked!) Cook, adjusting heat if needed, another 6-8 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve.
Skillet Pork Chops with Butter and Scallions
from (yup, you guessed it!) Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything
4 pork chops (we usually buy thin cut)
salt and pepper
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 c. dry white wine
2 T. minced shallot
1/2 c. stock or water
1 T. butter
1 T. lemon juice
Sprinkle the chops with salt and pepper. Heat a skillet over medium high heat, then add the olive oil. Add the chops when the oil first smokes. Brown chops on both sides, moving often, for 4 minutes at the most.
Reduce heat to medium. Add wine and scallions and cook, turning the chops a couple of times, until the wine is almost evaporated, 3 minutes. Add the stock/water, turn the heat down to low, and cook for 10 minutes, turning the chops once or twice, until the chops are tender but not dry.
Transfer chops to a platter. Continue cooking the pan juices until they reduce slightly. Add the butter and lemon juice, pour over the chops, and serve.
Documenting our Dinner. 