A Favorite Recipe: Braised Pork Chops with Tomatoes, Cream & Porchini Mushrooms

I’m a much better cook than I am a photographer. This recipe is the bomb.  The photo doesn’t do it justice!  Since the recipe comes from my favorite Italian cookbook, Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan, I won’t reprint the recipe except to write about it generally.

This Pork Chop recipe is a little more complex than my other pork favorite in the book, which is “Pork chops braised in two wines.” The recipe has vegetable oil, pork chops, dry wine, Italian plum tomatoes, whipping cream, dried porchini mushrooms (reconstituted in water) and a bunch of fresh white button mustrooms. Typically I start all porchini mushroom recipes by soaking the mushrooms in their water for 30 minutes while I prepare the rest of the recipe. While they are “reconstituting” in water, saute the porkchops until browned on each side, then you add the white wine and simmer.

When the mushrooms are done reconstituting, you take them out, squeeqe out the water and save it and chop up the mushrooms.  After that you add the tomatoes, cream, salt, pepper, and the “reconstituted” chopped mushrooms and cook at a very low simmer for 45 minutes. At this point, you’re supposed to boil down the porchini mushroom water to about 1/3 but I didn’t have enough burners so I skipped it.

While that’s cooking, saute the sliced white button white mushrooms  in olive or vegetable oil. I always add a bit of butter to this as I like how the musrooms absorb the butter flavor. When they’ve absorbed all the liquid from the oil, add the (boiled down) water from the porchini mushrooms. Since I didn’t boil mine down, I just used about 1/3 or 1/2 of the water. Stir fry the mushrooms until all the water is absorbed.

When the chops are tender, add the cooked musrooms to the pain, cover and cook for 5 more minutes. Then serve.

Since this meat dish is complex in flavor (white wine, cream, and porcini mushrooms are all very strong flavors) and preparation, I served this with simple boiled baby pototoes with butter and parsley and a side salad.

If you love Italian cooking, get the book Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. It never ever fails me. I cook from it at least three or four times per week.

One of my other favorite pork recipe I love is Braised Pork chops with two wines but I suppose  you can also do beef and veal in 2 wines as well.  Other favorites from this book include all of the risottos, the Pasta e Fageoli, Lentil soup and roasted or pan sauteed chickens and all of the bitter Italian veggies pan sauted and several of the beef dishes. The book also has recipes for the really weird stuff like brains, organs and game meats. I won’t dwell on its pasta sauces which are equally fantastic, but a favorite sauce is tomatos and prorchini mushrooms which I never made before this book.  While I use the book mainly for preparing meats because– any dish from this book will delight the taste buds.