The Captain goes Southern on Y’all

On Thursday, it was time to use those green tomatoes or else throw them away. So, I stopped at Westborn at lunchtime and got some stuff to go with them: Two nice bone-in pork chops and some pearl onions. I also picked up some things I’ll need over the weekend.

Back at home after a long, frustrating afternoon (I spent it trying to figure out formatting another book I had to rewrite while using Word 2010 – pain in the butt!) I treated the cats and changed clothes. I watched most of the news and then returned Jake’s call from Tuesday (not sure how I missed that).

We caught each other up on current events (I want his job, dammit!) After we hung up, I tacked the base together using my 2x6’s and my nail gun (I’ll screw them together this weekend).

Then I started dinner. First I stuck a handful of the pearl onions into boiling salted water. After three minutes, I drained them and shocked them to stop the cooking process. I slipped off their little skins and set the onions aside for later.

I made the pork chops Southern-style by adding a cup or so of flour to a baggie and seasoned the flour with fresh ground black pepper and some Lawry’s seasoned salt.

I didn’t have any lard, so I used bacon grease in my skillet. I got the pan hot and patted the chops dry. Then I put them in the baggie (one at a time) and shook them around. I shook off the excess flour and put them into the skillet.

I let them go until they were nicely browned on the one side (about 3 minutes) and then flipped them over. Once that side was done, I pulled the pan off the heat and stuck it in a pre-heated (375 degrees F.) oven. I set the timer for 10 minutes. The oven part is not exactly Southern-style as they would have just kept turning them over in the skillet until done. But, you run the risk of drying out the chop that way.

I made up my breading station with flour in the first tray, two eggs and some milk in the second and one cup flour, 1/4 cup corn meal and 1/2 cup of fine breadcrumbs in the last. When the canola oil started to shimmer, I started breading and frying the slices of green tomatoes. I made them in two batches. As each batch finished, I put them on some paper towels to drain and hit them with sea salt. Then I covered them with tin foil to keep warm.

I put the pearl onions into more boiling salted water and added about 1/4 pound of frozen peas. About that time, the timer went off, so I pulled the pork chops out and let them rest.

The fried green tomatoes were done, the chops were done and all that remained was to drain the peas and pearl onions. I added a half stick of butter to the saucepan and let that melt, while I seasoned them with salt and pepper.

I plated everything up (one chop, three of the fried green tomatoes and half the peas and pearl onions). The chop was moist and delicious, the tomatoes were tart and good, but I really, really liked the peas and pearl onions. I got three more tomatoes and the rest of the peas before I was full.

I watched a little TV, but then went to bed early.