Classic Pork Chops With Greens

Hello! How was your weekend?  Mine involved a lot of awesome eating.  Yay!

On Saturday we headed over to the butcher's to buy us some meat.  I could have bought pretty much everything in there, but in the end we decided some enormous pork chops.  We've actually never cooked these before, so we thought we'd give ourselves a challenge.

Since it was Saturday, we thought we'd get all fancy and have a starter too.

This is our first crop of fresh peas from the garden, which haven't been cooked - they're so fresh and small you can eat them raw, and they taste like sweets.  Honestly!  I sprinkled them over some salad leaves (which came straight out of a packet), with a few shavings of cheddar.  I dressed the salad with just a splash of olive oil and another of balsamic - I didn't want anything to overpower the lovely summery taste of the peas.  It was delicious.

Next came the pork chops.  We cooked them the Vefa way - seasoned with salt and pepper, then browned in hot oil for a couple of minutes on each side.  Once browned, we reduced the heat, added wine, water, torn sage leaves and some streaky bacon pieces, and let that simmer away for about 20 minutes.  We cooked a big pile of greens in olive oil and nutmeg to have alongside.

People, it was AMAZING.  Forget all the childhood memories you have of pork chops being tough, dry and weirdly fibrous (urk).  These were melt-in-the-mouth piggy goodness.  And I think that sentence says it all.