Kentucky cookbook author and food writer Ronni Lundy is one of my favorite chroniclers of American regional cookery as found in two of her books, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken: The Heart and Soul of Southern Country Kitchens and Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden. But right now I already have a few stained pages as I’ve begun to cook through her newest book, Victuals. This tome focuses on the cooking of the Mountain South and Appalachia.
The recipes lovingly extol exquisite country cooking. Dishes such as old-school tomato gravy (spiked with sorghum) served over salmon cakes (made with canned salmon) was delicious simplicity. Another dish I prepared was slow-cooked pork shoulder on the bone. I bought local pork from Sumner Valley Farm, which, incidentally, has the best price at $7 per pound. It was cooked in a crockpot, a utensil I rarely use since I favor a traditional Dutch oven for cooking low and slow in the oven.
The pork is seasoned with salt and pepper, browned all over and put into the slow cooker with sliced onions and sorghum and deglazed (with water and cider vinegar) pan juices. It’s supposed to cook for 4 hours until fork tender, though I thought that wasn’t enough time and I kept it on low for an additional 90 minutes.
More recently I tried Lundy’s recipe called Delicious Pork Chops. I was wondering what would make these chops different from others since all it called for was salt and lemon pepper for seasoning and to be browned in a shmear of bacon fat in a cast-iron skillet.
I seasoned the chops early in the day and let them rest in the refrigerator as a kind of dry rub brine. I don’t keep bacon grease on hand but I think I’m going to start doing that, using it in moderation (for health reasons) when necessary because it adds so much flavor to whatever you’re cooking. I rendered some bacon fat, however.
