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.

As it turned out these were truly delicious chops: tender, loaded with flavor and juicy.  It behooves you to get good quality pork from local farms for the best flavor; supermarket pork is so inferior.  Local pastured pork, though, can be expensive at $10 or more per pound.  I find that Topsham butcher Bisson’s cuts of pork at a third of the price are very good.  The pork comes from Canada whose cultivation methods are very strict (tantamount to being pastured/organic) and yield pork meat with sufficient marbling and pronounced flavor. Pat’s Meat Market in Portland  also sells Canadian pork.   Use chops that are only a half-inch thick because these are quickly pan fried over high and low heat.

Delicious Pork Chops with succotash and sweet potato mash; classic chess pie

This method insures tender meat. I served it with mashed sweet potatoes (pureed with copious amounts of butter and cream) and Lundy’s recipe for succotash.  I used cranberry beans in the succotash (and local shucked corn kernels and scallions) since we don’t have local lima beans, the traditional ingredient; frozen could have worked but it’s not the same.  I rounded out the meal with chess pie for dessert, which I had left over from a previous meal.

It’s funny how I was able to spend the afternoon on the beach under a dazzling late summer sun with the sea breeze keeping the temperature at 72 degrees and to enjoy a fall meal in the evening as nighttime temperatures were autumn fresh and cool.  Fall cooking might just be my favorite time to use up the last of the farm-field-farm abundance for bounteous home cooking.

Note: For chess pie, combine 3 eggs beaten with 1/2 cup  melted butter, 1 tablespoon yellow cornmeal, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar and pour into 9-inch unbaked pie shell.  Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes then lower heat to 350 degrees and bake for about 45 minutes more  or until set and puffed.  Cool before slicing.