I figured while I was home I should practice my French cooking. Besançon is the capitol of the Franche-Comté region, famous for their comte cheese (duh) and hearty meals. Their main meats tend to be pork, veal, and whole chicken, with beef saved mostly for stews or bourguignon. Their main sides seem to be green beans, potatoes, eggplant, and zucchini. They also use garlic generously and even have a garlic soup, which is fantastic news for me considering I LOVE garlic.
As I went to experiment and decide which recipe to try first, I noticed that almost all the recipes call for at least one type of wine, boiled down a reduced. This is really expensive to do in America, so unfortunately I can’t practice as much as I thought!
I settled with Pork Chop “Maman Blanc” by chef Raymond Blanc and added green beans. You can find the recipe here but beware: it is in metric.
I got 2 pork chops on the bone, about 1” thick, and seasoned them with salt and pepper. Put a saucepan on medium heat and add 1 ½ tbsp butter. Let it foam without burning. Turn the heat to medium high and put in your pork chops. The recipe said let each side cook for 4 minutes for medium but mine turned out well. Transfer the chops to a warm plate while you make your sauce out of the remaining juice. Open a window or five, because this part gets smoky. Pour 3 ½ fl. oz. (a little less than half a cup) of cold water into the pan. Open another window. Scrape the caramelized residue from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon while it reduces to a thicker sauce. Disable your fire alarm if it's sensitive. This isn’t going to be a full, thick gravy so don’t wait forever. I probably waited about 1 ½ minutes. The pork chop is also supposed to be served with Dijon mustard but I didn’t have any and didn’t want to buy a jar for one recipe.
The sautéed potatoes and persillade were started before the pork chops. I cubed the potatoes at about 1” thick, next time I will go smaller (should have followed the recipe and did ½”!) because they took a while to cook. I blanched, then sautéed the potatoes in extra virgin olive oil on high heat. The recipe called for rapeseed oil but I didn’t know what that was so I assumed it was expensive and didn’t bother looking for it. Turns out it’s canola oil! In North America they changed the name because of the negative connotation. The persillade was ½ shallot and a garlic clove, both diced. I omitted the parsley because one, I don’t like too much herb and two, my grocery store has a pretty horrible selection of fresh herbs. Once the potatoes were about done, I lowered the heat and added the persillade, 1 ½ tbsp butter, and seasoned to taste and let it all mingle for a bit before I deemed it done. I probably used more salt and pepper than the recipe suggested.
For the green beans I used ½ lb of green beans, 3 oz. of water, 2 garlic cloves chopped, 1 ⅔ tbsp butter, and salt and pepper to taste. I threw it all in a saucepan, brought it to boil, covered it, and cooked it until tender which was about 4 minutes.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take a picture, but below is the picture from the recipe page. I'll make sure to take some from now on!
As I went to experiment and decide which recipe to try first, I noticed that almost all the recipes call for at least one type of wine, boiled down a reduced. This is really expensive to do in America, so unfortunately I can’t practice as much as I thought!
I settled with Pork Chop “Maman Blanc” by chef Raymond Blanc and added green beans. You can find the recipe here but beware: it is in metric.
I got 2 pork chops on the bone, about 1” thick, and seasoned them with salt and pepper. Put a saucepan on medium heat and add 1 ½ tbsp butter. Let it foam without burning. Turn the heat to medium high and put in your pork chops. The recipe said let each side cook for 4 minutes for medium but mine turned out well. Transfer the chops to a warm plate while you make your sauce out of the remaining juice. Open a window or five, because this part gets smoky. Pour 3 ½ fl. oz. (a little less than half a cup) of cold water into the pan. Open another window. Scrape the caramelized residue from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon while it reduces to a thicker sauce. Disable your fire alarm if it's sensitive. This isn’t going to be a full, thick gravy so don’t wait forever. I probably waited about 1 ½ minutes. The pork chop is also supposed to be served with Dijon mustard but I didn’t have any and didn’t want to buy a jar for one recipe.
The sautéed potatoes and persillade were started before the pork chops. I cubed the potatoes at about 1” thick, next time I will go smaller (should have followed the recipe and did ½”!) because they took a while to cook. I blanched, then sautéed the potatoes in extra virgin olive oil on high heat. The recipe called for rapeseed oil but I didn’t know what that was so I assumed it was expensive and didn’t bother looking for it. Turns out it’s canola oil! In North America they changed the name because of the negative connotation. The persillade was ½ shallot and a garlic clove, both diced. I omitted the parsley because one, I don’t like too much herb and two, my grocery store has a pretty horrible selection of fresh herbs. Once the potatoes were about done, I lowered the heat and added the persillade, 1 ½ tbsp butter, and seasoned to taste and let it all mingle for a bit before I deemed it done. I probably used more salt and pepper than the recipe suggested.
For the green beans I used ½ lb of green beans, 3 oz. of water, 2 garlic cloves chopped, 1 ⅔ tbsp butter, and salt and pepper to taste. I threw it all in a saucepan, brought it to boil, covered it, and cooked it until tender which was about 4 minutes.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take a picture, but below is the picture from the recipe page. I'll make sure to take some from now on!
Review: I don’t eat meat, but Jeremy gave the pork chops an A+. I found the shallots added a more mild taste to the potatoes. Americans typically sauté their potatoes with onion and garlic so the shallots made me feel almost like it needed something more, but Jeremy liked the potatoes a lot. The green beans were my favorite but Jeremy’s least favorite. It’s not to say they were bad, but it’s how I always cook them so he is just used to them while the other foods were more of a rarity. All in all, it was a good meal. I had never cooked pork chops before and I can’t believe how easy it was. I’ll have to do it more often.
Thanks for reading and as always, feel free to comment or ask a question!
Thanks for reading and as always, feel free to comment or ask a question!