Day 9 and I made four of Rachel’s recipes – well, it is Saturday night! So, I made Maple black pepper pork chops, Perfect mashed potatoes, Green beans with anchovies and toasted almonds (again!) and Oreo chocolate fudge sundae.

 

I started the dinner tonight again with preparing the potatoes as they would take the longest to make and they were pretty much the same recipe I used before except I stuck to Rachel’s modest quantities of milk, cream and butter and not my usual overloading of same – see page 324. I then started on the pork chops (page 130) and, I must admit, this was the first time that I make pork chops. These were pretty easy to do except it probably took me a wee bit longer to cook them to brown them properly. I could have done with having the pan hotter.  

 

The pork chops were browned on each side and then I put them on a hot plate in the oven on a very low heat while I made the sauce. The sauce consisted of red onion, maple syrup and thyme. Maple syrup is always a staple in our house. There was a Canadian girl I used to play basketball with at Queen’s who got me started on the maple syrup for my porridge and ever since, that’s what I have with it every morning. I finished off the chops with green beans using the same recipe from last night. So here’s the dinner…

 

Then, it was onto dessert. As I said – no Saturday night would be complete without one. Dear Husband actually picked the recipe out of the cookbook himself (page 57). It wouldn’t have been my first choice as I’m not big into chocolate ice cream but, anyway, the Oreo chocolate fudge sundae had…wait for it…Oreo biscuits, chocolate ice-cream and fudge sauce. Oreos – shop bought. Check. Chocolate ice-cream – shop bought. Check. Fudge sauce – well, I had to make this one and for something that sounds simple, it took quite a few ingredients – caster sugar, soft light brown sugar, cocoa powder, plain flour, salt, tin of evaporated milk, butter and vanilla extract. The plus side that it took 5 minutes to cook once I brought it up to the boil but the downside was that I had to stir continuously for the 5 minutes which can be a task when Dear Son wants me to lift him up to see the “special chocolate sauce”. The recipe makes a litre so there was plenty left over which I put in a jug in the fridge. Somehow, I don’t think it will last too long.

The verdict…

Dear Husband gave the meal 9 out of 10. I strongly suspect that the inclusion of a dessert upped my marks by that crucial extra 0.5. However, in fairness, he did say that the pork chop dinner was one of the nicest dinners he’d ever had. I’m now that little bit closer to the 10! Dear Son gave the potatoes 9 out of 10 – probably only because he heard his father saying it but only ate a small bit of the pork. All in all, tonight’s dinner was a success story and, thank God, because I’m wrecked. Good night.