Pork loin cutlets with sour cherry and mint cream sauce!
Autumn is here! With autumn comes recipes for chilly weather. During the past few years I have posted many German, Swiss and Austrian recipes for the fall season. It seems like the cuisine of those countries dominates autumn cuisine. Octoberfest is a time of celebrating the harvest season of fall. Many people only think of beer when Octoberfest is mentioned. The Octoberfest celebration is about food and the beer that is brewed for winter is the means of making everybody happy after the labor of the harvest! Earlier in my career, I apprenticed in a few restaurants that were run by German and Swiss chefs. This was long before the fusion cuisine trends and healthy French food cuisine trends came to be. French cooking was classic French and every other european cuisine still featured its own traditional classic food. Sauces were rich and full of classic flavors. The food was rich. People did not dine out as often, because european style restaurant food at that time was so rich! It took a great degree of skill to cook the old classic recipes and the classic entrees commanded a price. Presentations of food were easy on the eye and excess garnishing was taboo. Fine dining has changed a lot since those days and many agree that the change was not for the better. At small German and Swiss restaurants in America, the special du jour board offered nice creations during the autumn season. The chefs liked to offer their own creations for the season and traditional favorites from the area of europe that they came from. A few German chefs that I worked with liked to offer veal with dried or preserved tart summer cherries flambeed with kirschwasser and finished with cream. This is not a recipe that you will find in many cookbooks, but it is a traditional late summer, fall and winter recipe that is perfect for when the weather becomes cooler. Dried mint from spring and early summer also becomes part of the fall and winter cuisine of many european countries. Mint flavor in a sauce brings recent memories of warmer seasons and comfort. Understanding the psychology of how food affects the mind is part of planning a good plate of seasonal food. Knowing when spring and summer harvest items, like mint and cherries, start to become used for cooking through the course of a year is part of creating good seasonal food. An entree with a sauce of tart summer cherries and mint during early fall produces a reflection of the past spring and summer, then conversation follows. More important, a sauce of tart cherries and mint tastes very nice with pork or veal cutlets! Schweinelende Koteletts mit Sauer Kirsche Minze Sahnesauce: Dried sour cherries are not sour like a lemon. They have a nice zesty tart cherry flavor! Cream is used for this sauce and not creme fraiche. Place 10 dried sour cherries in a cup with warm water and soak them till they become soft. Drain the water off of the reconstituted sour cherries. Cut the cherries in half and set them aside. Cut 3 thin pork loin cutlets that weigh about 2 to 3 ounces apiece. Gently pound the cutlets flat with a meat mallet or wine bottle. Season the cutlets with sea salt and black pepper. Dredge the cutlets in flour. Heat a saute pan over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Add 2 pats of unsalted butter. Place the floured pork cutlets in the pan. Pan fry and saute the cutlets on both sides, till light golden brown highlights appear. Remove the cutlets from the pan and set them aside. Pour the excess grease out of the pan. Add the the reconstituted sour cherry halves. Add 2 ounces of kirschwasser. (clear plain cherry schnapps) Place the pan back over medium heat. Flambe the cherries. Add 1 cup of cream. Add 1 small pinch of nutmeg. Add 1 small pinch of sea salt and white pepper. Add 3 to 4 pinches of dried mint. Bring the cream to a gentle boil. Reduce the temperature to low heat. Return the sauteed pork cutlets to the pan. Gently simmer and reduce the sauce, till it becomes a medium thin cream sauce consistency. Remove the pan from the heat. Place the cutlets on a plate. Spoon the sour cherry mint creme sauce over and around the pork cutlets. Garnish the plate with root vegetables and an autumn squash of your choice. Serve with a potato of your choice on the side. Note: Buttered hybrid purple carrot dimes are a nice looking style of carrot and they accompany the entree in the photographs above. Buttered pattypan squash halves are a nice late summer or early fall vegetable and they look good on the plate. Buttered peeled whole parsley root with the green parsley top attached is a classic root vegetable for the autumn season!
This is a very nice gentle tasting German special du jour for the fall and winter seasons! Yum! ... Shawna
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder