Borrowed Recipes!

Dinner tonight came from existing recipes, which all worked out pretty well! I made pork chops and a cherry dessert using recipes from the blog Simply Recipes. And I made kale with white beans using a recipe from Recipe Zaar.

Vermont Maple Syrup Pork Chops

I followed the recipe pretty closely but I only made 2 chops rather than 6. Instead of making only 1/3 the sauce I went ahead and made 1/2. I was glad to have the extra as the thickened gravy is delicious. Unfortunately the gravy was especially necessary because even taking 10 minutes off the cook time the chops were still overcooked. The recipe calls for 45 minutes and I set the timer for 35 minutes and wished I had taken them out 5 minutes sooner. I would suggest checking at 25 or 30 minutes with a meat thermometer. Pork should be cooked to 160 degrees but remember it keeps cooking after you take it out of the oven so anything above 150 should be fine.

Kale and White Beans

I followed this recipe to the tee except that I didn't have a tomato so I left that out. I would suggest using only 1T of brown sugar or maybe even none at all, except that if you include the tomato maybe it balances out the sweetness more. And I would add an extra 1T of balsamic. Additionally, there wasn't enough liquid to steam the kale, which also may be remedied by including the tomato. But I wished I had added a few tablespoons of water at the end when the recipe suggests covering the dish to melt the cheese with steam.

Cherry Clafouti!

This is a delicious dessert. It was great as is but next time I'll use slightly less almond extract and more actual almonds. I would suggest 1/2t extract rather than the 3/4t the recipe calls for and 4T almonds rather than 2T. We served this to guests with whipped cream but when we ate it ourselves later we decided it really didn't need it! Also, I used Balaton cherries, which are simply perfect cherries.