I have already gotten the obligatory email questioning the veracity of the timings of my recipes so I thought I would break down last night's meal, which is amongst the lengthiest I have made so far and still came in at about twenty five minutes from start to finish, and I did not need to be present for much of it. Admittedly, I have been cooking for years, so my knife skills might make me a little faster than most, and I have a very organized kitchen, but I still maintain that the food that I make is easy, and can be made in less time than you might think.
The dinner, poorly illustrated above unfortunately, was comprised of a garlicky grilled pork chop topped with fried green tomatoes, flanked by a microwave steamed potato and lashings of Rémoulade sauce, and served with a green salad on the side. Not too shabby for less than thirty minutes, fifteen of which I spent sitting on the front porch with a glass of wine, watching the baby chipmunks play tag.
I preheated the oven.
While the oven was preheating, I removed my pork chop from the fridge and salted it on all sides. I placed a clove of garlic and a teaspoon of oil in an oven safe skillet. I mixed up my Rémoulade sauce, sliced my tomatoes and scrubbed a potato clean.
I then turned the heat on under the skillet and, as soon as the pan was hot, cooked the pork chop for a minute and a half on each side to get a little seared, before putting it in the oven.
I placed my tomato slices in the Rémoulade sauce in which I planned on dredging them and then went and had a drink as mentioned above for fifteen minutes.
I went back to the kitchen and immediately hit five minutes on the microwave to cook my potato. Since the pork chop needed to rest, I removed it from the oven and set it aside covered loosely in foil. While it was resting, I rolled the tomato slices in panko and fried them on each side. While the tomatoes were frying, I assembled my salad.
Once the microwave pinged to say that the potato was done, so were the tomatoes and all was left to do was to put everything together on a plate.
Please believe my timings. They are accurate.