Brownie Schrumpf’s “Brownie’s Kitchen” filled this space for close to forty years. This month marks my tenth, something I barely can believe. When I took this job on in April 2006, fellow-food writer Allene White gleefully taunted me about weekly deadlines, and I have to say, it is true—you cannot conceive how quickly a week can pass until you have a deadline every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. A recipe column can turn a person into a recipe gathering monster, and when I thumb through Memories from Brownie’s Kitchen, a cookbook she assembled from collected columns, I can spy the occasional desperation recipe. Any old recipe in a storm!
A few of you readers remember Brownie. In fact, from time to time, one of you sends me a Brownie recipe. And this week’s recipe comes straight from a newspaper clipping of Brownie’s column from September 1987 that Barbara Elward of Mattawamkeag sent me a couple of years ago which has no fewer than seven recipes in it. Oy. She was a champ, that Brownie, and I thought I would honor her this week with one of her recipes, Nancy’s Pork Chops and Apples.
I am still working my way through the fabulous apple harvest of 2015, stored in the cellar, and since this household hasn’t had pork chops for a while, this recipe really appealed to me. It is very nearly one of those desperation recipes I mentioned, more an idea, or set of instructions for what to do with pork chops that you can stick in a covered dish for a couple of hours while you attend to something else. We tried it, and it was good, simple, and worth repeating. I served it with hot beets splashed with vinaigrette, and a big green salad.
The recipe as presented in Brownie’s column would serve six if everyone ate one chop. We are only two, so I averaged down, using two chops, two lovely large Wolf River apples, and instead of measuring out the brown sugar and cinnamon, did a quick sprinkle of each, and melted a bit of butter to dribble over. You can probably skip the butter and never miss it. And the next time I make this, I am going to slice in an onion to mix with the apples. The apples make their own chunky sauce in the bottom of the baking dish, and the chops end up becoming quite tender in the apple liquid.
So enjoy your pork chops, dear readers, and raise a glass to Brownie before tucking into them. By the way, if anyone of you is “Nancy” or knows who Nancy is, let me know?
- 6 pork chops
- 4 un-pared apples, cored and sliced crosswise
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon (or more to taste)
- 2 tablespoons butter
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Brown the pork chops on each side.
- Place the sliced apples in a buttered baking dish with a tight lid.
- Sprinkle the apples with the sugar and cinnamon
- Dot with bits of butter or melt the butter and dribble over the apples.
- Top with the pork chops.
- Bake for about one and a half hours, and if much liquid has accumulated, take off the lid and let bake for a half-hour more.
