An All-“American” dinner

Since starting this blog, I’ve been to Rome and Paris.  Both trips involved efforts at trying to duplicate the delicious food we enjoyed in Europe and, as I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve been exploring food from the Middle East and Central Asia recently.  Yet sometimes you need to touch bases with home.  I live in Philadelphia and for many, that might imply maybe a cheesesteak or spaghetti and gravy (marinara sauce) or a hoagie*.  Despite having lived here for nearly 15 years, I don’t think of any of those things as my home cuisine.

I think of Philadelphia as being the place where the farms of Lancaster County and Chester County in Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and rural Delaware meet.  This is an amazing place for fresh and unusual produce, dairy, and meat and I love to use it when I can.  I’ve talked before about the Italian Market and the Reading Terminal Market, both wonderful resources for fresh ingredients.  A place I neglected when I wrote about markets last April is the series of farmer’s markets sponsored by Philadelphia’s Food Trust.  The Headhouse Square Farmer’s Market  is about ten minutes from my house and is open every Sunday and a visit late Sunday morning has become something of a ritual for us.

So we went last week, as usual, and this visit did produce a market-inspired dinner, with all ingredients coming from the local area.  Now from the picture, you might think that the centerpiece were the boneless pork chops in the center but I’m not sure that those string beans didn’t demand the spot of honor.

Let’s start with the pork chops, though.  Hillacres Pride from Lancaster County sells a variety of pork and poultry products, eggs, cheese, and dairy.  I was initially skeptical about buying frozen pork, but after having tried their pork chops three or four times now, I’d say that they are better than anything similar I’ve purchased from Whole Foods, the regular supermarket, or any of the butchers in the Italian Market.  Thick, juicy, and with a nice, pronounced pork flavor.  I prepare them simply by seasoning with salt and pepper, searing for three minutes on the top, one minute on the bottom, and then three to four minutes in a 415° oven.  Perfect.

By the way, that yellow blob between the pork chops and the green beans is butter from Hillacres Pride.  I don’t usually use butter except as a cooking ingredient (just salt on my corn, please) but my true love tells me that it is delicious. And while we’re talking about the corn, it comes from the A.T. Buzby Farm in Salem County, New Jersey, and picking up a dozen ears of corn, a half-dozen tomatoes, an eggplant, and a tray of string beans has become a habit and will remain so until the season peters out.

Now we get to the string beans.  Just like the tomatoes I raved about a week or so ago, these fresh string beans are amazing.  We both like string beans and eat them frequently, and our two parrots LOVE string beans and between them eat a handful almost every night.  Seriously.  Regardless of how many string beans we go through during the rest of the year, string beans that are fresh in-season are something else altogether.  If I had done nothing more than boil them for five minutes and scatter a little salt, pepper, and lemon zest on them, they would have been delicious but I got inspired at another vendor, Queen’s Farm from West Chester County.

The farm sells a lot of Asian inspired greens and vegetables, with a few exotic mushrooms on the side of the table.  One such mushroom was a pink oyster mushroom with a little handprinted sign that read “tastes like bacon.”  I don’t often buy exotic mushrooms because I have trouble figuring out the best way to cook them but when they are advertised as “tastes like bacon” how could I resist?  I didn’t.

I trimmed the green beans and boiled them for four minutes so they were a little bit short of being done.  Then drained and rinsed them with cold water to stop the cooking process and put them aside.  With the mushrooms, I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter in a skillet and then added the mushrooms and cooked them until they started to carmelize – about 90 seconds.  Flipped and then removed them, blotting up the excess butter with paper towels.  By the time I finished, much of the butter was gone but the pint of mushrooms was nicely browned and sitting on a paper towel next to me.

Right before serving, I added the mushrooms and green beans to the remaining butter and sautéed until the beans were hot again, then removed them to a serving platter.  The mushrooms, did, in fact, remind us of bacon while doing a perfect job of elevating already magnificent string beans to a whole other level.

An All-American dinner, with all ingredients coming from within an hour of our dinner table, simply prepared. Sometimes, you just have to come home.

(*) Hoagie is Philly-speak for what is known in other locations as submarine sandwich, grinder, po’ boy, hero, wedge, zeppelin, banh mi, or some other phrase I haven’t yet encountered.  In other words, a long piece of bread halved and stuff with stuff.  If you know of other names, please send them along.