Pork chops and fried egg brunch

Crucial Rule #1 when it comes to doing just about anything with a pork chop: make sure that you get the thickest possible cut of pork chop! Just about all of us pig-eaters have at some point encountered the jaw-straining treachery of the overcooked skinny pork chop, and it gives a bad name to this potentially delicious cut of meaty goodness. Crucial Rule #2---and this applies to most meats you'll want to cook---is that you should have a meat thermometer. If you get a nice, chunky pork chop and cook it to 145F, there's almost no way you can go wrong. I mean, seriously, a pork chop is gonna be delicious with no marinade, rub, or glaze at all. It's that good.

That said, here's a recipe for a brunchy pork chop presentation that does involve a (super quick and easy) rub/glaze, largely inspired by this recipe.

Ingredients [for 2 pork chops]
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 Tablespoons butter
2 thick-cut pork chops
3 Tablespoons bourbon*
2 eggs
2 teaspoons chives or scallions or garlic scapes

Procedure
Heat the butter on a (preferably cast-iron) skillet over medium heat. Mix brown sugar, paprika, salt, and pepper together. Rub the mixture onto the pork chops, making sure to get the whole surface. When the butter has melted completely, throw the pork chops on to the skillet. Lower heat to medium-low. Cook for about 5 minutes on the first side. Flip the pork chops, and then pour the bourbon. Cook for another 5 minutes. If your pork chop is really thick, the internal temperature is probably only around 100F by this point. If this is the case for you, finish the rest of the cooking in the oven: put the pork chops onto a foil-lined baking sheet, pour any glaze remaining in the pan on top, and bake at 400F until the internal temperature of the pork chops reaches the desired 145F. Transfer the pork chops to a warm plate when they're ready.

Meanwhile, fry up a couple of eggs (letting the whites cook through but leaving the yolks runny). Mince up the garlic scapes (or whatever green thing you're using). Put the eggs on top of the pork chops, and sprinkle the green stuff on top of the eggs. Serve with some delicious biscuits!

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* When I was making this recipe this morning, a disaster occurred, in which I grabbed what I thought was a little Christmas-stocking-stuffer-size bottle of bourbon, only to discover it was a Christmas-stocking-stuffer-size bottle of bourbon maple syrup. I was saved only by the fact that it is humanly impossible to screw up a pork chop and literally any delicious thing tastes good on it.

Mini Meat Pies

Following our Game of Thrones themed birthday party, we had an insane amount of leftovers. The small amount of lamb still leftover two weeks later was easily dispatched by our dogs (they liked it almost as much as when they got to devour blue cheese filet mignon last week -- yeah, these dogs are ridiculously spoiled). The only thing left was a bit of rabbit stew. Super delicious and made by my mom -- who will perhaps post a recipe here one day?!

So today I finally got off my butt and decided to use our leftovers for good! And hence rabbit muffins. Or... Stew scone? Bunny bread? Carcass cupcake? Yeesh, okay, I'll stick with mini meat pies.


Ingredients
Leftovers
Pie crust

Pie Crust
[For 12 mini pies.]
2 cups flour
2/3 cup shortening
1 tsp salt
~1/2 cup cold water

Procedure

Mix flour, salt, and shortening together using a pastry blender until you have a fairly homogenous crumbly mixture. Add in water, a little bit at a time, and stir with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a ball. Roll it out (depending on your work surface, you may want to roll out half of it at a time) pretty thin line the bottoms of a greased muffin tin. Spoon in your leftover filling (any thick stew would work, as would anything that's not too runny).

 Cover the filling with another layer of dough, crimp the edges with a fork, and glaze with a bit of egg wash. Bake at 425F for about 15-20 minutes, or until the pie is slightly golden on top.

When you're splitting up the dough into the muffin cups, neatness is not very important. Just rip out a portion roughly large enough to go into the cup and stick out a over the sides. Same for the top. All that matters is you can crimp the edges to seal in the meaty goodness.

* Dog approved!

(Taken with a pie held over the camera. Don't feel bad, he got to eat it after.)

Storage/Leftovers
These will not be great re-heated, so only make the amount you plan to eat. Remaining uncooked dough can be frozen.

How to Spit-Roast a Lamb Using Household Items

• Step 1. Buy a leg of lamb in the city. Put it in your backpack. Run to catch the bus while grotesque animal limb bounces up and down behind you because it's twice as tall as your backpack. Ignore curious looks. Ignore looks in the terminal. Ignore looks in the bus. Ignore looks at the bus stop at home. Bring leg home. Ignore dogs.

• Step 2. Dig a hole for a firepit in your yard. Move the grass off in one piece so you can replace it later and tell your landlords you have no idea why a perfectly rectangular section of their yard is dead. 

• Step 3. Build a fire pit after your town's fire warden tells you that it's too dry to safely light a bonfire, but if you're going to cook food on it, then it's okay. Lamb makes everything safer.

• Step 4. Stick a couple of sharpened dowels through the meat. Ignore dogs. 

• Step 5.  Start doubting yourself. Introduce structural supports. Use household items like twine and the base of a tiki torch. Bonus points if all your structural supports are flammable.

• Step 6. Cooking time! Bring the meat to the fire. Ignore dogs.

• Step 7.  Put the spit on vertical sticks (16" off the fire). Start turning the meat. And don't stop for 4 hours. You had nothing else planned for today, right?

• Step 8. Introduce increasingly desperate reinforcements (e.g. nails, a clamp, a metal broomstick, more twine).

• Step 9. Get cocky and decide to clear some dead brush while lamb cooks. Throw pine branches on the fire, getting the fire so hot that you set ablaze the twine with which you wrapped the lamb, and watch helplessly as the meat falls into the raging flames. Rescue the meat and admire the "fire-kissed crust." Pretend this was all part of the plan.

• Step 10. Bring the lamb to the table. Ignore dogs. FEAST!