Pork Chops and Asparagus or Experiments in Cooking

Sunday 21 March
The only way to cook asparagus, anymore, is to roast them at 500º with a little olive oil (no salt till the end, because it seems to leech out too much water). So much more flavor than boiled, and Augustus notwithstanding, faster too. It seemed logical that one (ok, not one, me, Holt), could do two thickish pork chops in the same pyrex dish. Didn't really work out that way. 1) The PCs had been frozen, so still a tad too cold in the middle. 2) Even in a searingly hot baking dish, the PCs didn't brown. 3) Even after 15-2o minutes, when the asparagus was done, the PCs weren’t. To confess all, they still looked a dispiriting shade of ecru. So to our (my) eternal shame, time to dirty another pan. Took the PCs out and pan fried them to give color and a bit of crust. Arranged the 'geese nicely on the plates; put the pig back in the hot, hot oven; set the plates on the back burner, where all the heat from the stove leaks out into the kitchen. Made another experiment. The reduced orange juice and oil sauce is so good, we tried it with just a lemon's worth of juice. Nice but didn't ever really emulsify. And not lemony enough. Barbara had the great idea of tossing in the caper, and this (for some reason) really enhanced the lemon. So a nice meal, even though nothing went quite right in the kitchen.