The best pork chops with fresh bay salt, crackling & squashed purple potatoes
I have to be honest – once you've eaten pork in Italy you have to really look around for anything as fine over here. You see, we've become attracted to breeds of pigs that grow very fast to be butchered and sold on ASAP, whereas our old farming methods used breeds that are now considered rare. They take longer to grow to maturity, which gives the meat a fantastic depth of flavour and plenty of snowy white, waxy fat that just melts in the pan. Once you've tried that, everything else comes second best.
Estimated Nutrition (whole recipe, rough)
Counts 10 of 12 ingredients — the other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and contribute nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume — 10 portions →
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Pork | 100g cooked | 242 |
| Potato | 1 medium (173g) baked | 161 |
| Olive Oil | 1 tbsp (14g) | 119 |
| Butter | 1 tbsp (14g) | 102 |
| Fennel | 1/2 bulb (87g) | 27 |
| Black Pepper | 1 tsp ground (2.3g) | 6 |
| Thyme | 1 tsp dried (1.4g) | 4 |
| Mustard | 1 tsp (5g) yellow | 3 |
| Bay Leaf | 1 leaf (0.6g) | 2 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
| Seed | not in our table | 0 |
| Cider | not in our table | 0 |
Totals for the whole recipe, adding one typical portion per ingredient — listed above. Quantities in the recipe are not counted, so this is a rough guide only — not suitable for medical or dietary planning.
Ingredients
- 1 kg purple or Desirée potatoes, peeled and halved
- sea salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- 4 higher-welfare pork chops, skin removed but kept
- extra virgin olive oil
- 1 small handful fresh thyme, leaves picked
- 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 10 bay leaves
- 285 ml cider
- 1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
- 4 tablespoons low fat crème fraîche
- 1 knob butter