Apple Butter Chops

This turned out to be the most surprising flavor combination of any recipe yet. You sort of know what to expect with chicken and beef, but molasses, mustard and apples on pork turned out to be better than expected. This is Bobby’s Molasses-Mustard Glazed Pork Chops with Apple Butter (page 166 of Grill It!). I started with the Apple Butter by mixing some onion, garlic and two peeled and chopped Granny Smith apples in a pan over the grill. I added brown sugar and cinnamon as it all simmered. When the apples were soft I took it off the fire and let it cool. In about 15 minutes I dumped the mixture into the processor with a stick of butter and let it whirl into a paste. The pork chops had the molasses and mustard glaze. Later when the pork chops came of the grill I topped the chops with the Apple Butter.

I really don’t like mustard that much as a stand alone, but blended with all these flavors, as I said it was the biggest surprise of any recipe so far.



What to drink? We pulled out the first of our Wine-of-the-Month Club selections. It was the Punti Ferrer Monte Blanco Cabernet from the central valley of Chili. We saw a difference in color the moment it was poured into the glass – it was more red-ruby than dark plum. The taste was big with fruit, but dry fruit, not sweet. There was a lot of tangy flavors in this meal, so this wine was a great balance. We have enjoyed wine from Chili for a long time. If you look a globe you will see that central Chili is the same distance south of the equator as California is north of the equator. In other words, they experience the same angles to the Sun and therefore will have very similar climates. Around the globe about 30 to 50 degrees either North or South Latitude is wine growing country. France, Italy, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Spain and Tennessee are all in that zone. Tennessee has a wine region? Yes, but more on that later.


What was on? Flag. That’s right, the album by James Taylor that has only a semaphore flag as the cover. This is music from the distant past but for me it also has a story. When I was in college I let my sister, Suzanne, borrow my Flag album. This was an actual LP phonograph record, not a cassette or anything that came after. It took months to get it back from her, in fact I had to drive a good distance during a school break to pick it up. She was staying with family friends who lived on a farm at the far end of a long steep valley. I arrived to confiscate the Flag album just about the time it started to rain. Tom, the farm owner, said, “you should probably get going, because the road floods during these rains and you might get caught.” I didn’t leave immediately because another conversation began. I was holding the Flag album, when Tom took it from my hand and started looking it over. I inquired, “Are you familiar with Flag? It’s a great album.” He said, “No, I just have never seen an album that was worth more than your car.” Well its 2010 and it all seems ironic now. The car was a 1974 Chevy Vega that has been in the junkyard for at least 25 years. The Flag album is still in my collection and still just as good as ever. In the end, Flag did turn out to be more valuable than my car.

More grilling and less car stories to come.
Paul