FNCCC – Mario Batali – Pork Chop Milanese, Broccoli sautéed with Wine and Garlic, and Potato Torta

Since I haven’t done the FNCCC in a long time, I decided to go all out this time and do three dishes by Mario.  He is one of my favorite Food Network chefs simply because I love his attitude.  He seems like such a fun loving guy who takes every day and makes the most of it.  Besides, how can you not love a bearded, ponytailed guy wearing orange crocs and shorts??

To get the meal started, I peeled some waxy red potatoes and sliced them about ¼ of an inch thick.  I had Wil from Rez the Weak in the kitchen playing sous chef, so while I did that, I had him manning the food processor to make fresh bread crumbs from some French baguettes, then I asked him to grind up the Pecorino Romano cheese.  Once the potatoes were peeled and sliced, I put a layer of them in the bottom of a square baking dish.  Then I mixed bread crumbs with chopped Italian parsley, Pecorino Romano cheese and some olive oil.  I put a layer of that mixture over the potatoes and continued layering until I was out of potatoes, ending with the bread crumb mixture.  I slid it into the oven and forgot about it for an hour or so.  (Here’s Mario’s full recipe)

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had Pecorino Romano cheese, but if you imagine the smell of parmesan cheese and add the element of dirty wool gym sock, you’ve got the smell of Romano cheese.  I didn’t hold out any hope for the potatoes at this point.   Oh well, moving on to the pork.

Now I’ve made pork Milanese before.  It’s a simple technique that always pleases my family.  I haven’t done it in Mario’s way though.  Instead of dried bread crumbs, Mario uses fresh.  Also, he doesn’t dredge the pork in flour before dipping it in the egg wash.  I was skeptical, but I went with it.  To my surprise, the egg stuck to the pork just fine, and the fresh bread crumbs gave the pork chops a lightness that mine never have.  I’ll definitely be using that method again.   I’ve also never really served the chops with lemon to squeeze over them, but I did this time, and I loved it.  My 11-year old picky eater also loved the lemon squeezed over.  Definitely keeping that one too!  The recipe I used called for an arugula salad with teardrop tomatoes, but I left that out this time because I was doing broccoli instead.

As for the broccoli sauteed in wine and garlic, there are several things I will do differently next time.  Firstly, I had way too much broccoli.  I’ll be cutting the amount in half.  Secondly, I’ll cut it into florets rather than spears.  That’s what everyone prefers anyway.  In fact, I’ll probably just buy the florets rather than the whole stalks of broccoli.  The price difference probably is a wash when you consider the stalk just gets tossed out anyway.  Finally, I’ll likely leave out the wine altogether.  No one was really crazy about the flavor the wine gave the broccoli.  The garlic was fabulous, and the chili flake added a nice bite of “OOoOOoo what’s that?”, but the wine just had an almost kerosene type flavor.  Maybe it was the wine I bought, but I don’t honestly know.  I’d just prefer to leave it out altogether and maybe use some lemon juice as the acid instead of the wine.

I pulled the potatoes out of the oven when they were done, and I was pleasantly surprised.  The cheese wasn’t overly stinky-feety.  I was amazed when everyone asked for a 2^nd portion.  Even my extremely picky brother had seconds of it.  Of course he did say, “It’s amazing what you’ll eat when you’re hungry.”  I won’t hold that against him though… at least not for very long.

In all the meal was a success.  We didn’t end up ordering out.  I wish that I had made more of the pork chops, because leftovers would have been amazing.   Oh well, it’s a good excuse to make them again soon!

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