Recipe: Pork chops with mustard cream sauce

September can be an awkward time of the year, at least as far as seasonal cooking is concerned. Tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and eggplant? Maybe you’ve grown a little tired of them. (At least the zucchini part.) Salads and crunchy vegetables? The (slightly) cooler nights don’t make them quite as necessary. Yet it’s not quite time to turn to soups, stews, braises and pumpkin everything.

Transitional cooking is all about your mood. I often seesaw between super summery fare and more comforting dishes this time of year. But just because I may be cooking comfort food doesn’t mean it has to exclude vegetables or take the entire evening to cook.

Take these mustardy pork chops, for example. The recipe is made using boneless loin chops which, besides being a great source of lean protein, are quick cooking and a blank canvas for just about anything. I like to serve them bathed in an easy cream sauce bolstered with whole grain mustard and a splash of apple cider vinegar. It sounds and looks fancy, but if you can bring liquid to a simmer in a pan, you can pull this one off.

First, sear the chops on both sides until they’re just cooked through. In their rendered fat, cook a shallot (or half a red or yellow onion, if that’s what you’ve got) until it’s tender. Add a bit of cider vinegar and let it do most of the hard work of simmering off any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Congratulations, you’ve just delgazed your pan. Stir in heavy cream and mustard, let it all come to a simmer, and cook until it turns thick enough to call it a sauce. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.

Add the pork chops back to the pan and turn them to coat in the sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste and a sprinkle of fresh thyme for color, if you’d like. All that’s left is to serve the chops with the best bread you can find to mop up all of that sauce, and perhaps a green vegetable — or salad — on the side.