Milk-Brased Spiced Pork Chops

A few posts ago, I spoke about a blog I had been introduced to called The Recipe Development Engineer. The author of the blog, Ludwig, wrote a great piece about braising meat. Long story short, braising makes pretty much any piece of meat moist and delicious (read the full article here). Last night, I came up with a braising recipe of my own. There's an Italian way of preparing a pork roast wherein it is slowly braised in milk; I played with it a bit in order to give it some zing.

Please, don't try eating the bay leaf.

Collaboration with The Recipe Development Engineer

I want to start out by giving a big thank you to two people: A number of weeks ago, my friend Alex introduced me to Ludwig, who runs a fantastic food blog called The Recipe Development Engineer. Ludwig has a great approach to cooking, using constant incremental improvements in order to create truly phenomenal dishes. Like any good engineer, he optimizes! He has a lot more experience with cooking than I do, and it shows in recipes like his Chicken à la Provençal.

We decided that it would be great idea to collaborate and draw some inspiration from each others. He recently wrote a great piece on the science behind braising that I would heartily recommend checking out. A properly braised piece of meat can be most precisely and concisely described as succulent. I have never braised before; it's a technique that takes a long time, and I rarely decide what I'm cooking until about two hours before dinner time. That said, I'm inspired. I'll be braising some cut of meat or another within the week, and I'll post the results when I do. I'd also like to do my own quirky twists on some of Ludwig's recipes.

So thanks, Alex! Thanks, Ludwig! My apologies for not writing a post on this sooner; the past month or so has been hectic for me. I kept telling myself that I'd write this post when I modified one of Ludwig's recipes, but I've just been busier than I expected. I give my word that there will be good things to come.