Cote de porc à la charcutière

Tonight we had pork chops with a white wine-dijon sauce from the Les Halles Cookbook, which once again I borrowed from the library. It looked like a relatively simple recipe and it turned out to be delicious – though I had to make a couple of substitutions. I served it just with peas – the only veggie I had at home – and unfortunately one of the kids ate just peas, while the other one had only a couple of bites of plain pork. They don’t know what they are missing. The following is my version of the recipe (which doesn’t differ that much from the original). I used gherkins instead of cornichons as I couldn’t find the latter at the supermarket, and instead of a high quality concentrated chicken or veal stock, I used “better than bouillon” chicken base. I also omitted the single chopped sprig of parsley that the recipe asked for (to add with the cornichons) because I wasn’t going to buy a whole bunch of parsley to just use one sprig.
Cote de porc a la charcutiere
-1 tbsp oil
-1 tbsp unsalted butter
-4 rib chops of pork
-salt & pepper to taste
-1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
-1 tsp all purpose flour
-1/2 cup white wine
-1 cup chicken stock
-2 tsp Dijon mustard
-10 cornichons or 5 gherkins thinly sliced
Preheat oven to 375. Add a tablespoon of oil to a large, oven proof sauté pan and heat. Add the butter and melt. Add the pork and cook on high until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Turn and brown the other side. Remove the pan from the heat, and place it in the oven. Cook for about 8 minutes, until done.
Remove the chops from the pan, put in a platter and cover loosely with aluminum foil to keep warm. Make the sauce.
Return the pan to the heat and add the chopped onion. Sauté until golden. Add the flour and stir for one minute. Add the wine and deglace, scrapping all the brown bits at the bottom of the pan. Add the chicken stock, mix well and reduce the liquid by half.
Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the mustard. Add the gherkins and any juice remaining from the pork chops. Mix well and serve the sauce over the pork chops.