Pretty simple dish. Here's what you need:
--Pork chops.
--A cast iron skillet, probably a 10" one.
No seriously, you're going to need to brine them first, but in the end, it's the chop that makes the difference. So buy some good ones. I got two from our butcher on Massachusetts Avenue, and threw them into a brine this afternoon. You can spend lots of time making a brine--boiling it, adding lots of herbs and spices--or you can just use water and salt. I compromise and use water, salt, some brown sugar, and sometimes apple cider.
Drop the chops into a bowl and cover them with the brine. Refrigerate, covered, for half a day at least.
When it's time to cook, preheat the oven to about 400.
When you're ready, pull the chops out of the brine, dry them well, add salt and pepper.
These are the chops, fresh out of the brine, dried, salted and peppered, ready to go into the pan.
Heat the skillet over medium high heat. Once it's ready, add the chops and brown both sides for about three minutes each. Then stick the skillet in the oven.
Now you can start on the brussels sprouts and potatoes.
Add a few small red or yellow potatoes to a pot of water and boil until the potatoes are soft enough to pierce with a fork. Drain, salt and pepper, add a little butter to the pan and coat the potatoes well. Some chopped parsley if you have it is a nice addition. Re-cover and let sit.
While the potatoes are cooking, cut off the hard stem remnant off of the sprouts, then slice them in halves. Clean and slice lengthwise half a leek, then slice into 1/4 inch slices. Add some olive oil to a heated skillet, then add the sprouts and the leeks. Stir in salt, pepper and a pinch or two of thyme, then heat through, allowing the sprouts to brown just a bit and the leeks to soften, about 6 or 8 minutes. Pour about two ounces of water into the pan and cover, allowing the vegetables to steam for a few minutes. Turn off the heat and leave covered.
Leeks and sprouts a few minutes before I added the water to steam them.
All this should take about twenty minutes. By then, it's time to check the temperature of the chops. Pork should be cooked to 160 degrees F according to every cookbook in the world, so I won't tell you to pull them out earlier. But I pull mine out at about 140 and they are perfect.
Ready to go.
Let them rest under foil for about five minutes--which likely brings them up to a safe temperature--and serve. I set them up with an Oregon Pinot Noir that worked quite well.
