This Little Piggy Went to Market and Got Apples

If you didn’t know, apples and pork create a very good relationship. Not only do they complement each other in taste, the act of pairing them together has been around for centuries. To illustrate, “For example, to cook apples with fatty meats, so that their sharpness offsets the fat, is a practice which dates back at least as far as classical times when Apicius gave a recipe for a dish of diced pork with apples...the versatility of apples was already being exploited in medieval times; the Forme of Cury and the Menagier de Paris (14th century cook books) give a range of recipes for apple sauce, fritters, rissoles, and drinks."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 30-31)

So with this said, I love pork and apples, so I have a yummy recipe, that I make, and I serve it with mashed sweet potatoes and green beans. My recipe can serve 4.

Ingredients for Pork n’ Apples:

4 bone in pork chops (thick if you like it)
1 large apple
½ onion
3 cloves garlic
½ tsp. dried thyme
1 chicken stock cube (made with 2 cups of water or however the instructions say)
2-3 tbsp. flour
Half of a lemon
Salt/pepper

Mash Sweet Potato:

3-4 large sweet potatoes (enough that will feed your family)
1 tbsp. orange marmalade
2 tbsp. non-fat yogurt, or half fat crème friache, sour cream etc..
Garlic powder
Salt/pepper

To start:
Peel and dice the potatoes and get them boiling until soft.
Slice the onion and the apple, and chop garlic, set aside.
Make the stock

Next:
Heat a pan with a little oil, salt and pepper your chops and let them sear in the pan, get a good colour but we’re not trying to complete the cooking here just the colour. When the sear is complete put them on a plate and cover with foil, you could put them in a warm oven while you’re making the sauce.

Next:
Add a tiny bit of oil in the same pan that the chops were in and get it hot, add the onion and apple, cook until soft.
Add the thyme and give another few stirs.
Sprinkle with flour and stir until all the flour is dissolved into the onions and apples. 2-3mins.
Squeeze the lemon on the mixture and add about half the stock. Stir thoroughly.
As it thickens add a little more stock but be careful not to make it too watery.
Return the chops back to the pan, plus the juices, stir and cover for another 5 minutes and turn off heat and it should cook in broth.

To finish:
Mash the potatoes
Add the marmalade, yogurt, seasonings and mash. Enjoy!