Meal No. 574: Stuffed Pork Rib Chops

The one thing I can claim to consistently miss about my time on faculty at Wake Forest University is the chance to work with and get to know students on their journey into teaching. My life is much richer today because of many awesome young people I had the pleasure to teach in those classes or coach during their student teaching internships, both in the undergraduate and graduate ranks at WFU.

Of course, kids grow up and move on, and since I took my own professional work in a different direction, it just gets harder and harder to maintain contact with a lot of them. It's always a delight when former students pass through Winston-Salem and make a point of stopping in and catching up. Occasionally I'll capture those moments with blog posts here and there.

It's also nice that a few of my WFU crew are still in the area, and it's even better when they are part of the Roediger House family. One of those regulars, of course, is Bradley Phillis, who's been teaching at the local Simon G. Atkins High School since 2007. He brought his delightful fiancée Lauren to dinner this evening, and I tried to do it up special. Lauren is joining the faculty at Mount Tabor High School here in town (the place where I did my own student teaching back in 1990, in fact!). That means she'll be a colleague of another former student of mine, Laymarr Marshall.

I've been burning up the recipes in one particular issue of Cuisine at Home lately: the May/June 2012 issue was full of excellent ideas and meals and sides. Tonight I followed their recommendation for Stuffed Pork Rib Chops with jalapeño-plum-pecan relish, with slight variations here and there. For instance, I used a food chopper to make the relish more relish-y:

These very thick chops were stuffed with aged Gruyère cheese, wrapped in wonderfully thin-sliced prosciutto. As I'm writing this, I am now remembering I then forgot to salt and pepper the chops before tossing them onto the grill. Shucks.

Tonight's sides included parmesan risotto and garlicky green beans, as well as that very interesting and very tasty relish:

We did start off the evening with an appetizer, just so I could give them prosciutto overload. This idea came from former 7th grade student Brendan Shanley, whom I taught in Raleigh in the mid-90s and who now lives in New Zealand, of all places. It's softened goat cheese, currants, pine nuts, and arugula, all wrapped up in prosciutto. Delicious.

We also had salads with that amazing homemade blue cheese dressing that I've been making lately.

I even got dessert made sufficiently in advance for it to chill and set up. This is CreamyTriple Lemon Pie, although the gathered crew agreed it did not need the third burst of lemon, so I left off the lemon-enhanced fresh whipped cream.

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"Stuffed Pork Rib Chops with Plum-Pecan Relish," from Cuisine at Home, Issue 93 (May/June 2012), p. 26-27.

"Garlicky Green Beans," from Cuisine at Home, Issue 93 (May/June 2012), p. 34.

Parmesan Risotto, based loosely on Emeril Lagasse's directions found in "Shrimp and Asparagus Risotto Casserole."

"Rich and Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing," from Cook's Illustrated. Published May 1, 1999.

"Creamy Triple Lemon Pie," from Cuisine at Home, Issue 86 (April 2011), p. 36-37.