French cooking

Last week (or perhaps the week before -- I lose track of time) Joan made a chicken dish from a French cookbook that we found in the kitchen. This week I adapted it to pork and made a few changes. It would work with veal too or as a vegetarian dish served on something crusty like toast.

Lime is the key ingredient. I used 3/4 of a fairly large lime, cut the flesh from the peel, and then took about one third of the peel and sliced it thin to put in the pot too. I also cut up a medium onion, and cleaned 6 or 8 ordinary mushrooms. I also cut about 200 grams of pork into four pieces.

I started cooking the onions in butter. When they were translucent I added the pork and let it cook long enough to seal in the juices. Then I added the lime (including cut up peel) and the mushrooms. The original recipe called for adding some chicken stock, but the mushrooms and lime produce enough juice to skip this unless you like a very soupy sauce.

I let the meat cook in this mix long enough to pick up some flavor from the lime, then took it out to keep it from overcooking. When the mushrooms were ready I added a modest amount of cream and let that cook together just another minute or two before putting the sauce decoratively over the meat. I had intended to take out the lime peel but in fact it added attractive extra flavor and was as soft as a mushroom after cooking.

I also used some the remaining lime peel to in the cooking water for Brussels sprouts. We ate a baguette with the meal.