Saturday Lunch - Pork with Camembert

Along with trying new dishes or creating new variations on old standards is the maxim that I stay within a $20 budget for purchasing meats, spices, or any other ingredients that might be needed. Today's dish stretched that $20 mostly because I did not have the main ingredients in the house.

Pork with camembert is pretty easy to concoct. It consists of fried pork and a creamy cheese sauce. Start with a pound of pork - the recipe (from a cookbook entitled Around the World in 450 Recipes) calls for pork tenderloin cut into steaks about 1/2 inch thick; I used pork chops with the bone cut off. Same principle applies. Seasoned the pork with pepper, and fried the pork in butter until just cooked through.

Now to the cream sauce: Using the juices from the pork, I added 3 tbsp of a dry white wine - I picked up a cheap bottle of chardonnay. On a side note, I read somewhere that cheap wine for cooking will taste just that way - cheap. I'm not that much of a gourmand to tell the difference... Yet. Anyways, bring the wine to boil. Add 3/4 cup of sour cream, plus 1 tbsp of mixed herbs (marjoram, thyme, and sage - according to the recipe). I substituted 1 tbsp of herbes de provence (rosemary, marjoram, thyme, savory, and lavender). This packs most of the flavor in this dish. Bring to boil - I found that low heat kept a nice boil, but didn't burn the sauce.














Camembert cheese - I've never eaten it before. Got to take the rind off before slicing into the sauce. It's kind of expensive, too (Then again, I've been accustomed to generic cheddar or colby jack for most of my life, let alone Kraft processed "cheese"). 4 oz. of Camembert cheese - half the package - is melted in. Plus 1 1/2 tsps of Dijon mustard - stirred in. Voila! A creamy Camembert cheese sauce! Drizzle sauce on top of pork. Ooh lala! French cuisine!