Cider Braised Pork Loin Chop

Last Saturday I took the bus into town so that I could buy the liver and onions for that evening's meal.  I was so surprised at how cheap my bill came to in the butchers* that I panicked and also bought a couple of pork loin chops.  I was so flummoxed by the low price of my offal that I asked for chops without specifying pork or lamb.  I left feeling rather sheepish.

The pork loin chops went into the freezer as I didn't know when they would be cooked, but I needn't have been so hasty.  Meal planning on Sunday afternoon saw them being needed straight away.  I usually grill pork chops** but I wanted to try something a little different in the name of Everything But The Oink.

During the Olympic Food Challenge I braised a lot of food and it always made a delicious meal***.  I thought that braising the chops would be a nice way of cooking them and provide a delicious gravy to boot.  I'm going to try and avoid the cliché of apples and cider with as many pieces of pork as possible, but braising chops in cider with apples had to be done.

I based the braise on one of Nigel Slater's simple suppers, omitting the juniper, sage and whole apples.  As I expected, the chops were perfectly cooked and the gravy was superb.  The loin provides a lot of the pork that we eat, from chops to back bacon.  Along with cooking the other parts of the pig I'm going to try to add more variety in how I cook my pork.

*under £1 for two slices of pig liver and three rashers of smoked back bacon.
**we do eat a lot of pork chops.  This is probably why I want to eat more pig this year, to try to redress the balance. 
***give or take the pigs trotters braised in sauerkraut.