As I mentioned in my post this morning on grapes and how expensive they were, my roommate has a ton of cherries she wants used up. I also picked up some pork cutlets yesterday on a whim, because they were on sale for really cheap. Finally, I have some zucchini and yellow squash that’s going bad in the fridge. The solution? Plugged “cherries pork zucchini” into the search engine at Food Network, and found this recipe. I love that search engine.
It looks pretty nice, doesn’t it?
Pork recipe notes:
I grilled the pork on the Foreman to avoid using oil, and didn’t bake it at all – because I used a cutlet instead of a chop, it was very thin and grilled up VERY quickly. I put it on the plate with a bowl over it to hold the heat in. As for the sauce, I used raw cherries, but no sugar as suggested with raw cherries (I figured it would be sweet enough on its own, and I was right). I also used Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum instead of brandy. The rest was pretty much the same.
Zucchini recipe notes:
As I said, I had zucchini and yellow squash to use up, so I used them both. Instead of sauteeing them in olive oil, I used chicken broth and just kept adding more water until they were cooked through. I didn’t toast the walnuts; just tossed them on top at the end.
Nutrition facts:
328 calories for the pork chops, sauce, and zucchini (recipe here)
Review: 3/5
I wasn’t a huge fan of the whole thing, but it definitely wasn’t bad; just not quite to my taste. It’s extremely healthy though! It really makes a complete dinner for a little over 300 calories. I would just add a starch (mashed potatoes or brown rice perhaps?) to make it a little more complete and filling – the sauce would have gone well on either of those. You could really use any meat with this sauce, too; I think lamb would go really well because of the mintyness. I might make this again, depending on the ingredients that I have in the fridge, but probably wouldn’t rush out to buy stuff specifically for this. It’s definitely different though, so if you or your family like mint and/or cherries, it’s definitely worth a try.