Pork chops with pepperonata

Do you ever get tired of...cooking? It doesn't happen to me very often, but right now I'm in a little bit of a slump. To break out of my rut, I've decided to ditch my cookbooks and grocery lists for a few weeks and just buy whatever appeals to me. On Saturday, I started at the farmer's market for produce, moved on to my local grocery store for meat, and ended at Trader Joe's for staples. Yes, I do shop at multiple grocery stores every week!

I saw these heirloom italian sweet peppers at the farmer's market and bought an assortment of shapes and colors.

I feel lucky that my local grocery store has a great meat counter. It was an easy decision to go with some nice bone-in pork chops. I already had some winter squash in the pantry that needed to be used up, so that became my side dish.

I brined the pork chops for 24 hours before I cooked them. If you've never brined pork chops before, I encourage you to give it a try. It's a little more work, but makes a huge difference with the taste and texture of the meat.

For the pepperonata, I sliced up all the peppers I bought with a few cipollini onions. I sauteed the peppers and onions in olive oil with some salt, black pepper and a healthy pinch of french espelette pepper. I cooked the mixture at medium heat for about 30 minutes. I added a handful of chopped parsley for color.

After the pork chops came out of the brine, I dried them off and sauteed them in a little olive oil until they were cooked through to about medium-well. I topped the pork chops with a generous dollop of pepperonata and served them on a bed of mashed kabocha squash. To make the kabocha squash, I simply microwaved both halves of the squash until tender, scooped out the insides, and mashed it with butter, salt and pepper. This was a great meal - delicious, easy and healthy. It was nice to just do my own thing without having to refer back to instructions in a cookbook. Stay tuned to see what other impromptu meals I come up with!