One Pot Egyptian Summer Dinner

One pot cooking!!! Those might be the best words ever when you are the person on dish duty or the one who has to do clean-up as well as make dinner! This one pot meal gives you all the food groups. Pork chops, rice, mushrooms, beans, spinach and kale combine with bacon for an easy-to-make dinner that cooks while you are helping with homework or relaxing. Next day leftovers are great for lunch on the fly or even an encore dinner performance.

One of the things that I have really enjoyed since I started writing TravelFoodCool is the number of people who have reached out and told me how much they’ve enjoyed making the recipes, or how they followed the steps and how well their meal turned out. It’s great to hear! The other thing I really like is meeting different people who are just as passionate about travel, food or cocktails as I am.

When I was writing about things Canada for Canada150, one friend, Charlie, introduced me to his friends in Nova Scotia who have a fabulous food company called Big Cove Foods. Big Cove Foods, besides being Canadian, is a very cool little company that makes spices and shrubs. (You know how much I love my spices!) Their products help you make dinner or cocktails faster by giving you a head start. They were kind enough to send me a sample pack of their spice mix products and a two of their Shrubs to play around with (thank you!). After first making a cocktail with their Lime Chili Coriander Shrub, this time I made a variation of one of their recipes based on their Egyptian Summer Spice mix. (Did I mention that they have fab recipes on their site?)

Prep time:  15 minutes; Cook time: 20 minutes + 40 minutes; Serves: 4 – 6

What you need:

• 4 butterflied pork chops, boneless (mine totaled 1.2 kg , roughly 2.65 lbs – I split mine, so I had 8 halves)
• 4 slices bacon, chopped
• 10 oz mixed mushrooms (quartered for the white and cremini and chopped for the rest – you can use all white mushrooms if you want)
• 1 15 oz can white cannellini beans , drained (or 2 cups)
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 bunch kale, chopped (no stems)
• 1 bunch spinach, chopped
• 1 tbsp + 1 1/2 tbsp Big Cove Foods Egyptian Summer Spice blend (this is, in total, an entire sample pack)
• 1 1/4 cups parboiled rice (I used Uncle Bens)
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

What you do:

• Prehead oven to 350ºF
• Mix 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp Big Cove Foods Egyptian Summer Spice blend

• Pat your pork chops dry (I split each chop into two pieces)
• Toss them in the oil/Egyptian spice mix

• In a large (5L) Dutch oven, over medium high heat, add the seasoned pork chops, cook 3 minutes a side, cook in batches if necessary

• Remove and place to the side
• Turn heat down to medium
• Add the bacon to the Dutch oven, cook 3 minutes

• Add the onions and garlic, stir

• Cook another 3 minutes
• Add mushrooms, stir for 2 minutes

• Mix the chicken stock with 1 1/2 tbsp Big Cove Foods Egyptian Summer spice blend

• Add the rice to the Dutch oven with the bacon, onions and garlic

• Add the Egyptian Spice seasoned stock, stir, try to scrape up all the brown bits on the bottom

• Add the chopped kale

• Add the cannellini beans

• Add the pork chops on top

• Add any of the remaining juice (from the bowl that the pork was sitting in)
• Cover
• Place in oven for 30 minutes
• Remove from oven
• Add spinach on top

• Return to oven for 10 minutes
• Remove pork chops from Dutch oven, place on a plate

• Stir rice, mushrooms, kale spinach together

• Serve the pork chops on the bed of rice mixture

• Salt and pepper to taste
• Super yummy!!!

• Enjoy!

• (And enjoy the easy clean up!)

A big thank you to Big Cove Foods! I love your spice blends and shrubs. More recipes to come! Want to get some Big Cove Food Spice blends? They will ship! Exclusive for TravelFoodCool readers: until October 1, 2017, you can save 15% with discount code travelfoodcool15 at checkout on www.bigcovefoods.com!