This recipe calls for some alcohol so first pour yourself a drink.
You need some nice thick veal chops on the bone for this dish. The chops I got from a great local Italian market De Luca’s http://www.deluca.ca were amazing. These chops were over an inch thick.
I actually did a couple different dishes with these, 2 chops per dish but generally use 4 chops or more if they are a bit smaller.
In a large frying pan heat about 1 tablespoon of butter and about 2 or 3 tablespoons of good olive oil.
Fry the chops on medium-high about 5 minutes each side to get a nice brown crisp. Remove and place them on a plate and cover to keep warm; do not remove the oils from the pan.
Chop an onion and a couple cloves of garlic.
Slice about 1 – 2 cups of mushrooms. Use white or brown or wild or a mixture.
Fry the onions and garlic in the same pan as the chops were browned. Cook a few minutes on medium, add the mushrooms, lower heat a bit and continue cooking. The mushrooms will soften, release a lot of water so continue cooking about 5-10 minutes.
Pour in about ¼ to 1/3 cup of white wine or cognac or, in this case, bourbon. I used a little Jim Beam and it worked great.
Cook a little longer to reduce this then add a couple cups of stock – chicken or beef is good.
I make my own concentrated stock and had some veal stock on hand so I used that and added water.
Add about ½ to ¾ cup of cream. If you use half and half or milk it will obviously not be as rich and to thicken it you need to simmer longer if you do not add a thickening agent like flour (I prefer to let it simmer longer and reduce to thicken as it concentrates the flavors).
Place the chops in the pan, bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer, cover with a slight opening on one side of the pan, and cook for about 45 minutes as the sauce thickens and the meat cooks to a degree of tenderness you can separate with a fork.
After about 30 minutes taste the sauce and season with some salt and pepper. The amount of salt you use depends on the stock you added so taste it first. I use coarse sea salt of various kinds which works nice (pink, black, white salts) and fresh ground pepper. I also had some dried thyme from my garden and added a little to the sauce whilst cooking.
Rosemary is a great herb with veal and I use it on other dishes but this particular one I used thyme.
I served this dish with some whipped potatoes (potatoes from my garden) and beans, also from my garden.
Bon Appetit!