Southern Cooking-Smoked Pork Chops with Sauce Beautiful

Another cooking blog roundup-this time Southern. Check out all the entries at My husband cooks at myhusbandcooks.wordpress.com.

This is the number one selling dish at the restaurant, and it has an interesting story. The original recipe came from a cookbook entitled "Princess Pamela's Little Kitchen"-It is a collection of recipes from a famous soul food restaurant in Harlem-published in the 1960's. I don't have a copy of this book, but my friend Richard Perry does. He has served this dish for many years at "The Jefferson Avenue Boardinghouse", "Richard Perry Restaurant", and probably at "Orchid's" in Cincinatti, when he ran that restaurant.

Soul food restaurants sprang up in Black communities after the Southern diaspora when many of the rural South (Blacks and Whites) moved North for work in the factories. Beautiful was the name of Princess Pamela's mother and the sauce is named for her. It is a homey dish that never fails to please. I love to serve it at a big Southern breakfast with creamy grits to sop up the sweet glaze.

12 smoked pork chops
2 cups of peach preserves
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Combine all of the ingredients except the pork chops and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the sauce until slightly thickened.

Briefly grill or saute the chops to brown them, add to the sauce and heat through. This dish holds nicely in a chafing dish .