ntiis' Pork Chops alla Fiorentina | Giada’s Italian Weeknight Dinners | Food Network

Hi guys, I'm Giada De Laurentiis, and today we are making pork chops a la Fiorentina. One of those dishes that is sort of all-in-one. You got your greens and you got your meat, which I think is really great. I have these beautiful bone-in pork chops right here, about 12 ounces, and I'm just seasoning them with a little bit of salt, and we're going to get them cooking. The important part about seasoning meat before you start cooking it is that you season it really well all over. So we're just going to make sure we get a nice salty crust on these pork chops. You could use a steak, and in fact in northern Italy, in the Tuscany region, it's usually a steak a la Fiorentina. A nice big bone-in ribeye is usually what they use, but today we're going to use some pork. Lighten it up just a little bit. All right, let's go put these in the pan and start getting them cooking. So we've got a nice hot pan here, and we're going to add our pork chops to the pan. You want a nice sizzle, just like that. We're going to cook them a couple of minutes until they're cooked through, just like that. All right, while these babies cook, let's get everything else ready. Fiorentina usually always means that there's some spinach in it. That's usually how it works, and it's a creamy sauce. We're going to use mascarpone today to create a creamy sauce. So what we want to do is just chop two shallots. When it comes to shallots, I'm not even going to chop them. I'm just going to slice them up, and they're just going to kind of melt into the sauce. They're a little bit sweeter and more delicate than regular onions, which is why I like using them. And ever since I went to cooking school in France, where they use a ton of shallots, I've been using them. And then it kind of got reinforced when I had Jade, and she wasn't a big fan of that onion flavor, but somehow shallots, because they're sweeter and more delicate, she was okay with it. So I ended up sticking to shallots. But if you can't find shallots, any onion will work. We're going to smash and peel two garlic cloves along with that. So basically, you prep all of the ingredients for the sauce while your pork chops are cooking, and I think that's what I love so much. I'm not a big lover of chopping garlic, because I find that it becomes too potent. So I just want an essence of garlic in my sauce. I don't want it to be super, super garlicky. So if you love it super garlicky, chop it, mince it up. But if you like sort of just the essence of garlic, just a light garlic flavor, you just smash, peel it, and I just cut it in half. And that's it. So let's take a look at our pork chops. They're getting there. So a la fiorentina means a la Florence. So they say the first time the steak came with the spinach and the cream sauce was in Florence. So that's why it's called a la fiorentina. Just like villanese comes from Milan. All right, I think we can flip these suckers. Chop our lemon. We're going to use the juice of half a lemon. We're going to use a little bit of bascatone cheese, and I have some baby spinach here. Instead of spinach, you could always use arugula if you wanted to, or Swiss chard, kale, that would work too, baby kale or regular kale. There we go. And instead of lemon, you could always substitute with some white wine vinegar or any kind of vinegar because we're just looking for the acid to create a nice balance in the cream sauce. So the pork chops take about five minutes on each side to cook, or you can stick a meat thermometer in it and they need to be at about 145 degrees. I like to cook the edges of the pork chop too. It makes it look prettier, and also we want to render out some of the fat on the sides, more flavor to the sauce. Okay, pork chops are done. Put them on this lovely plate. And we are going to finish off the sauce. I'm going to lower the heat to medium low, and we're going to add the shallot, a little bit of salt. There we go. And because this is a northern Italian dish, we're going to add a little bit of butter for the sauce. You can add straight olive oil if you want to, but traditionally we add a little bit of butter, especially in a cream sauce. It's a really nice sort of velvety texture that it gives the sauce. We just want the shallot and the garlic to sort of slowly soften. Next, time to add some spinach. So I have some baby spinach, about five ounces. I've already chopped it up. There we go. Again, I'm going to add a little bit more salt, and it'll start to wilt down. We wilt it down for a minute, and we're going to start to add the mascarpone. We're also going to add a little lemon juice and a little bit of water to kind of thin out the sauce a bit. You can see how quickly the spinach sort of cooks down. All right, half a cup of mascarpone. Start creating that traditional creamy sauce. There we go. We're going to add the juice of half of a lemon, a little bit of tang. We're also going to add a couple tablespoons of water, just to help create that creaminess. And you just want to melt down the mascarpone, just like that. Let's taste it and make sure that the seasoning is just right. So good. So good. The lemon juice in there is really fantastic. All right, sauce is done. Pork chops. Put the sauce right over the pork chops. There's also the juices from the pork as well. Creamy heaven. It's so good. It's such a great mix. And the great thing about this sauce is that creamy, rich sauce really keeps the pork nice and moist, because you don't want dry pork. So it's the perfect sauce to make on a weeknight. It's the perfect dish to have. Honestly, probably one of my favorites, and also quite beautiful to look at.