Pork Served Grandma's Style

Looking through a box of recipes that my grandmother saved from local newspapers, I found a directive for dinner from Emily (Smolik) Buckert, who wrote the longtime Good Taste column in the Victoria Advocate beginning in the 1960s... "Now is a good time to return to the old fashioned goodness of pork chops and some of the dishes that grandmother served," she wrote before offering a recipe for Pork Steaks with Kraut. I absolutely agree, I thought. Now is the time.

I made a date to spend last Saturday morning with my friend Lori at the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market and then Central Market looking for ingredients. Lori and I do what I imagine my grandmother did with her neighbors... share surplus produce or dishes we made too much of. Or we test new recipes on each other to get a second opinion. We're thinking about hosting a dinner party together soon, so have been talking a lot about food lately, especially food in the Texas Czech community and what our grandmothers and mothers served. 

Most often I think about my grandmother (Anita Kallus) as my family link to traditional Texas Czech food. She made things like chicken noodle soup, cream cheese rolls, soup with kapanky (egg drop soup), and creamed spinach. And mostly I ate at her house for holidays like Easter or Christmas when traditional foods were more likely to have staying power on the menu. But her collection of newspaper clippings reminded me that she had to put dinner on the table for a husband and up to 8 children every day for decades. In fact, the recipes from Emily Buckert's column that my grandmother collected indeed span from the mid 1960s to the late 80s.

And Anita lived her married life "in town" (Hallettsville), not on a farm, so was influenced by newspaper columns, local restaurants, talking with friends at her children's school and at church. I found recipes for Cabbage Cacciotore, Skillet Spaghetti, Italian Eggplant Casserole, and something called Mexican Meal in her collection among hundreds more. She obviously was continuously looking for new and interesting ways to combine the ingredients available in Hallettsville. The number of cookbooks she owned was very small, maybe 10 books, but she collected a huge number of recipes clipped from newspapers, magazines, the backs of product containers, and handwritten recipes from friends and relatives.

Back home on Saturday evening, my son and I made Emily Buckert's pork recipe. At the farmers market I found huge, beautiful pork chops (instead of the pork steaks the recipe called for) from Richardson Farms. I cut the recipe in half since it's just two of us. Of course, pork and sauerkraut is a standard of Czech cooking and even considered the "national dish" (served with dumplings.) I imagine this recipe as a derivation, created by some Texas Czech housewife being creative with what she had... a little bit of rice in the pantry that wasn't enough for a whole meal, maybe the juice from a jar of tomatoes she'd put up.

Pork Steaks with Kraut

4 pork steaks, 1/2 inch thick
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon fat
1 can (16 oz.) sauerkraut
2 tablespoons rice, uncooked
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
1/2 cup tomato juice
1/2 cup water

Pork chop in the skillet with all ingredients before popping on a lid and simmering for an hour.

Brown pork steaks on each side. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Drain sauerkraut. Spread kraut over pork steaks. Sprinkle with rice, seasonings and pour tomato juice and water over all. Cover and cook slowly 45 minutes to 1 hour. Serves 4.

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The final dish was so delicious... tender and rich. We ate it with a cold, crisp cucumber salad, but the sauerkraut was the surprising winner of the meal. After simmering in pork juice for an hour with spices, it was savory and the little bit of sugar made it just the right combination of sweet-sour. I don't know if my grandmother ever made this recipe, but I love that something from her collection ended up on my son's dinner table.