There is no such dish as pork stroganoff, but I don’t see why it should not exist. Just because, in the late 19th century, a French chef of the Russian Count Pavel Stroganov originally made this rich, creamy dish with beef doesn’t mean we can’t use our imaginations.

The wealthy Russian nobility often spent the social season in Paris, where they entertained lavishly. Stroganov’s chef simply combined the Russian love of sour cream with the French taste for beef and mushrooms. Onions and mushrooms were first cooked in plenty of butter, then a fine beef fillet was cut into thin strips and added, and the whole thing was finished with mustard and sour cream.

Once Robert Carrier got his hands on it in the 1960s and classified it as one of the Great Dishes of the World, it began to feature in dinner parties nationwide. It was the Sixties equivalent of Jamie’s perfect roast chicken with lemons and Delia’s Piedmont roasted peppers.

As the dish became more popular, it also became more ordinary, suffering from the use of cheaper cuts of meat and the addition of boosters such as stock cubes, red kidney beans and tomato ketchup. Perhaps its lowest point came in the pub where I once saw it chalked up on the blackboard menu as “beef strongandoff”.

This lighter, less creamy recipe takes the idea of the mushroom and sour cream sauce and teams it with a seared pork chop and lots of chives. So now there is such a thing as pork stroganoff.

Ingredients
Serves 4

Prep: 10 min
Cook: 20 min.

Serve with rice, mash or buttered egg noodles.

4 thick pork loin chops
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
1 tbsp fine-snipped chives

Stroganoff sauce

1 onion, peeled
500g button mushrooms
1 tbsp butter
125ml white wine
sea salt and pepper
1 tsp sweet paprika
100ml sour cream or crème fraiche
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Method

To make the sauce, cut onion in half and finely slice. Wipe the mushrooms, discard the stalks and finely slice.Melt the butter in a frying pan and cook the onions gently for 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes. Add the white wine, sea salt, pepper and paprika and bring to the boil, stirring. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the sour cream and mustard to the mushrooms and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy frying pan and cook the pork chops over a moderate heat for about 10 minutes. Season well, turn and cook for 5 minutes or until tender, then rest.

Spoon the mushroom sauce over each pork chop, scatter with chives and serve.

jill.dupleix@thetimes.co.uk

Very Simple Food by Jill Dupleix is published by Quadrille at £20. Order from Times Books Direct for £16, plus £1.95 p&p. 0870-160 8080

Times Recommends

• Top Ten most searched for recipes
• Chalet Chef 2010: the winning menus
• Gin and pomegranate jellies