Pork and warm cabbage salad with sherry wine vinegar sauce

If you want to get serious with your cooking I highly recommend The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America. It's basically their textbook so it is full of a bunch of stuff the average home cooker doesn't need to know, but there is a plethora of information on various cooking techniques, styles, and recipes. Yesterday's meal was one of our first outings using recipes from the Professional Chef. Our second, in fact, and both meals were amazing.
The menu:
-Sweet potato curry soup
-Pan-fried pork chops with sherry vinegar sauce
-Warm cabbage salad with bacon and sherry wine vinegar
-Roasted peppers and tomato salad
-Italian bread loaf
Dessert:
-Peach cobbler
-Blueberry Madeleines with yellow curd

Quick synopsis since I really should be going to school soon.
Actually, I need to go to school. The sauce was magnificent. The end.

The Recipes

Sweet Potato Curry Soup:
This one I just made up a couple weeks ago while at work. It could use some tweeking but, despite the fact that Jake was hating on the idea, it came out pretty tasty.

2-3 sweet potatoes depending on the size (peeled and cut into chunks)
1 red bell pepper (sliced)
1 small onion (sliced or chopped)
1-2 carrots (diced)
chopped garlic
tbsp of yellow curry powder
2 tsp allspice
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground cloves
ground coriander
chopped cilantro for serving
s/p season to taste

Peel the potatoes and cut into chunks. Place in a baking pan. Slice the red pepper and add to the pan with the potatoes. Sprinkle with coriander and salt. Drizzle with olive oil and bake at 375F til soft, about 30-40 min depending on size.
Fry the carrots and onions in a large pot in olive oil on medium heat til onions begin to turn translucent. Add chopped garlic and fry for a couple minutes.
Add the cloves, ginger, garam masala, allspice, curry powder, and fry for ~30 seconds. *(skip this step for hot curry sweet pot soup)
Add the potato/pepper mix from the baking dish.
Fry for a few minutes to combine the flavors.
Cut the heat down and transfer to a blender or food processor. Add water and blend until smooth.
Transfer puree back to pot and bring up to temperature. Add s/p to taste and adjust water as necessary to reach a good consistency. Let the soup simmer for a little while for the flavors to develop.
Serve with cilantro garnish.
NOTE: As this is was my first time making this soup I made up while delivering meds at a hospital, I would like to make a few comments.
I was actually using heavy cream as my liquid (in place of water) when I realized potatoes are pretty thick and maybe I should use water instead. I ended up using way more water than cream, but I can't say if it might have a better flavor with some cream instead of only water. I also think a good vegetable stock would add a lot to the flavor, but I didn't think of it at the time. You may notice a revision to this in the future if I use it and like it. Also, feel free to experiment with the spice measurements. I didn't measure any of them and kind of just made up the numbers while typing this. Ratios are probably pretty close. Everything's relative. Overall, I was happy with the outcome. Enjoy.

Pork Chops in Sherry Vinegar Sauce
There's really nothing special about the pork chops in this recipe. Pat them dry, salt and pepper them, and fry em up in a saute pan. The sauce is where the magic is in this recipe and it is absolutely stunning. We were seriously just eating spoonfuls of it at a time. Stupid good.
This one is straight out of The Professional Chef which means multiple steps. Really, you could probably make the sauce in ~1.5 hour but I chose to do the 1st couple steps the night before and then complete it while preparing the pork chops and sides. I also skipped a step by using beef stock instead of making a veal stock. The sauce recipe calls for a demi-glace which is equal parts veal stock and espagnole sauce. An espagnole sauce is largely veal stock with some added ingredients. So I simplified it and basically made an espagnole sauce and went heavy on the beef (veal) stock. So to make a short story long, let's start with a roux.
A roux is a basic thickening agent used in many stocks, soups, and sauces. Basically 3 parts flour (all-purpose) to 2 parts fat (butter, oil, ...umm fat).
The longer you cook it the more nutty flavor it develops, the darker it develops, and the less thickening power it has. The stages of roux are white, blond, brown, and dark. For this sauce, you want a brown roux.
I've lost where I wrote down the amounts I used and we tend to measure by weight. Will revise in the future.
1 oz of butter
~1 tbsp of olive oil
~1/4 cup AP flour
Heat the oil/butter on med-low heat. Add the flour slowly while stirring to mix. It will thicken before it relaxes. Continue cooking the roux while stirring to keep it from scorching. It should take ~15 min or so to go from white to brown. The consistency should be similar to beach sand at low tide. You should notice a nutty aroma develop as it darkens. Set aside.
For the Espagnole Sauce/Demi-Glace you will need:
2 tbsp Olive oil
Mirepoix ingredients separate (see below)
~ 1 tbsp+ tomato paste
32 oz beef stock
Brown Roux (see above)
Sachet d'Epices (sprig of thyme, bay leaf, clove of garlic, 3-4 parsley stems, cracked peppercorns)
s/p

Mirepoix: this is a combination of diced onions, carrots, and celery in a 2:1:1 ratio, respectively. Used in many soups, stocks, and sauces as base ingredient.
A small onion, med carrot and stick of celery should suffice for the sauce.
Saute the carrots in oil on medium heat til they start to brown.
Add the onions and saute til translucent.
Add the celery and cook til browned.
Add tomato paste and cook to a rusty brown with sweet aroma. Few minutes.
Add the stock and bring to a simmer.
Whisk the roux into the stock, return to simmer, and add the Sachet d'Epices.
Simmer for 1 hr, skimming the fat from the surface as necessary.
Strain the sauce and season with s/p.
Continue to make Sherry Vinegar Sauce or keep refrigerated for later use.
This can also be used in other sauces. If used in the future I will refer to this recipe.
Sherry Vinegar Sauce:
You will need:
~50ml sherry wine (cooking sherry will work)
~50ml white wine vinegar
some brown sugar (once again, I lost my math. Maybe 30 grams? Tablespoon?)
Espagnole Sauce/Demi-Glace
s/p
Cook the sherry wine, white wine vinegar, and sugar in a saucepan over med-high heat til it boils and sugar is dissolved.
Remove from heat and add the demi-glace. Stir to combine and simmer over medium heat until reduced to thickness that covers the back of a spoon, ~15 minutes.
Season w/ s/p.

After sauteing the pork chops, degrease the pan. Add a little white wine to deglaze the pan and reduce til almost dry. Add the sherry vinegar sauce and reduce to a good consistency. Serve over the pork. Start a blog to tell people how good it was.