• Preheat oven to 225°-325° depending on how hungry you are.
• Sauté a finely diced shallot in butter
• Add two slices of bread, 1/4” dice
• Add two apples, also 1/4” dice
• Season with thyme and whatever
• Sauté mixture for a few minutes to get it going (total cooking time here depends on the nature and size of the pork chop)
• Dump out mixture onto a oiled sheet pan
• Brown the pork chops
• Place chops on apple stuffing
• Deglaze pan with a white wine
• pour sauce on chops
• Add some rosemary for an aromatic
• Place in oven until chops fully cooked

The tricky part is balancing the cooking of the apple with the cooking of the chops. And choosing the right apples. In this case the chops were ridiculously thick, so I only cooked the stuffing in the skillet for a few minutes and it took roughly 45 for the chops to cook through in a 325° oven. In retrospect I would have preferred a much lower temperature for longer, but needs must. So it was a little dry. A less lean chop would have also helped.

For the apples, one Granny Smith and one Pink Lady did the trick. The pink lady being a bit firmer and offered a bit of tooth in the final mixture.

The next time, I might cook the stuffing in a skillet longer and sous-vide the chops. The bread croutons are there to soak things up a bit. The extra pork fat, the apple juices. The Granny Smith tend to break down quickly, so having the bread there lends a bit of structure.

Experiment showed that a small bit of balsamic vinegar made a delightful contrast to the sweet apple and savory pork chop. If you must have the hot to go with sweet, salt, and acid, I suspect a bit of cayenne with the salting of the chops before cooking would work.