“Olga Berman had something to confess: She is frequently guilty of involuntary porkicide. ‘I’m the girl who kills pork,'’ she wrote in an e-mail. ‘I always overcook pork chops, and they come out dry.’Even after three years of a part-time culinary program at Sur La Table, Berman didn’t have the chops to cook chops.”

But Olga Berman is nothing if not supremely fortunate.

According to this article in the Miami Herald, when Southern cookbook author Nathalie Dupree heard about Berman’s pork curse, she showed up Olga’s DC apartment to play fairy godmother and show her the secret of unforgettably succulent pork chops.

“Then the two started the chops by heating butter and oil in a saute pan. Dupree laid two chops in the pan, explaining that you always cook the prettier side first because it will get more nicely browned than the second side. ‘When the pork starts talking, you start listening,’ Dupree intoned. ‘It’s sizzling because it’s putting water out into the hot fat. When it stops sizzling so much, it’s time to turn it.’ Dupree turned the chops with her hands, as the pros do…”

You can read more about Nathalie Dupree’s 911 Culinary Intervention here.

The first woman since Julia Child to film more than 100 cooking shows for public television, Charleston’s Dupree is the author of 10 cookbooks (you can preview four of them free of charge here) which have sold over half a million copies so far.