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Meatloaf

Saturday, May 05, 2012

My fiancé Patti is on what I call an Atkins friendly diet, and she's really avoiding wheat flour. I'm trying to do a DASH oriented diet, so I need low salt and low fat. Her son, Nick, is an ovo-lacto vegetarian. So the challenge has been to come up with recipes that we can all end. This one doesn't work for Nick, but it does for Patti and I. And it happenes to tast very good, especially in terms of moistness.

This takes about 1/2 hour total time spread out over an hour to prep and 45 mins to cook.

  • 2 lbs of ground meat. My personal favoriate is ground turkey breast and some ground lamb. You can adjust the mix as you like to manipulate the fat content, but keep in mind that this recipe doesn't render out much liquid.
  • 1 egg
  • 2 regular packages of mushrooms, creminis work well, but buttons are good, too.
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 bell pepper, red if you want more sweetness.
  • 1/2 white onion
  • 2-3 celery stalks
  • 1-3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 dash of 'shire sauce or fish sauce.
  • olive oil

Herbs, whatever you like. The combination I tend to use is 1 tsp each of dried thyme, rosemary, and parsley (or 2-3x if you're using fresh herbs). Or you can add home made chili powder and tumeric. Paul Prudhomme's magic salt-free seasoning mix is also very good, I add two to three teaspoons to pretty much any recipe for extra depth.

Very roughly chop the carrot, pepper, onion, celery and garlic. Then run them in small batches through a food processor, until they are finely chopped. Heat a large flat pan to med, a 14" cast iron skillet is what I use. Coat lightly with the olive oil, and put all the veggies in the pan and a dash or two of salt. The idea is to cook these down to get rid of much of the water, let it cook down for about 20 minutes stirring occaisionally. What you're looking for is a paste, when you get there take it out and press it around a large bowl so it can cool.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees.

After it cools down enough for you to handle it, add the rest of the ingredients and mix by hand. Once it's mixed, form it up as a ball in the bowl. Then put a thin coat of oil on some aluminium foil on flat sheet pan, and turn up the edges to catch what liquid leaks out (if you're keeping the meat mix on the lean side it won't be much). Turn out the ball of mix and form into a loaf, mine usually are about 3" tall and 5" wide. You could sprinkle some additional chopped herbs and pat lightly.

Put it in the oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 325 degrees for about 30 minutes. You can cook it less if you poke it or probe it to make sure it's done, but I usually just let it run out the clock. Pull it, cover with a tent of foil, parchment or a bowl and let it rest for about 10-15 minutes. Cut with a sharp knife into about 3/4"-1" slices (thinner crumble if it's still hot, and you can cut them in half width wise if you want smaller portions). Patti likes it with ketchup or marinara. It's really good with some pureed cauliflower done up like mashed potatoes, that hits the traditional north american home comfort food button nicely. Or you could saute some mushrooms, add 1/4 cup each chicken broth and white, reduce and use that as a sauce. But I don't put anything on it--the nice thing about this recipe is that the veggies keep the meat from squeezing out much liquid as it cooks, so it come out really moist.

After it has had a chance to cool down in the fridge, the next day it makes for a nice sandwich on toasted bread with some brown mustard, lettuce and a thin slice of tomato.

Categories: Recipes

Teriyaki Sauce

Sunday, January 24, 2010

This is a home made Teriyaki sauce to use as a marinade or a dipping sauce.

  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 cup dry wine or sake
  • 1 Tbs honey
  • 1 tsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp minced ginger
  • hot sauce to taste

Mix the ingredients in a pot and heat through. That's it. Make a big batch, it keeps forever. If you want a stronger version, use dry red wine and dark soy sauce. If you prefer a lighter sauce, use dry white wine and light soy sauce. Fresh garlic and ginger are best, but if you only have powdered garlic or ginger, that works. Don't use garlic salt--there's no point to garlic salt, really, just get garlic powder and add salt when you want it.

The things I use this marinade with most are chicken legs and lamb. When I was in school, I'd marinade some chicken thighs in this sauce for about 3 hrs, and then roast them in a toaster oven at 275 degrees for a couple of hours, then broil them a bit to crisp the skin. Every once and a while, I'll marinade a lamb roast overnight, and then grill it.

This afternoon, it was lamb cubes marinaded for a couple of hours, then put on skewers with mushroom, tomato, and bell pepper and grilled:

 

Categories: Recipes

Butternut Squash Soup

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Today was six hours of cleaning, washing dishes and clothes, going through old clothing for donations, and some cooking. Part of the cooking was this butternut squash soup--it's thick, sweet and creamy, very filling, and I had the excuse that I hadn't yet tried out the new porcelain coated cast iron pot my brother and sister in law gave me for christmas. Obviously, I'm on a soup jag, but there are worse things.

This soup is something I started playing with since I like Caroline's Zucchini Soup so much, the recipe is very similar. It works well with pretty much any winter squash.

Ingredients

  • 1 butternut squash
  • 1 small onion
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 quart of chicken or vegetable stock.
  • 1 tsp Thyme
  • 1 Tbs curry paste or powder. My personal favorite in this soup is yellow thai curry paste, it goes well with the sweetness of the squash.

Preparation

Cut up the onion into smallish pieces, don't worry about them being too even since we'll blend everything anyway. Put some oil into a pot, and put that on medium low. Add the onion, sprinkle on a little salt.

Crush the garlic cloves, throw away the hard papery shells. Chop the garlic and add to the pot. You want to cook the garlic and onions until they start to turn translucent. You don't really want to brown them, but it's ok if that happens. This will take about 6-10 minutes.

Peel the outer skin off of the butternut squash. This can be a pain with a regular peeler--it helps to use quick light strokes. Better is a coarse narrow microplane.

Cut the squash in half lengthwise--use a long sharp knife for this. Be careful, winter squash are pretty tough. If you hold the squash at the narrow end with one hand, you can put the tip of the knife in the middle with blade facing away from the hand holding the squash, cut down and then lever the knife flat. Then you can turn the squash around, and repeat to cut narrow end in half.

To get the seeds out, use your thumb and just squeeze the seeds loose from the mesh in the ball end of the squash. Root around a good bit, there are more in there than you'd expect. (The seeds are worth saving--you can rinsh them well, dry them out, coat with oil and salt, and roast them). Once the seeds are gone, scrape out the mesh with a spoon, working from the narrow end down to the bottom of the ball end.

Then lay the squash halves flat side down on a cutting board and cut up into 2" pieces. Put those into the pot and cover with broth. Add some water if you need to, this soup is thick enough to take it.

Add 1 teaspoon of dried thyme, 1 tablespoon of curry (more or less to taste), and grate a bit of nutmeg into the soup. Nutmeg is a great spice to buy whole, it keeps for years in a sealed bottle, and you can grate what you need when you need it. Here's a double batch simmering:

Simmer for 30 minutes on low heat.

Take off the heat. We need to blend this, just as with the zucchini soup, so use a stick blender, blender, or food processor--but this soup is hot, so be careful. Salt to taste. Here's the finished product:

Categories: Recipes

Matzah Ball Soup

Friday, January 15, 2010

Since I'm home sick with a cold today, it seemed a good time to make chicken soup. Luckily, I had a quart of chicken stock frozen. Unfortunately, I was out of root vegetables and meat, except for some salmon. So it was matzah meal to the rescue.

If you haven't had matzah ball soup, you really need to make this. My recipe is pretty much off the box with some minor modifications.

  • 1 quart of good chicken broth or stock
  • 1 quarter cup of matzah meal
  • 1 egg
  • oil
  • garlic powder
  • red pepper
  • salt

I like floaters, which are light matzah balls that pop to the surface. If you do the research you'll find that there are a lot of techniques for making floaters, such as using soda water, but really all you need to do is get some air into the batter and treat it gently.

Separate the egg yolk and white. Whisk the white in a bowl until it's nice and foamy (you can do this with a folk, but it will take a bit longer), we'll try to keep that foam intact all the way to the pot. Add a dash of salt and some garlic powder, 1 tablespoon of your chicken stock, the yolk, and 1 tablespoon of oil, and whisk that together. Next add the matzah meal and mix that up gently--don't over do it, you want to keep the foam intact. You don't want large lumps, but some small ones won't hurt anything. Once you have it mixed, put the bowl in the fridge uncovered for 30 minutes. Put a plate in the fridge, too.

While you're waiting, heat up your stock or broth. If you're using canned or boxed broth, I'd suggest adding a little red pepper and some thyme or chives.

The matzah batter will be stiff when you take it out of the fridge, but don't poke at it. Put it and the cold plate on the counter. Some people advise wetting your hands before you do this, but I think a little oil works better. Grab a spoon (I like small matzah balls, so I use a teaspoon), and spoon out a bit of the batter. Roll that gently into a ball and put it on the cold plate. You want to work quickly, since the cold keeps the batter stiff, and it gets sticky as it warms up. Here's the plate from this morning, these are about 1/2" in diameter:

Next drop them into the simmering broth. It helps to turn up the heat just before you drop them so it will come back up to a good simmer faster. Also, cover the pot, that helps them expand.

After 20-30 minutes, they should be plumped up nicely and floating about in the pot. Here's breakfast, notice that the matzah balls have about doubled in size:

Some people like dense matzah balls, sinkers, which hug the bottom of the bowl, and to make those you can use this recipe, but don't seperate the eggs or whisk anything, just mix everything up and roll the matzah balls. Sinkers are pretty easy to make.

Categories: Recipes

Caroline's Zucchini Soup

Saturday, January 09, 2010

This is a simple soup, a variant of a recipe my friend Caroline gave me years ago. It's got great color, low fat but feels creamy on the tongue, and it can be served hot or cold. It also freezes well.

Ingredients

  • 3-4 zucchini squash
  • 1 onion
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 quart of chicken or vegetable stock. I like Pacific Organic. Don't use bullion cubes!
  • Thyme

Preparation

  1. Cut up the onion into smallish pieces, don't worry about them being too even since we'll blend everything anyway. Put some oil or butter into a pot, and put that on medium low. Add the onion, sprinkle on a little salt.
  2. Crush the garlic cloves, throw away the hard papery shells. Chop the garlic and add to the pot. You want to cook the garlic and onions until they start to turn translucent. You don't really want to brown them, but it's ok if that happens. This will take about 6-10 minutes.
  3. In the meantime, cut up the zucchini into about 1/2 inch cubes. When the onions are translucent, add the squash to the pot.
  4. Add enough stock to cover everything, and bring the liquid to a simmer. You want to simmer the squash until it just get soft, on my stove that takes about 12 minutes.
  5. Add some Thyme leaves, I use about 1 teaspoon of dried, or 1 tablespoon of fresh.
  6. Take off the heat. We need to blend this, the easiest way to do that is to use a stick blender. Remember, this is hot stuff, so be careful! If you're not sure what you're doing, you might let it all cool down a while first--you can reheat it later. If you don't have a stick blender, you could ladle it into a regular blender or food processor. Blend until smooth, add salt and pepper to taste.

Variations

  • My girlfriend Patti likes to pour a bit of cream or half and half in this.
  • Other spices that work for me are curry powder or a combination of basil and parsley instead of the Thyme

Just before adding the stock:

Finished!

 

Categories: Recipes