I know it's not nice to toot your own horn, but......
I'm going to do it anyway! About 2PM today I got a serious hankering (is that a real word?) for some meat. Red meat to be exact. I spent the next hour letting my mind wander over all of my options. My first thought was to head straight to Delilah's for a Bison Burger or maybe a Spanish Sausage sandwich. They are both darn good. Then I started drifting towards some homemade meatballs - never made those before. Nah, maybe I should try the Boerewors we made at our last cookery course (African Outdoor Cooking - more on that to come at a later date). I guess I should explain, Boerewors is a South African pork sausage. Good stuff. Then I noticed the recipe called for letting the sausage mixture sit overnight before making into patties and grilling. While time didn't allow this step at the cookery course, I figured if I was going to do it I wanted to do it right. Plus, pork isn't a red meat. So, time to come up with another idea. I finally settled on meatloaf. The only meatloaf I think I have ever made was using Heinz, or maybe it was Hunt's, Meatloaf Fixins in a can. Surprisingly it is pretty decent stuff, but it's not available over here, and I was in the mood to experiment anyway. I finally found a recipe on the Internet that sounded good, but decided to make a few modifications, such as using 1/2 pork and 1/2 beef instead of all beef. I also added some spices as the recipe only called for salt & pepper. Boring. Anyway, this turned out to be the absolute best meatloaf Yankee and I have ever had! I'm not exaggerating either. This stuff was amazing. So I'd like to share the recipe with everyone. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly into measuring, so you'll have to have a little confidence in yourself to wing it a bit, but I know you can do it. I'll try to give pretty good estimates to get you started.
The Best Meatloaf Ever
Ingredients:
*2 Eggs (hard not to measure those suckers)
*1/2 Cup or so Milk
*3 Slices White Bread - try something a little on the heavy side - none of that Wonder Bread crap
*Spices (see below)
*400g each ground pork and ground beef (not exactly sure what the conversion to lb. is, but if you are able to find this blog on the internet you can definitely find an online conversion calculator)
*1 finely chopped yellow onion
*1 grated carrot - no kidding
*1/2 Cup shredded cheese - again no kidding, (the original recipe called for cheddar, but I sused Double Gloucester since that's what we happened to have)
*About 1 - 1 1/2 C. of Sauce (see below)
In a large bowl, beat the eggs and then add the milk, bread & spices. Mix until bread is disintegrated. Add the meat, onion, carrot & cheese and mix well. I don't like to stick my hands down in a bowl of raw meat, so I wear latex gloves. Walgreens sells a box of 50 for $4.99 and they come in size Small which I love. These also come in handy for chopping onions, chili peppers or other stinky things. Pat down into a baking dish. Any dish will do. I used a covered round Le Creuset dutch oven, but then again I'm the one that made a square pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving last year. Bake at about 350 for roughly 1 hour or until nearly done. Drain off the grease. Spread sauce on top and return to oven, uncovered, for about 15 minutes to finish. Serve with mashed potatoes (scratch - don't even think of using instant) and green beans.
Spices:
I'll tell you what I used, but I definitely can't tell you how much of what. Just use what you like and try to end up with about 2-3 Tbsp. total.
*Mustard Seeds (I didn't use too much of these)
*Coriander Seeds
*Cumin Seeds
*1 dried chili pepper (I used a small red one)
*Mixed Peppercorns
*Rock or Sea Salt
*Whole Cloves (only use 4 or 5 of these)
*Italian Herb Seasoning
*Italian Seasoning (yes, there's a difference - just found this today at the grocery - a mixture of red pepper, sea salt, basil, thyme, oregano, white pepper, rosemary, onion & garlic)
Using a mortar & pestle, grind all the spices together. I'm sure you could just as easily use ground versions of all the spices, but Yankee bought a mortar & pestle several weeks ago and has been dying to try it out.
Sauce
*Equal parts ketchup and brown sugar
*Prepared Mustard (I just quickly grabbed a jar of Colemans yellow mustard at the store today. I didn't notice until I opened it that it was English mustard, which evidently means mustard with a bunch of horseradish in it. I was pleasantly surprised how good it was in the sauce, but I only needed about a 1/2-3/4 tsp. of this stuff - a little goes a long way!)
Below is a picture of the finished product, minus the big chunk that we ate.
posted by Yankee Girl @ 7:30 PM
2 comments
