Sunday 5 May
After the previous night's
indulgences, we wanted to go with something a little blander than the canonical
Mexican holiday meal. On a cold, rainy
spring night, you can't beat meatloaf.
We whizzed up 4 oz. saltines in
the robo-coupe to make crumbs, whizzed again with a quarter cup milk and 2
eggs to make a panade, and added 3 Tbsp. wheat bran for good measure.
Into a big bowl with that went:
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
a big grind of black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 Tablespoon of whole-grain
mustard
a scant quarter cup ketchup,
though that was a little uncertain, as we used the end of a bottle by shaking
it up with a bit of milk
1 Tablespoon tomato paste;
ditto of sweet pickle relish
(maybe two)
a minced onion
a stalk of minced celery.
To this we added the usual pound
of ground beef and pound of ground pork, mooshed it together gently until just
combined, molded into a loaf on a flat tray, and baked at 400º for a half hour,
then basted with ketchup and turned the oven down to 350º until just done at
160º, which took about an hour total.
Oh, and three parsnips sliced into
coins and tossed in oil went onto the tray after 10 minutes, and stayed the
whole time until tender. We even pushed
them under the tent of aluminum foil while the meatloaf rested for the
compulsory 5-10 minutes.
This came out pretty damn close to
the best meatloaf ever, so maybe it was the bran that held the secret. The flavor was perfect, but texture
was a bit crumbly, perhaps due to too much liquid from the pickle relish or
milk in the ketchup bottle. It would
also be nice to get it a bit brown and crusty, but we are so not complaining.
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