Meatloaf and Potato Salad

Wednesday 4 February

The sixth and last of this series of "____" and "____" meals.  

This one was composed entirely of leftovers: Saturday's meatloaf, and Sunday's potato salad.  But to give it a little warmth and zip, we sautéed a sliced onion, deglazed with a shot of cider vinegar, and added a good amount of ketchup to heat through, as a topping for the meatenloafer.

When you're eating this much ground meat, you take whatever variety you can get.

Meatballs and Spaghetti

Tuesday 3 February

We got 26 meatballs out of the half batch we prepped last Saturday, and eight of them were eager to jump into some sauce and onto a pile of spaghetti. 

The sauce had also been made ahead of time, by sautéing a few sliced cloves of garlic and a minced onion in a deep enamel pot, stirring in some salt and a couple of Tablespoons of tomato paste to warm and mellow.  Then we added two big cans of crushed tomatoes, hand-crumbled leaves of our own dried basil and oregano, plus a couple of Israeli bay leaves, to simmer for a couple or three hours until the flavors were sweet and mellow.

Tonight, there was nothing to do but put the meatballs into the sauce, heat both through, and boil up some spaghetti.  A block of parmesan to grate over the top, and we had our perfect dose of Italian-American nostalgia.

Sausage and Sprouts

Monday 2 February

Groundhog day must be celebrated with ground hog; in this case, Napa sausages from Kroger Brothers.  Disappointingly, they split as they cooked, and were again saltier than we like.  Watch the quality, Kroger Bros.!

Just as a change from the usual accompaniment of onions and/or peppers, we roasted a tray of halved brussels sprouts, tossed in oil and salt.  Nice.

Country Ribs and Potato Salad

Sunday 1 February

You've gotta go American for Superbowl Sunday.  We marinated a batch of meaty pork ribs with Broken Trail hot sauce (ask for it by name!) and the tail end of a bottle of oyster sauce, for umami.  Normally the ribs would be braised then baked, but with our new combi-oven, it was easy to give them 30 minutes on super-steam, then baste with more Broken Trail, shoot them with 15 minutes of steam-broil, then flip, baste, and repeat.

Earlier, we made a big batch of potato salad, flavoring it with oil-frozen tarragon and mustard, and a simple dressing of good oil and white wine vinegar; it had all day to sit and soak up the flavors, and didn't need to be refrigerated.

We started dinner just as the game began, but actually finished and left the house before they got to the only part we both like, halftime.  Instead we went to a terrific concert by the vocal group Cantigium, held just around the corner at Annunciation Church as the start of the Early Music Festival this month.  So we think we got the best parts: good (American) food, good (polyphonic) music.

Meatloaf and Roots

Saturday 31 January

While digging deep in the back of the freezer, we found a 3-pound chunk of ground chuck, probably dating back to Lea and Mark's time here, as we generally break such purchases up into one-pound or hamburger-size packets.  Chuck generally needs to be lightened up with other meats, so at Findlay Market, we foraged for a pound of ground pork (Bender's) and another of ground turkey (Luken's).  Total: five pounds o'meat, to use in two classics: the vasty meat log, and eye-talian meatballs.

We pursued the meat loaf first, using these guidelines but adapted for a slightly larger amount of meat, with 3 eggs, and using Ritz crackers, which is what we had. 

Once it went into the oven, we sliced a turnip, two parsnips, and two carrots thinly, tossed them in oil and salt, and let them bake on the same tray, for an hour.

While that was roasting, we made the rest of the meat into a half batch of David Warda's Recipe Bible meatballs, saving the whites from the two egg yolks for future granolas, and whipping up a milk and yogurt mixture instead of buttermilk.  

Then when the meatloaf came out, the meatballs went in, so we could have them ready for another day...and another, and another.

As for the meatloaf, it was good enough, but still crumbly despite all the eggs, and weirdly creamy in the interstices.  I wonder whether mixing the eggs into the panade isn't a mistake; maybe next time the eggs will get mixed directly into the meat, and the panade added later.  

So we're still searching for what we did to achieve that holy grail, the Best Meatloaf Ever.