Magnificent Meatloaf
Meatloaf is one of those things I just throw together. No written recipe, but it's the same ol' loaf time and time, again. It's good, but it's the same ol' loaf time and time, again.
I decided that we needed something a bit different. I had a recipe for a Rustic French Meatloaf that I made for Victor's birthday, but I wasn't in a chicken liver mood. (Besides, I didn't have any lying about...)
I saw an old Gourmet recipe but it wasn't really what I wanted, either. I decided to take bits and pieces of everything and make my own.
Magnificent Meatloaf
- 1 cup bread crumbs
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 small onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 stalk celery
- 1 carrot
- 4 oz mushrooms
- 1 cup dried figs
- 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
- 3 slices thick-sliced bacon
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup Italian parsley, minced
- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tbsp cider vinegar
- 1/4 tsp allspice
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat oven to 350°.
Soak bread crumbs in milk.
In food processor, finely mince onion, garlic, celery, carrots, and mushrooms. Cook mixture about 5 minutes in skillet over medium heat.
Add Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, allspice, salt and pepper. Add to bread-crumb mixture.
Finely chop bacon, parsley, and prunes in a food processor and add to onion mixture. Add beef and eggs and mix well.
Form into loaf.
Bake about 90 minutes or until thermometer reads 155°.
It worked pretty well.
All of the chopped and sauteed vegetables really made for a moist meatloaf, and the figs added a perfect sweet balance.
Mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, and peas finished the plate.
And now we get meatloaf sandwiches.
Yum.
Frozen Mexican
Dinner tonight came right out of the freezer. All of it. The whole thing.
Slightly unusual, I know, but I just wasn't in the mood to cook tonight. Also unusual.
But having a meal like this now and again makes me realize how much better food is when I actually do cook it myself.
The best part of the meal was probably the little tacos. It's kinda hard to screw up a crunchy little corn tortilla. The orangish-blob in the center of the plate is cheese enchiladas. I admit that I am not overly-familiar with frozen cheese enchiladas, but these were nothing to write home about. They filled a void. And they also do not transfer from cardboard container to plate.
The tamale was not bad but really could have used that wonderful brown sauce from Johnson's Tamale Grotto in San Francisco.
Johnson's... ::sigh:: They were at 24th & Vicente and made the best tamales around. They were "cup" tamales. Not rolled in husks, but formed in cups. They had a turkey tamale - made with fresh-roasted turkey, of course - that was out of this world. With rice and beans.
Those were the days... I guess it's a bit unfair to try and compare frozen concoctions with freshly-made items of my youth, but it really does bring home the point that even fast-food once upon a time, was really, really good. We had several take-out-type places in the neighborhood that served some really fine food. They took pride in what they served and sold.
Then, again, people had different standards about what they would eat.
As a kid I didn't eat a lot of frozen foods because there were six of us kids - and frozen food was expensive. I remember the extremely rare times we actually got to eat a Swanson's TV Dinner! My favorite was the Salisbury Steak. Or a frozen pot pie (back when there was a top and bottom crust!) They were so much fun - because we never had them.
After moving out of the ancestral home I never had frozen food because I worked in restaurants. I ate fresh. Heck, for the longest time I rarely shopped for groceries at all except for Coca Cola and Dorrito's. (Great for the munchies...)
So... dinner tonight wasn't bad, it just wasn't fresh, homemade, or out of the Johnson's steam table.
I probably won't be making it a weekly dining experience.
Beef Stew and Beer Bread
It's amazing how much fun it is to decorate the house for Christmas and what a chore it is to take everything down. And how do decorations get so dirty?!? Do I stop and wash or clean things or say hell with it and pack 'em away, thinking I'll be in a better vrame of mind to deal with them next year?!?
You may guess which route I chose...
Spending the day taking down decorations means a day not spent in the kitchen cooking. But I still wanted a decent dinner.
Beef stew was the logical choice. It could sinner while I stewed about the 487 trips up-and-down the basement steps with 632 plastic bins full of 7,874,928 santas and other decorations.
We decided that if we ever won the lottery, we would have two identical wings to the house. One would always be decorated for Christmas. We'd just close it off until the holidays and open it up and close the other. I'd never have to worry about stowing dirty ornaments, again.
As we were getting towards the end of the bins, I decided we needed bread to go with dinner.
The quickest loaf to bake was definitely George and Suzanne's Quick Beer Bread.
I made this particular loaf with Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale. I keep several bottles of beer in the 'fridge just for cooking and making beer bread. I've been on the no-knead kick for a while and the beers have just been sitting there. The type of beer definitely changes the flavor. I tend to go for the darker beers, but a light pilsner works very well, also.
Beer Bread
- 3 cups self-rising flour
- 2 tbsp sugar (raw sugar works best)
- 12 oz beer
Use a 4″ x 8″ bread pan. Mix and bake at 350° about 1 hour. Top with melted butter.
If you don't have any self-rising flour in the cupboard, don't fret. Use:
- 1 cup flour
- 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
per cup of flour.
I'm seeing toast for breakfast.....
Soup and Sandwiches
A roast chicken means chicken soup. A chicken carcass is an automatic free meal. It takes nothing but a bit of leftovers to create a great meal.
A basic chicken soup has no recipe. It just is.
Seriously... It's put stuff in a pot and boil. Place the carcass and whatever meat is still attached, skin, liver gizzard, neck - all the little pieces from the little bag - into a soup pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for a couple of hours. You can add some celery, onion, and carrots to the pot - skins, peels, and all - for additional flavor.
Remove from heat and strain.Let the carcass cool and then strip it of every last shred of meat. It will go back into the pot.
For the soup itself, add the stock and chicken to a pot. The add whatever you have in the house. Frozen vegetables, those little tupperware containers of whatever, potatoes, beans, rice, noodles or other pasta...
Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper and anything else you may like or have laying about.
That's the soup I made last night. It's slightly different yet always the same whenever I make it.
There are a lot of other chicken soups out there, from Mulligatawny - one of my all-time favorites - to our friend Karen's Mexican Chicken Soup.
Soup is not difficult.
So that was last night.
Tonight was meatball sandwiches and french fries. Going gourmet all over the place.
Even the cook doesn't feel like cooking some nights. Frozen meatballs, jarred sauce, a fresh baguette, and fontina cheese. French fries dusted with garlic powder and cayenne pepper.
It worked.
Roast Chicken
I have been sadly remiss in getting dinner blogs together the past few days. We're definitely eating, but I have been really busy trying to get a new website online for Against The Grain Gourmet - a great gluten-free bakery in Vermont. They've outgrown the site I did for them a couple of years ago and we're going to bring it into the 21st century. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, dinners are being quickly consumed and then I head back to the office to work.
But they've been good dinners!
Last night was a roasted chicken. Sometimes the simplest foods can just be the best! A lemon in the cavity, freshly grated orange zest on top with a bit of salt and pepper, and into a 375° oven for about an hour.
It came out great! Pan gravy, mashed potatoes, and zucchini and tomatoes finished the plate.
Victor had chicken sandwiches today and I'll probably make soup tomorrow, since it's supposed to snow a bit.
Well... no more goofing off. Back to work!
Turkey Soup
Lobster one day, soup the next. It's just the way of things around here.
But hi-brow or low-brow, it's always fun.
Tomight's dinner came completely out of the freezer. Well, almost. The carrots were fresh.
I had a small container of turkey soup from Thanksgiving, a small container of turkey gravy - also from Thanksgiving, and a container of chicken stock from whenever.
All three went into a big pot. I let it come to a boil, added some shell macaroni and a couple of sliced carrots.
I warmed up the bread from a couple of days ago and dinner was served.
It was the perfect for the weather - getting cold outside, again - and the perfect meal to balance the food-a-thon we had yesterday.
Oh. And there's more cheesecake for dessert.
Steaks and Langostinos
It's still New Year's day, so that means we have to indulge just a little bit more. Tomorrow we will be indulging a little bit more, as well. Maybe we'll settle down by mid-week.
Maybe.
Tonight we had filets with a langostino harissa cream sauce. Really.
And it was good.
The sauce was nothing more than a tablespoon of harissa paste, 2/3 cup heavy cream, one egg yolk, salt and pepper. As it thickened, I added the already cooked langostino.
I made a bed of red rice, placed the filet on the rice, and the sauce went over the steak.
It worked really well. Really well.
Harissa is a spicy chili paste-type condiment. I think it originated in Tunisia but I see it in a lot of other northern African recipes. It's not exactly a traditional preparation, but it really worked well with the cream. I have to admit I wasn't sure how this one was going to turn out. It had all the right flavor profiles, but from experience I know that just because I like things doesn't mean they're going to work together.
They did tonight.
And I used the last of the no-knead dough to make a loaf of bread.
Tomorrow is another all-out-food-fest.
I love the holidays!
New Year Breakfast
You just know it's going to be a great year when the first meal of the year fills the kitchen with billowing clouds of smoke. I think my first task of the new year should probably be clean the oven.
New Year Breakfast - and billowing clouds of smoke - are traditions at our house. Not necessarily at the same time, but traditions, nonetheless. Breakfast is one of my most favorite meals and billowing clouds of smoke just seem to be a natural with me.
The billowing smoke is almost always a result of a dirty oven. [That's my story and I'm sticking to it!] It only takes a small spill, and a well-used oven is often rife with small spills. At least, ours is. Well... are. Both of them.
At least the Fire Department wasn't involved, this time.
Breakfast this morning was very basic. Bacon, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, toast, cinnamon rolls, sparkling cranberry, and the last of our Christmas coffee. The perfect way to usher in 2011. It would have been better if the camera battery had been charged, but 30 seconds on the charger gave me enough juice to shoot a couple of pics and breakfast was still served hot.
2011.
It doesn't seem possible. Then again, 2000 didn't seem possible. Turning 50 didn't seem possible. And they happened a long time ago.
The years do pass quicker as we age. The theory is that the brain processes new and novel things differently so - as youngsters doing something for the first time - it seems like it took forever. Older and wiser, the brain processes the same thing quicker - like putting it in cache. It doesn't need to reprocess the whole thing - been there, done that. Time flies.
And 2010 did fly by.
- Last year started with bacon-wrapping cheese-stuffed dates. They were so good.
- We revisited Debbie's Chicken in February. I hadn't made it in forever. It's a really simple and really flavorful dish.
- And in March I made my first loaf of no-knead bread. I've been making it ever since.
- April Peeps at Easter. Peeps. Gag. But they made a fun presentation. It's going to be fun figuring out what to do with them this year.
- Green Rice from Atlantic Spice arrived in May. Bamboo gives it the green color - and tea-like flavor.
- June saw the arrival of Gates Kansas City BBQ Sauce from our friend, Luigi. It is currently my favorite bottled sauce.
- And then we got a deep-fat fryer! The July Birthday Boy had made an off-hand comment about cooking equipment. It's not for every-day use - and fried Snickers bars are vastly overrated - but it's fun!
- And Pasta Monday Began! Bless that August issue of La Cucina Italiana magazine! This has been one of the best culinary adventures, ever!
- September saw us stuffing tomatoes from the garden. We had a great crop this year.
- And then in October we got married. The honeymoon included seafood night at Dana's on Cape Cod.
- November was my first real attempt at candy-making in years. It actually came out.
- December brought us another over-the-top Christmas Eve with Joanna and Tom. Food, family, and fun. Who could ask for anything more?
So here's to another fun-and-calorie-filled year.
Create a few memories for yourself and your family. Make something new and different; explore a new flavor or cuisine.
Experiment and don't worry about screwing up. The very worst thing that can happen is you throw it all out and call for pizza.
New Year's Eve 2011
2011. It's hard to grasp.
I remember as a little kid figuring how old I was going to be in the year 2000. Not just old. Ancient. I couldn't quite fathom being almost as old as my grandparents.
And here it is, 11 years after that.
I do know that that little boy in San Francisco never imagined his life would be what it is today. I don't think I even knew where Pennsylvania was, let alone thinking that I would actually be living here.
And I certainly didn't imagine going to war, working in hotels all over the United States, or actually settling down and getting married to the greatest guy in the world after a rather wild and somewhat misspent youth.
No. That little boy couldn't have imagined half of it.
A computer?!? The World Wide Web?!? Transistor radios were the hot new thing and television was in black and white. Annette was the most popular Mouseketeer, but Cubby was secretly my favorite.
A long time ago.
And not such a long time ago, I don't think I imagined this being my 999th blog post. How fitting that New Year's Eve should be the last post before I hit 1000.
1000 posts! What will I cook? What will I say? We have been planning having Linda and David over on Sunday. I never did plan anything for New Year's Day, itself.
In typical Tim fashion, I'll just have to wing it.
Like I did with dinner tonight.....
I knew I was doing veal chops and I knew I was going to serve them on a bed of arugula, but that was about it. I found a recipe from Gourmet with radicchio and white beans that gave me the idea for endive, tomatoes, and white beans.
Veal Chops
- veal chops, 1" thick
- olive oil
- rosemary
- garlic, minced
- tomato, diced
- 1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
- Belgian endive, roughly chopped
- arugula
- red wine vinegar
- chicken broth
- cornstarch
- salt and pepper
For 2 chops, mince 1 clove garlic and mix with 1/4 teaspoon rosemary and about a quarter-cup of olive oil. Marinate the chops for about an hour, turning a couple of times.
In a hot skillet, sear the chops and then place in a 375° oven for about 20 minutes.
A couple of minutes before the chops are done, quickly saute arugula in a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper. Arrange on plate.
Place chops atop arugula.
In chop pan, add endive and diced tomato. Add 2-3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar (or vinegar of your choice.) When vinegar has reduced a bit, add beans and about 1 cup of chicken broth mixed with a tablespoon of cornstarch.
Cook until lightly thickened, check for seasoning, and spoon over chops.
That chop was way too much even for me, but I gave it that old college try. Cybil will be eating well for the next couple of days!
The flavors all worked well together. The vinegar was just sharp enough, but also diluted by the chicken broth so as not to be overpowering. The tomato added sweetness, the beans a comforting smoothness. The endive added a nice bitterness and a good crunch. The chops themselves were excellent. And the peppery goodness of the arugula played off everything else.
In other words, it was a perfect meal to end the first decade of the second millennium.
And post 999.
Chicken and Cranberries
While shopping yesterday I picked up a bag of fresh cranberries. It seems a bit late in the season for cranberries to still be so plentiful. I don't know if I just haven't been paying attention or I'm noticing them more because everything else is looking so bad. Weather in Florida and California is really wreaking havoc on produce right now - and I'm sure prices are going to be reflecting it soon.
But I digress...
I picked up cranberries with the thought of making a cranberry sauce for some chicken breasts and leftovers for ham sandwiches. Love hose versatile sauces!
Cranberry sauce really is the easiest thing in the world to make. Really. I had sparkling cranberry juice and dried cranberries in the house so I made a really simple triple cranberry sauce.
Triple Cranberry Sauce
- 1 cup sparkling cranberry juice
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 12 oz fresh cranberries
Mix cranberry juice and sugar in medium saucepan. Heat and stir until sugar dissolves. Add both cranberries and cook until cranberries pop and sauce begins to thicken a bit - about 10 minutes.
Cool and chill.
As I said - easy.
The chicken was a simple boneless, skinless breast that I sauteed in a bit of butter and then finished off in the oven. The only thing I did was add salt and pepper. No other seasonings. I didn't want anything to compete with the cranberry sauce tonight.
Green and yellow Italian beans - salt, pepper, butter - and plain white rice finished the plate. The simple rice also worked well capturing the runaway cranberry sauce.
It was one of those meals with really simple flavors but also one where every flavor was noticed. I like moving back and forth between using every spice in the cabinet and showing restraint. I mean... restraint is not a word that is often associated with me. It's fun to step outside of the box now and again.
I'm also thinking that the sauce can be reworked into a dipping sauce for some hors d'oeuvre or another on Sunday. We have a biannual dinner with dear friends and while the main dish (a lobster pasta) and dessert (a big ol' cheesecake) are already planned, the hors d'oeuvres are not chiseled in stone. But as I sit here, I think a mini-fritter of sorts with a spicy cranberry dipping sauce may be fun. I really love that deep fryer!
I made the cheesecake when I got home today because it really needs to set for a few days. Not an easy thing to allow to happen, but it's for a special occasion. We'll deal with it.
And I need to figure out what to do with the veal chops for our New Year's Eve dinner tomorrow night.
The stress.
Ham Steaks and Potatoes
Early in my hotel career, I worked with an Executive Chef named Peter Koenig at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe. Peter initially hired me as a cook at the gourmet restaurant Hugos Rotisserie on the lake, and then brought me up to the main hotel restaurant. Peter was an exacting and demanding chef - but not in the temperamental and egotistical manner that seems so fashionable today. Peter just expected things to be done the right way. He took the time to teach and show you how to do it and how he wanted it done and then expected you to do it correctly every time you did it. I was a quick learn. I just knew it wouldn't be wise to piss him off.
It paid off. Peter actually hired me twice. First as a cook and then after a brief interlude back in San Francisco, to run the short-lived Ponderosa Buffet off the hotel casino. It was from the Ponderosa that I went to Alpine Jack's and started managing the restaurant I once cooked for.
I learned a lot from Peter from cooking and technique to presentation and management. How to nit-pick on the seemingly minor details because the minor details were what were actually important. Or when to come down heavy on an employee for screwing up and when to create a "learning experience." We butted heads now and again but it always was a learning experience.....
He was good.
Really good to be remembered 35 years after that initial hire!
But I remembered him today because of a ham. A Cure 81 Ham. I really don't recall the exact scenario, but it basically had to do with us getting the wrong ham. I think that at one time Cure 81's were pretty much only available to the industry and they were the top "deli ham" of the day. They could be shaved thin for sandwiches or sliced thick for ham steaks. For whatever reason, we got the wrong ham and Peter was not amused.
Fast-forward 30-whatever years and I'm at the grocery store, look down, and see a Cure 81 ham.
It's amazing how something as simple as a ham can trigger such a flood of memories. It was (still) not cheap but I had to buy it.
A dozen recipe ideas were running through my mind. But the first one was the simplest and most appealing. Fried Ham Steak.
The ham steaks tonight were simply fried in a pat of butter. And fried ham needs potatoes and peas. But not just any potato... A thin-sliced-soft-in-the-center-and-crispy-on-the-outside potato.
I sliced the potatoes nice and thin using a mandoline (go buy one - they're fantastic!) and layered them in a small skillet. I drizzled a bit of butter on them as I built the layers and added a pinch of salt and pepper now and again, as well.
When I got to the top I sprinkled them with dill.
They went onto the stovetop for about 5 minutes and then covered, into a 375° oven for 45 minutes.
The last three or so minutes were under the broiler to crisp the top.
I inverted the pan onto a cutting board and sliced in half. They came out just as I wanted - crispy on the outside and nice and soft and buttery on the inside.
I think Peter would have approved.
Filet Mignon Roast with Sauce Béarnaise
Ah... the joys of Gift Cards...
Victor's mom got us a gift card for Christmas so I thought I would exchange it for a ridiculously-expensive piece of meat. A seasoned filet mignon roast. I mean... why not?!? I think the whole concept of gift cards is to buy something you would not normally buy yourself, and a filet roast is definitely something I would not normally buy.
Or cook and serve on a non-occasion Tuesday.
But that's the other half of the fun. Doing the unexpected.
I pan-seared the roast then put it into a 375° over for about 30 minutes. I didn't use a thermometer with this - just the look-and-touch method. After all these years, the touch is still there - perfectly rare in the center.
A filet roast on a non-occasion Tuesday requires more than mere potatoes and vegetable. I did a gorgonzola mashed yukon gold potato and French green beans with mushrooms, garlic, and almonds.
And a semi-classic Béarnaise sauce for the beef.
I have had such incredibly-good luck with blender hollandaise and blender béarnaise that I will probably never whisk one over simmering water ever again. Really.
Just too easy.
Béarnaise Sauce
- 1 shallot, minced
- 1 tsp dry tarragon (or 1 tbsp fresh)
- Pinch black pepper
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 1 stick butter
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 tbsp tarragon vinegar
Place shallot, tarragon, pepper, and wine in small saucepan. Reduce to about 1 1/2 tablespoons of liquid. Strain.
Melt the butter, keeping it hot.
Add egg yolks and tarragon vinegar to blender. Mix. With blender running at high speed, slowly dribble in the hot butter. When butter is all added, whirl in the wine reduction.
Enjoy.
The potatoes were simply boiled and mashed with a bit of gorgonzola, butter, milk, salt, and pepper. I rarely peel the potatoes and I like lumps. Your mileage may vary.
The green beans were steamed and then sauteed with mushrooms, fresh minced garlic, and a handful of sliced almonds. A bit of salt and pepper finished them off.
Not bad for a non-occasion Tuesday dinner.