Chinese Meatloaf and the Pig Story

When my DH was still working - this has been more than 10+ years ago now - Fay was one of the women who worked in the office (DH sold computer chips for Intel). She lived on the outskirts of our county on a small ranch. Her children were young teens then, and the family was active in 4-H. The H's stand for Head, Heart, Hand, and Health. It's a youth organization, centered mostly around farming or ranching families, along the lines of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, except the kids learn skills for raising livestock (like cows, sheep, chickens, etc.). They do service projects just like scouting does, but still the day to day work is all about farm projects.

Fay had a son who wanted to raise a pig. And usually, the deal is that the kids raise the animals, knowing from the beginning that they'll be sold at the County Fair. Or at a livestock auction. So Fay offhandedly mentioned to DH that her boys were going to be selling a pig - their pig - at the Fair that summer. She also told us that we'd be paying a fairly premium price for the pig, but would we be interested in buying a half or a whole pig? She explained that the pig was mostly hand raised, and that part of the price is tax deductible somehow. Her son would be caring for it from day one on their ranch, the best feed, exercised well, pens cleaned out, etc. We talked it over, and Cherrie and I agreed to buy a half a pig. Fay would buy the other half. We signed up to buy it in the Fall when the pig was a little piglet. Months and months went by, and I'd forgotten all about this until one day Fay phoned to tell us that the pig was going to the Fair the next day. Oops. And that we would need to pay up in full right away. That's when we learned how BIG the pig was. Something like 400+ pounds. Somehow I'd pictured a sweet little, demure thing, maybe 100 pounds or so. Ah well. Live and learn. Pigs are not hogs, but they're gosh darned BIG.

The next day Fay phoned with the price and Cherrie and I mailed our checks immediately. Meanwhile, we needed to decide how we'd like to have the pig butchered - well, not how exactly, but what kind of cuts. We were faxed a page from the butchering firm, and we looked it over carefully to decide on chops, ribs, roasts, breakfast sausage, Italian seasoned sausage, plain ground pork, even hams smoked or raw, and bacon. We needed to specify how much of each. Of course, some things we didn't know - like how many pounds of baby backs there are in a half a pig. It was quite perplexing figuring that out. We faxed back the page, and they told us to come pick it up a few days hence, depending on the smoke house schedule. The 4-H group used a company almost in Northwest Riverside (that's about 50 miles away), out in the boonies, to do the butchering.

THEN, we got a note from Fay's son, including the tax deduction information, and he thanked us for buying PETUNIA. Oh my. Petunia. When we heard her name was Petunia, we wanted to back out. To say no, you can't have butchered Petunia! How could we possible buy a slaughtered pig with the name of Petunia? Sounds inhuman. Like you're destroying a famous cartoon character. But we had to - after all, we'd agreed to do this and we'd already paid for it. It was too late, of course.

For several years we bought an animal from Fay's son and one of us had to drive out to this butcher, with the car filled with ice chests. It was always summertime, so we needed to keep the stuff cold. They did freeze all the meat for us - that is a nice service - and it was all labeled well. Cherrie and I figured out which was which - hers and mine - and we began enjoying the pig. PETUNIA. <very big, sad faces here> I think Petunia was the very best tasting pig we had. For a couple more years we shared another pig. Cherrie bought a half by herself one year. His name was Tootsie Roll. Fay's sons also raised lambs a couple of times too. Generally, with whatever kind of meat, we used the nice cuts first, seemed like. The chops, the roasts. Even the Italian sausage. Unless we used the ham prior, for a special occasion, it usually waited until Easter to be served. Some years it was too salty for me, so in subsequent years I asked for less smoking, less salt, which the butcher was kind enough to accommodate.

So all of this story is leading up to how this recipe came to be. Cherrie had somehow, one year, ordered a LOT of ground pork. I mean a lot. We learned over the years what we preferred - the chops, roasts, even the ribs, not so much the hams or the numerous packages of seasoned sausage. We could order the ground pork in whatever sized package we wanted - I always ordered in one-pound ones. But they often got rolled to the back of the shelves (the freezer) and began to accumulate. There are only so many recipes you can use with pounds and pounds of ground pork. Unseasoned, fairly lean, but still, it's ground pork. The only constant was meatloaf. But usually that's a mixture of beef, veal and pork, or some semblance of such. Veal is not very accessible these days and way too pricey anyway, so basically you're down to ground beef and ground pork (or you could add ground turkey or chicken too). So, really, how much pork can you use up in ONE meatloaf. Two pounds maybe. When you have perhaps 25 pounds of ground pork in the freezer, that's a heck of a lot of meatloaf.

So, Cherrie raved about this recipe for Chinese Meatloaf, and she was delighted because the single recipe used a full pound of ground pork. She'd found the recipe in the Los Angeles Times (this has been years and years ago, now, and it's not available online). She's changed it just a bit, but mostly it's the original recipe: ground beef, pork, a lot of Napa cabbage, cilantro, fresh ginger, Asian seasonings, and some Hoisin sauce on top. I'd gone online to see if I could find the recipe, and did, but mostly found recipes for a meatloaf using lots of cream soup cans and bean sprouts. Yuck. This version is ever so much more authentic and tasty.

Cook's Notes: Cherrie has added another cup of Napa cabbage to her version (the one below), and she likes to put a bit of Hoisin on the top of the meatloaf when it first goes in the oven. Not much, but about 2 tablespoons. You'll want to use a large baking dish, like an oval or round Pyrex. Mold the meatloaf into the dish so it has space around the sides to exude the juice. The meatloaf generates a lot of liquid, so make sure it's high enough sided that it doesn't spill over. Halfway through the baking, you'll want to pour off the fat. I suspect a lot of the liquid is juice from all the cabbage, but still, you'd like it removed since the fat is swimming in that water anyway. Then when the meatloaf is done, smear the top with a bunch more Hoisin sauce, because that's the part you crave (like the ketchup part on a traditional American meatloaf). The meatloaf makes a somewhat soft texture (from all the cabbage), so let it cool for a bit before slicing and serving. She serves it with basmati or jasmine rice in which she's shaved some carrots, and a green salad to which she adds some kind of citrus, like Mandarin oranges from the can, or some wedges of fresh orange or tangerine. Thanks Cherrie, for sharing your great recipe.

Chinese Meatloaf
Recipe: adapted from my friend Cherrie S.
Servings: 8
1 pound lean ground beef
1 pound ground pork
5 cups Napa Cabbage -- chopped
1/2 cup cilantro -- minced
1/4 cup ginger root -- minced
1/2 cup green onion -- minced
1 tablespoon salt [next time I'll use less, probably 2 t.]
2 tablespoons hot chili sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 large eggs -- beaten [I might use 3]
4 tablespoons Hoisin sauce
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Combine beef, pork, cabbage, cilantro, ginger, green onions, salt, chile sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce and eggs in bowl and mix well. Press into a large baking dish (with sides). Spread about 2 tablespoons of Hoisin sauce on the top of the meatloaf.
3. Bake for 1 hour or up to 90 minutes, removing halfway through to drain off the fat.
4. Remove from oven and brush top and sides with additional Hoisin sauce. Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes before cutting and serving.
NOTES : The Napa cabbage seems like a lot, and it does generate a lot of liquid, but it adds a wonderful lightness to the meatloaf. Don't omit it.
Serving Ideas : Serve with rice (white or brown) with some grated carrot in it. Also with a green salad with some citrus in it.
Per Serving: 392 Calories; 29g Fat (67.0% calories from fat); 23g Protein; 9g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 137mg Cholesterol; 1581mg Sodium. Exchanges: 0 Grain(Starch); 3 Lean Meat; 1/2 Vegetable; 4 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.
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Tuscan Chicken (not) Soup

Why would you think a soup would be named Tuscan CHICKEN Soup when there isn't any chicken in it? Beats me! But, I'm being true to the original recipe, which called it Tuscan Chicken Soup. Even though it has beef in it.

When the instructor, Patty Padawar, explained this soup, she must have had some kind of explanation, but it's nothing that stuck in my head, nor did I write anything on my notes. The originator of this recipe must have had a reason, right? Oh well. Whether it's chicken or beef, it's just a plain old good soup.

This recipe came from a cooking class at Sur la Table, and was a compilation of some of the cooking school's "favorites." How could I not go to a class that culled through hundreds of cooking class recipes and pulled out the best of the best? Only one of the recipes was one where I'd attended the class (that was Joanne Weir's Sicilian Tuna Salad, which I've already posted here on my blog).

I'm a real sucker for soups. I've loved them always, but over the last 10 years or so I've found them to be such a time saver and they make a very full, tasty and easy meal. We don't eat many bean soups just because neither of us need the packed carbs at our age. But, I love vegetable soups, chicken soups, beef soups, squash soups too.

This one is a mixture of ground beef, escarole, fresh fennel, onions, and orzo pasta. A nice combination. If you don't know if you like fennel, trust me on this - fennel once cooked is very mellow. There isn't even an inkling of anise flavor in this soup once it's been simmered awhile. And, as always, this soup is much better the next day if you can plan ahead!

The soup also has one added touch that I'd never seen done before: just before serving you slice a plank of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, using a cheese plane, and place it in the bottom of the soup bowl. Then you ladle the hot soup on top and within a minute the cheese is mostly melted, although it doesn't "stir" into the soup at all. It's best when your spoon just lifts a little bit of the cheese with a bite of soup. Be sure to tell guests so they don't scrape the bottom and get an entire mouthful of cheese.

Actually, this time I used some ground chicken (a third) to this soup in addition to ground beef (two thirds). And I added some celery too, just, well, because. The soup is low in calorie, although I don't think this serves as many as the recipe indicates. We eat about 1 & 1/2 cups per serving, and I think the recipe assumes less. I made a double batch so I'd have leftovers. And this soup freezes well to join others in my soup library. That is, if there are any by the time we finish tonight's dinner.

Tuscan Chicken (no, Beef) Soup
Recipe By :Patty Padawar, cooking insructor
Servings: 8
3/4 pound lean ground beef -- or veal
1 small fennel bulb -- chopped
1 medium onion -- chopped
2-3 whole cloves garlic -- minced
4 cups low sodium chicken broth
2 cups low sodium beef broth
2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano -- crushed
2 whole bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup orzo
4 cups escarole -- shredded
4 ounces Parmesan cheese -- shaved in planks

salt -- to taste

1. In a large saucepan or pot, cook the ground beef, onions, fennel and garlic over high heat, stirring as needed for about 5 minutes, until meat is browned and vegetables are softened. Drain off excess fat.
2. Add broths, water and seasonings and simmer for 10 minutes. Bring up to a gentle boil, add the orzo and cook 10 more minutes, stirring twice.

3. Remove bay leaves, add the escarole and remove from the heat. Taste and add salt if needed, or more pepper. Stir to blend in. Divide the cheese planks into serving bowls, ladle the hot soup on the cheese and serve.
NOTES : To make cheese planks: use a cheese plane or sharp vegetable peeler. If you have leftovers, taste it when you reheat it as you may need to add additional water or broth.
Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 275 Calories; 13g Fat (43.8% calories from fat); 24g Protein; 14g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 43mg Cholesterol; 586mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1/2 Grain(Starch); 3 Lean Meat; 1/2 Vegetable; 1 1/2 Fat.

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Cabbage Patch Stew

Okay, friends. Listen up. I'm sharing today one of my very favorite recipes ever. I've been making this soup/stew since about 1966. That's 40 years. Wow. Even surprises me! So why have I waited 6 months to tell you about it, you ask? Simple. It wasn't soup season. This is one of those dishes that sticks to the ribs. Hearty. Hot. If I had a restaurant, say, Carolyn's Country Kitchen, this would be at the top of the menu as Carolyn's signature soup. Or stew. Or stoup, as Rachel Ray calls these kinds of concoctions.

This is so much of a favorite that it's going onto my Top Fav's listed down the right column. Now, you need to love soup and stew to like this recipe. And vegetables. And cumin (although you could leave that out). To me, the cumin is an important component, however, even though it wasn't in the original recipe; that was one of my additions. And you need to like mashed potatoes.

Many of you know how much I like soups, and that I keep a regular stock of soups in my frozen soup library (see my post about my soup library here). The weather has finally cooled off here in So. California, and my fancy turned to soups right away.

This recipe is very easy. A tad different than the norm. It came from a 1954, small, Betty Crocker cookbook. I even remember when I first made it. In Fallon, Nevada. Why I was there is another story, and why I should remember that, I don't know, other than I fell in l-o-v-e with this soup!

Here it is in the pot, stewing away. Note the thickness to it - I had just added the cabbage. Over the years I've adapted it with my own additions (garlic, cumin, shrooms, some heat, etc.) but the basics are the same. A ground beef (or turkey or chicken) and vegetable soup (cabbage, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and kidney beans) with a mound of buttermilk-enhanced mashed potatoes on top. As you eat it, the mashed potatoes just begin to kind of melt into the soup. This recipe is very forgiving. You don't like cabbage? Fine, leave it out. Same with mushrooms. Add corn. Or substitute something else or just leave out the things you don't care for. But, when you prepare it, it needs to have a thick consistency - not a lot of liquid, in other words, but mostly vegies. Here, below, it's in the bowl, ready for the mound of mashed potatoes. The soup mixture is not thickened (like a creamed soup where you've added flour), but it's "thick" with vegetables.

I make this in a very large quantity when I do it because it's a real winner for freezing. I make the mashed potatoes too, and pile them into smaller Ziploc freezer bags (doing the same procedure, flattening them out so they freeze and defrost easily), then the soup goes into a larger bag. When I want a quick dinner I just take out one soup and one potato bag to defrost.

Now mashed potatoes become a weird duck when you freeze them. They lose all their form and become mostly a liquid. So just a warning here - don't be alarmed and think the potatoes are ruined. Once you heat them up, the starch firms them right back up again. Amazing, but true. Sometimes I even put the potato bag (smaller) into the larger Ziploc bag, then pour the soup around it. Then it's all contained in one package. But then you can't get so much soup into the larger bag, so I usually separate them.

About 7-8 months ago, before I had my own blog, I was reading Tummy Treasure, Erika's blog. She was trying to make some thrifty meals, so I emailed her this recipe. She liked it so well she wrote up a blog post about it. I was so thrilled! Wow, my recipe in lights! If you'd like to read it, click here.

If soup season has arrived at your house, I highly recommend this one. A lot. Our son-in-law, Todd, is visiting us at the moment, and he ate two full bowls last night and would have licked the bottom if he could. My suggestion: you need to order up a bowl right away.

Cabbage Patch Stew
Recipe: Originally from a Betty Crocker cookbook.
Serving Size : 8
SOUP:

1 pound ground beef (or chicken, turkey or soy protein chunks)
2 medium onions -- sliced thin
1 1/2 c cabbage -- shredded or sliced thinly
1 1/2 c celery -- diced
2 cloves garlic -- minced
2 c kidney beans -- canned, undrained
2 c tomatoes -- canned, undrained
2 c fresh mushrooms -- sliced
2 tsp chili powder -- or more to taste
1 tsp ground cumin - - or more to taste (I usually add about 1 T.)
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 c chicken broth - - or water
1 tsp beef broth concentrate -- diluted in water

salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 c water

POTATOES:
10 med potatoes
1/2 c buttermilk

salt & pepper to taste
1 tbsp butter

1. Brown ground beef over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, cabbage and celery and cook until vegetables have lost their raw color. Add beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and seasonings (and some water if it appears to be too thick) and continue to simmer for 15-25 minutes. The original recipe called for the addition of 2 cups of water, but I'd recommend about 1 cup, maybe 1-1/2 cups.
2. Meanwhile, boil potatoes until fork tender and mash them using the butter, buttermilk and salt & pepper to taste

3. Serve about 1 to 1-1/2 cups stew per person in large bowls, then add scoops of hot potatoes on top.
Per Serving: 505 Calories; 18g Fat (30.9% calories from fat); 26g Protein; 63g Carbohydrate; 16g Dietary Fiber; 53mg Cholesterol; 155mg Sodium. Exchanges: 3 1/2 Grain(Starch); 2 Lean Meat; 1 Vegetable; 0 Non-Fat Milk; 2 1/2 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.
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Want a little kick in your meatballs?

(photo from kitchengardeners.org)

This is about chiles. You want a bit of chile heat in your meatballs? This is your recipe, then. Usually I make these during cool weather, not in the summer, as the spicy heat seems to taste better when the rain is falling or the wind is blowing. But, there's no reason why this couldn't be eaten any time of year.

We'd been on a hiatus from eating beef when I made this some years ago. The recipe was in Bon Appetit, and just hit a taste button with me and I promptly went out to buy the ingredients. I made a moderate batch of them and froze the remaining in dinner-sized portions. I freeze the rice in a separate quart-sized Ziploc bag but put it with the meatballs in the gallon sized bags. Then my meal is all together.

This could be made with ground turkey or chicken, or a mixture. It's the little bit of capers in the middle that make the meatballs unusual. And the chipotle chiles. Then the fresh tomato sauce is also different. Fresh Tomato Sauce merely means you use fresh tomatoes and you don't cook it very long. So the sauce retains some semblance of a "fresh" taste. It's easy and delicious. Summertime is a good season to use up your abundance of home grown tomatoes.

As I mentioned, the recipe called for rice (I use brown basmati), but it could also go over mashed potatoes just as easily. Or pasta for that matter. But you might want some kind of carb to soak up the good sauce. Generally I make more sauce than the recipe says, but it's truly not necessary unless you like sauce like we do.

Chipotle chiles are an ancient condiment, I'm sure, with all the Mexican or South American cuisines that include hot chiles. They're merely jalapeno chiles that have been smoked and canned or bottled in an adobo tomato sauce. They're spicy. Very spicy. I'd open a can and use a mere teaspoon or two, put it in the refrigerator and months later would discover this moldy messy gunk in there. So I was overjoyed when at one of the cooking classes I attended, the instructor suggested piling the chipotles into a plastic bag and freezing the leftovers. Then when you need some, you just use a spoon and scrape out whatever you need. Very easy, and certainly a better use for the contents of the can. I don't cook Mexican food very often - we have such wonderful restaurants here in our part of the world that I don't need to make it. But I use lots and lots of Mexican food products in my cooking. And this meatball dish certainly isn't Mexican particularly.

Are any of you enjoying Rick Bayless' cooking program on public television? I've been Tivo-ing it for awhile, and have enjoyed it immensely. Rick is a famous American chef from Oklahoma, although he lives in Chicago now, where he has two very popular Mexican restaurants. He's a very unassuming kind of guy - I don't detect a bit of ego in his style. He just adores Mexican cuisine, particularly from the Yucatan. He uses copious amounts of chipotle and other chiles in nearly everything he makes. Some chiles I'd never heard of. Rick has published six cookbooks. (Just an aside here for those of you who follow my cookbook obsession, I own not one single Rick Bayless cookbook . . . aren't you proud of me?) This series, with the recipes from the PBS series is from his book called Mexican Everyday, although the series is called Mexico One Plate at a Time.

My hands are particularly sensitive to chiles. No matter how careful I am with cutting up a chile, I always manage to feel some heat from it - usually underneath my fingernails. Not everybody has this problem, so this is just a friendly warning. I use plastic gloves. The staff in my dentist's office has been kind enough (thanks Joan and others) to give me a box of their gloves every couple of years. They're a must for me. Particularly with the chipotles. Getting a little bit of that spicy chipotle sauce under my fingernails can be so painful for hours and hours.

So, if you're looking for something a bit different, give this a try. Use gloves. :-)

Chipotle Meatballs in Fresh Tomato Sauce
Recipe: Bon Appetit, May, 2003
Servings: 6
3 pounds plum tomatoes -- chopped
1 medium white onion -- chopped
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons chipotle chile canned in adobo -- minced
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 pound lean ground beef
1 pound ground pork
1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons oregano
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons capers -- drained
1. Puree first five ingredients in blender (in batches, if necessary) until almost smooth.
2. Heat oil in large pot over medium-high heat, add tomatoes, cover and simmer for 10 minutes just to blend flavors and thicken slightly. Stir occasionally and season with salt and pepper. This can be prepared up to 3 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate.
3. In a large bowl combine the beef and pork and next six ingredients. Add 1/2 cup of the cooled tomato mixture and stir well. Using your hands, form about 1 rounded tablespoon of meat mixture into a ball. Insert 2-3 capers into the center and reshape to cover them. Repeat with remaining meat mixture and capers.
4. Bring sauce to a simmer over medium heat. Add meatballs, cover and simmer until meatballs are cooked through, about 20 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, prepare a batch of basmati rice. I use brown basmati rice because it's better for us. Spoon rice into a large shallow bowl and ladle meatballs and sauce on top.
NOTES : At a cooking class I learned to open a can of chipotle chiles, divide them up into small plastic bags, place those in a larger plastic bag that can be labeled. Since you never use much chipotle for any one dish, at least you'll always have it on hand. The chipotle adds a subtle, but important kick to this dish. I make this in at least double quantity and freeze both meatballs (in sauce) and rice in separate bags, and on evenings when I don't want to cook, it's really easy to pop out one of each bag and there's dinner with a vegetable and/or salad.

Per Serving : 511 Calories; 38g Fat (66.6% calories from fat); 30g Protein; 13g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 147mg Cholesterol; 635mg Sodium. Exchanges: 0 Grain(Starch); 4 Lean Meat; 2 Vegetable; 5 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.

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Bifteck Hache a la Lyonnaise - aka French Hamburgers

(photo from tallgrassbeef.com)

I probably should start out this posting with the sentence: I love thyme. It is this recipe that introduced me to its virtues. And I've been a frequent user ever since.

My memory served me poorly on this recipe. I've been making it for so long, and it's been written into my old recipe binder for so many years that I didn't remember who gave it to me. When I did a search for the title (in French) sure enough, I found it. This is Julia Child's recipe from her first major tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. I found a write-up about the recipe on the Julia-Julie Project (the young woman who decided to methodically cook the entire contents of Julia's book in a year, all the while blogging about it, and she subsequently wrote a book based on her blog). I tried to read her blog a couple of years ago (after I read Julia's memoir, My Life in France, written by her nephew, which I just loved), but this woman, named Julie, has such a foul mouth I just couldn't continue. (I'm not even going to insert a link to her site because I disliked it so much.) I don't understand why people feel they have to use the f and s words in every sentence.

But, I also found the recipe on one of my favorite blogs, Sweet Napa. If you want to see what these French Hamburgers look like when finished, click on over to her blog to see it.

So, obviously, this isn't anything original. This has been a staple in my cooking repertoire for 40 years. I've even served it to guests (I double the sauce in that case), and whenever I do make these I make extra and freeze at least 4 patties so I can make them just by defrosting. They aren't difficult. Not in the least, although they do take a bit more time than just making patties from raw meat and cooking them.

Since I haven't read Julia Child's take on using minced beef (raw), I don't know the origin of this either. But she recommends using lean beef, then you ADD butter to the raw meat. Interesting, huh? Most current chefs and cooking magazines recommend using nothing leaner than ground chuck. But, realize that when you cook these, if the cold butter is in the middle, when the heat finally reaches the butter, it melts right into the meat, not out into the pan. That's what gives the meat it's richness. But first you saute some onion and butter, cool it, then combine that with egg and thyme to make thick patties. It's necessary to allow these to chill a little bit (with the egg to hold it together). That's an important step. Then you dredge them in flour, then fry them up until done to your liking.

You remove them from the pan and set in a warm oven while you make the sauce. Then you drain the fat from the pan, and add wine or broth. I usually use red wine, but have also used sherry. You can also use broth, or white wine for that matter. You deglaze the pan, scraping up any of those pan juices and little sticky parts, until the wine has evaporated some. Remove from heat and add some additional butter, in bits. Pour into a HOT little pitcher to serve at the table. The recipe says pour the sauce on the burgers, but then most of the sauce ends up on the platter, not on the burger, so I prefer a pitcher.

I like serving this with pasta, just simple buttered pasta. Because some of that sauce tastes great with the pasta. Then with a bright colored veg - like broccoli, or green beans perhaps. And a salad. This used to be - back in the days when nobody thought anything of eating beef 3-4 nights a week - a frequent visitor on my regular family menu. Now it's a treat.

French Hamburgers
(aka Bifteck Hache a la Lyonnaise)
Recipe: Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1
Servings: 4
BEEF PATTIES
3/4 c onion -- minced
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 lb lean ground beef
2 tbsp butter -- softened
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp thyme
1 whole egg

DREDGING MIXTURE:
1/2 c flour

1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp vegetable oil

SAUCE:
1/2 cup red wine -- or sherry or port or broth
2 tablespoons butter
1. Cook minced onion slowly for 10 minutes in butter, until tender, but not brown. Pour into a mixing bowl. Add the ground beef, additional butter, and seasonings to the onions and beat just until combined. Form into 4 patties, 3/4 inch thick. Cover with wax paper and chill several hours.
2. Just before sauteeing the patties, gently roll them in the flour. In a large, heavy frying pan, melt butter and oil, bring to a moderately high temperature and add patties. Sear them until they're brown on both sides, then reduce heat until they're done to your liking. This usually takes longer than I think - about 15 minutes.
3. Remove patties to a heated oven. Pour fat out of the pan and add sherry (or other wine), scraping up the pan juices, until it's reduced to a thick syrup. Take off the heat and add the butter and serve in a small pitcher to pour over the patties.
4. Note: the original recipe calls for red wine, white wine, vermouth or beef stock for the sauce. Use either red wine, sherry or light port.
NOTES : Originally this dish was called "Bifteck Hache a la Lyonnaise" but we always called them French Hamburgers. I believe it is a Julia Child recipe from way-back, when we didn't care (or know) much about watching fat. But, it's a wonderful company meal. I've altered the original a little by reducing some of the butter. When making these I usually buy extra beef and make additional patties to freeze.

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 766 Calories; 60g Fat (73.4% calories from fat); 34g Protein; 15g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 235mg Cholesterol; 1160mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1 Grain(Starch); 4 1/2 Lean Meat; 1/2 Vegetable; 9 Fat.

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Nothing but Old Fashioned Sweet & Sour Meatloaf

We may be one of the few cultures to make baked meatloaf. Lots of other cuisines include a ground meat stuffed something (pastry, cabbage, etc.) or small orbs of some kind of chopped meat, but we Americans appear to have invented meatloaf (really, we did), meaning we started with finely chopped raw meat. Mostly I learned, earlier cooks used cooked meat to make any kind of chopped meat dish. I wanted to know more about the history of the dish, and found this:

The raw, ground meat commonly used to make today's American meat loaf has a humble heritage. In the 19th century, we know the Industrial Revolution made it possible for ground meat to be manufactured and sold to the public at a very low cost. At first, many Americans were slow to purchase raw ground meat products and generally regarded them with suspicion. Cooks continued to mince their meat (often already cooked, as was the practice for centuries) by hand. Companies selling meat grinders to home consumers at the turn of the century endeavored to change this practice by providing recipe books to promote their products.

Regarded as the ultimate comfort food, there are certainly lots of types of meatloaf. Some with fillers and additions (bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, carrots, onions, eggs, red bell pepper) and many variations of toppings (savory tomato, catsup type, even teriyaki style). But the most common is with a tomato-based sauce on top. I'm no different than the crowd, so this may not be one of the recipes you're going to try since you may already have a favorite sauce. But for me it's simply the sweet and sour sauce that is a must here. The recipe came from one of my old 1960's era military officer's wives cookbooks, and since I first made it, this has been the standard by which any and all meatloaves are measured. In our family, this is THE recipe, and mashed potatoes on the side are an absolute must. No rice. No pasta. It must be mashed potatoes.

And generally I increase the sauce because everybody loves to put more sauce on the potatoes. So early on I began doubling it. No problem. It's easy enough to make. I've made this with partly ground turkey, and it's also very good. I think my daughter Sara makes it with all turkey and her family loves it that way. When I make it now I use 50/50 beef and ground turkey. That gives the meatloaf a little firmer texture, which is what we (and most people, I surmise) miss about eating ground turkey. It just doesn't have the "tooth" to it that beef does. I've made this using Splenda (it's fine) and with Brown Sugar Twin (also fine). So we can still have this but with less carbs.

Back when our children were teenagers we asked each of the kids to choose a weeknight and be responsible for preparing dinner for the family. (We're a blended family, so between DH and I we have 3 children, two daughters and a son, all in their late 30's now and for most of their teenage years we all lived together.) We had to plan ahead so the ingredients were on hand, and mostly the kids were pretty good about it. They got to fix one of their favorite meals, and we were all appreciative (at least I think we were). I will tell you that this item was a real "regular" on the menu. Everyone in our family loves this meatloaf and they all learned how to make it because they had to do it.

Meatloaf with Sweet & Sour Sauce
Recipe from a Military Wives' Cookbook from the 1960's
Servings: 6
MEATLOAF:
1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef or mixed with ground turkey
1 whole egg -- beaten
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2 ounces tomato sauce
1 medium onion -- minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons Italian herbs
SAUCE:
4 ounces tomato sauce
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1. Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl combine beef, egg, crumbs, tomato sauce, onion and spices. Mix just enough to combine the ingredients; no more. Mound into a loaf shape and place in baking dish somewhat larger than the meatloaf with at least 1-inch sides. It's better to use a higher sided dish than a lower, flatter dish.
2. In same bowl combine the sauce ingredients: tomato sauce, water, vinegar, sugar, mustard and Worcestershire. Mix to blend in the brown sugar, then gently pour over the meatloaf. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then slice and serve with more sauce on each slice.
Notes: Over the years I began to double the sauce recipe because we loved to spoon the sauce over the mashed potatoes, and we never seemed to have enough sauce. The original recipe said you could use either tomato paste or sauce, but we prefer the sauce. If using paste, increase the water in the sauce as it will be too thick. You want the sauce to stick some to the meatloaf, although most of it drips down into the pan.

Per Serving: 378 Calories; 25g Fat (60.3% calories from fat); 23g Protein; 14g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 120mg Cholesterol; 564mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1/2 Grain(Starch); 3 Lean Meat; 1/2 Vegetable; 3 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.
To view a printable recipe, click on title at top. (photo from sourcherryfarms.com)