Scarborough Fairly Meatloaf - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme!

You may not be altogether surprised to hear that the name of this meatloaf is one of my own devising. Of course, it's because the herbs involved are parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. LOL

You see, I was after a midweek, no frills, relatively plain, good and savoury, tasty meatloaf that could be served with some denomination of potato dish and a selection of vegetables. A meat & three veg. meatloaf, if you like!

I used beef and pork mince in a two thirds/one third combination because the pork mince just serves to lighten the texture of the beef. Adding loads of extra flavours - mustard, herbs, onion & garlic granules - helped pep up the savouriness and my now indispensable method of draining off the cooking juices halfway through the cooking time as ever, resulted in a good firm loaf. I do so hate meatloaf that you could serve with a spoon. Gak!

Now you might be wondering why I used the onion & garlic granules instead of adding fresh onion and fresh garlic. Good question! I find that fresh onion has to be almost grated or minced, so as not to leave small pieces of quite firm, almost crunchy, onion behind in the mix. Some people might like that, but I'm not a fan. Grating or mincing the onion just serves to increase the liquid in the mix, which I pour off at half time anyway so its not a good method.

It's a similar thing with garlic. I'm allergic to raw garlic, so it has to be incredibly finely chopped to wind up cooked sufficiently for me. Hitting on a piece of semi raw garlic is so overpowering to the other flavours, that again, it's just not a good method for me. However, if I add onion and garlic granules - which are simply dehydrated and finely minced - I get all the benefit of the flavour and none of the drawbacks. It's a personal taste thing. If you like to find onion or garlic in your meatloaf, or have the time and energy to pre-cook and caramelise them, then by all means go ahead and use fresh!

Oh and I'm also assured that this meatloaf is fairly epic when used, cold, as part of a sandwich. Happy days!

SCARBOROUGH FAIRLY MEATLOAF   (Serves 5)

Ingredients :

1 bread crust, blitzed into breadcrumbs
500g reduced fat beef mince
250g pork mince
1 large egg
1 heaped tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
pinch of sea salt
pinch of ground black pepper
1 tsp onion granules
half a tsp garlic granules
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped fine (dried parsley would work too - use 1 tsp)
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp dried rosemary
half a tsp dried thyme
1 tsp beef stock powder or 1 tsp Bovril.

Method :

Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4.

Place all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix together well, using your hands.  Try not to over-mix or the meatloaf will become tough, but ensure all the ingredients are distributed well across the mix.

Line a 1lb loaf tin with silver foil and pack the meatloaf mix in well.  I find it best to put half in and press into the corners, pushing it well down and ensuring all air bubbles are out, before adding the second half and repeating the process.

Using your fingertips, create a small space along the edge of the mix between the loaf tin and the ingredients - a gutter, effectively!  This will help when it comes to draining off the excess liquid, later.

Place onto the middle oven shelf and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the meatloaf from the oven and carefully drain off any accumulated liquid.  Take care not to let the loaf slip from within the tin, into the sink!

Place back into the oven for another 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and, using the silver foil, pull the meatloaf from inside the loaf tin.  Place onto a chopping board and carefully unwrap.  Cut the meatloaf into slices and serve with mashed potato and seasonal vegetables of your choice.

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BBQ meatloaf - man pleasing food!

This meal was born from a desire to create a "man pleasing dinner".  The notion was that having had a healthy, vegetable inclusive fish dinner the night before - and another vegetable inclusive meal to come on Sunday (tomorrow) - the menfolk might like a man pleasing dinner to keep them interested.

In fact, this meal contained the subject of this blog entry - the meatloaf - together with a fantastic cornbread (which is dealt with in the next blog post) and baked beans.

Now I don't know about your menfolk, but my menfolk like meat.  No, in fact, they like MEAT.  *chuckle*  I can understand this, as I'm a bit of a carnivore myself and do sometimes get a terrible hankering for a big lump of roast beef in which to sink my gnashers.

Quite a long way up on their "man pleasing foodstuffs" list, but below meat, is a good barbecue sauce.   We've discovered Kraft's Bulls Eye BBQ sauce, which is currently doing a pretty good job in that connection.  If anything, I find it a tiny bit sweet - but the menfolk love it and that's the main thing.

I can't claim to have invented this form of meatloaf, as like with a lot of things, I spotted a photograph on the internet that piqued my interest.  That of a meatloaf with a coating of barbecue sauce - and it looked good.

Now I have written previously about my attempts to make a firm meatloaf that doesn't require a spoon with which to serve it.  Hubby has a term for these soggy meat loaves - that of "meat porridge".  It describes the texture quite succinctly.

Fortunately for us, I discussed the problem of meat porridge with my pal Melanie (a Brit who has been in Canada for the last mumblymumble years) and who claimed to have solved the conundrum.  She decreed her meat loaves to be firm and positively perky.  Hence, I have paid attention to Mel's tutelage and gone down my own road with the flavourings - but followed the basic recipe quite closely.

Lo and behold - what do we have here?  Only a firm, sliceable, serve with a spatula and no spoon in sight, delicious meat loaf!  Thanks, Mel!

If you also have problems with meat porridge, it is well worthwhile having a read of her treatise on the subject at her blog, Rutabaga Dreams.

I had been pondering on what to use as flavourings and couldn't really come to any firm conclusions.  I knew I had to be aware of how much salt was being included - as additional sauces can often bring quite a slug of salt with them.  So salt wasn't a problem unless I overdid it.  The basic meats were two thirds beef, one third pork and a lone rasher of bacon (that had no other home to go to).  Now onion was a given - but in fact, I used two shallots for their sweetness.  The breadcrumbs were made from a combination of white and brown Polish Bakery bread - which can only be surpassed by home made bread, in my view.  I also added a little tomato ketchup, some Worcestershire sauce, some Mic's Chilli Inferno hot sauce, a teaspoonful or so of freshly ground black pepper, some dried parsley and something that you may not have at home - a teaspoonful of Essential Cuisine's mushroom stock powder.  Add an egg, mush it all together and into a loaf tin it goes!

Baking the meat loaf (at 180degC) is a simple matter of making sure it is inside another roasting tin, to catch any drips that may escape the loaf tin, then fishing it back out after 30 minutes.  Very carefully, tip the liquid away then coat the top of the meat loaf generously with your favourite barbecue sauce.  Back into the oven it goes for another 30 minutes and you're done.

The flavourings really are up to you.  You can go Italian with sun dried tomatoes, oregano and garlic, or Mexican with chillies and beans, Indian with curry spices - really, so long as you follow the "no ingredients that will leach liquid" (like tomatoes, mushrooms, courgette etc.) and include the breadcrumbs and an egg, I see no reason why your meat loaf shouldn't be as sliceable as mine turned out to be!

The menfolk both gave the meat loaf - in fact, the whole dinner - a big thumbs up, so I'd say that's job done!

BBQ MEAT LOAF   (serves 3-4)

Ingredients :

3-4 slices of dry bread, blitzed into crumbs
pinch of sea salt
half a tsp of freshly ground black pepper
half a tsp of dried parsley
500g minced lean beef
250g minced lean pork
1-2 rashers of bacon, chopped fine
1 dessertspoonful of tomato ketchup
1 tsp of hot sauce (to taste - use more if you like more)
2 tsp of Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp of stock powder of your choice (most, but not all, of a stock cube will do)
1 egg
3-4 tbsp BBQ sauce.

Method :

1.  Place all the ingredients barring the BBQ sauce into a large bowl.  Using your hand, scrunch and mix the ingredients until they are all evenly spread throughout the mix.

2.  Take a one pound loaf tin and line it with silver foil (non-stick silver foil, if you can get it, is wonderful for this!).

3.  Pack the meat mixture into the loaf tin, pressing it down firmly.

4.  Place the loaf tin inside a bigger roasting tin and into a pre-heated 180degC/350degF/Gas 4 oven for 30 minutes.

5.  At the end of the time, remove the meat loaf from the oven and carefully drain the liquid away.  (Be very careful not to let your meat loaf fall into the sink, as happened to me on one stellar occasion).

6.  Coat the surface of the meat loaf in BBQ sauce and replace into the oven for another 30 minutes.

7.  When the time is up, remove from the oven and from the loaf tin.  Carefully peel the silver foil back all around the meat loaf, but be careful of the hot liquid that will be contained therein.  Let the loaf rest for a couple of minutes - no longer than 3-4 - then slice and serve.

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Today's dinner : An emergency Sicilian!

Son & heir's plans changed suddenly and instead of being out this evening, he and a friend were going to be in for dinner after all.  This meant that what we had planned to have - a night off from cooking, complete with prawn cocktail baguettes - was abandoned and I had to get thinking about what to make instead!

It had to be something easy, with not much preparation, as following on from a busy and slightly stressful day yesterday (yes, going out for lunch is stressful, these days), I knew I'd be feeling it today.

Good old pasta.  You can't go wrong with it, it's so easy to make - whatever you put with it!  I decided upon the Sicilian Pork Ragu with Chocolate that we all love.  All you need to prepare is an onion and some basil, so it was perfect.  You can find the recipe for this quick and stress-free lovely at http://jennyeatwellsrhubarbginger.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/sicilian-pork-ragu-with-chocolate-co.html

The ragu was a little wetter than usual, largely because the pan decided to act like Mount Vesuvius and send little super hot globules of sauce flying in all directions.  I'm really not sure why this one decided to do that and others haven't, but it made simmering the sauce virtually impossible.  I really must buy a splatter guard.  I don't really want to go and see the state my cooker is in!

Dessert was a shop-bought lemon tart with additional raspberries - and hubby went a bit mad with the squirty cream and sprinkles.  He reckons everything is made better by the addition of sprinkles.  He may even be right!

BBQ Burritos using Mic's Chilli "El Loco BBQ Sauce"

I just don't know where to start to tell you about the fun we've been having with the Mic's Chilli products.

I first heard of Mic's Chilli on Twitter, where you'll find them being tweeted about by @MicsChilli (amongst others).  They are based in Ireland, which I've got to say isn't the first place you'd go to when you're considering buying either chilli sauce or barbecue sauce - but once you've found them, I would be very very surprised if you ever wanted to look elsewhere, it's that good.

Having taken delivery of a box containing one of each of their range of chilli sauces, the El Loco Barbecue Sauce and a Sweet Chilli Sauce, we've been busy getting up close and personal with them.  However, for the sake of clarity, this post deals just with the barbecue sauce - I'll get on to the other sauces in other posts, otherwise we might be here for quite some time.

Chicky & Gnocchi with garlic bread

So, do you remember the Chicken & Gnocchi we were planning to have with Sorrel Pesto, but swerved the pesto?  Well, on a whim, hubby decided to use some of the Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce on the chicken and put the gnocchi into a plain cheese sauce.  It might seem a bit of a random pairing, but oh yes, it worked.

In this instance and because he felt that the BBQ sauce might be a tad on the spicy side for the dish, he combined the sauce with a little tomato ketchup before putting it onto some pan fried chicken.  In fact, the BBQ sauce is more flavoursome than it is hot - from a spicy point of view - but as a little introduction to El Loco BBQ sauce, it was a good one.

I had planned to give the BBQ sauce its first proper trial with some BBQ Burritos - which I cooked on Saturday.

I'm a bit bored with minced beef and minced turkey, so decided to go with minced pork in this instance.  The burritos were so easy to make because the BBQ sauce is so good.  All I did was fry a large quantity of onions until they were golden brown and sweet, then I removed them from the pan and fried off the pork mince to a stage where it was caramelising.  Then the onions were added back in and the BBQ sauce was added to everything, along with 200ml of water to help everything amalgamate and to give some fluid for the mince to cook in and soften a little.  Personally, I hate gritty hard mince in something soft like a burrito - and because the mince was caramelised to accentuate its flavour, it needed to soften a little.


I'd bought some soured cream and a small pot of tomato salsa to go with the burritos - which made them more like an enchilada, but then who's counting!

I also served them with my first go at an American-style chopped salad.  From what I could gather, a "chopped salad" involved some sort of leaf, many different types of salad vegetable, plus some sort of protein involvement.  Everything is cut into small dice or just plain old chopped, then amalgamated with some kind of dressing - and served.

My chopped salad involved Little Gem lettuce, cherry tomatoes, spring onions, a Braeburn apple, some radishes, some parsley, a little cucumber, some sweetcorn and diced cheddar cheese.  Hubby made a lovely dressing of Rapeseed Oil, cider vinegar, honey & Dijon mustard that went very well indeed.

I was working on the premise that we often have cheddar cheese with chilli, so felt that a little cheese amongst the salad would go down well and provide the required "bridge" that brought the two elements of burrito and salad together.

The mince mixture, having had some 20 minutes to simmer and bubble, had reduced back down to the desired consistency.  As a last flourish, I added a can of red kidney beans and a big old handful of chopped coriander and served.

Chicky & Gnocci - yes, it was a garlic bread fest!

The very first mouthful of burrito was an instant hit of savoury/sweet, as the fabulous flavours of the BBQ sauce hit first - smokiness, garlic, paprika, followed by the molasses and sweetness from the onions, all carried by the richness of the pork mince.  The heat of the Habanero and Chipotle chillis was tempered by the soured cream and the salsa delivered that cold against the heat of the mince mixture, that made your tongue tingle.

Fabulous!  Mic's Chilli has just won over three new fans.  We don't just like it a little, we like the BBQ sauce enormously.  Hubby declared that the El Loco BBQ Sauce is the best BBQ sauce he's ever experienced - and he's been through a lot!


For me, it's not just the flavours of the sauce (which are amazingly complex), it's also the fact that the sauce is so versatile.  We've (so far) used it with pan fried chicken, pork mince, a spatchcock chicken (which will be blogged in future), on cheese on toast, in baked beans, with cold chicken and couscous, as a dipping sauce - and it has performed on all levels throughout.


As and when you have the opportunity to try it - I would impress upon you that you NEED to try this BBQ sauce.  I am sure you won't regret it.


BBQ Burritos   (makes 8)


Ingredients :


2 medium onions, sliced fine
1 tbsp olive oil
500g minced pork
freshly ground black pepper
140g good Barbecue Sauce (Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce, if you can get it!)
150-200ml hot water
400g tin of organic red kidney beans
a handful (to taste) of fresh coriander, chopped fine
8 corn wraps.

Method :

1.  Put the sliced onions into a frying pan and add the oil.  Allow to fry on a medium heat until well softened and golden brown.  Remove and retain.

2.  Turn the heat up to maximum and put the minced pork into the frying pan.  Season with the pepper and cook the pork through all its stages, as it will initially change colour, then a quantity of liquid will appear.  Continue to fry on a high heat until all the liquid has evaporated and the mince is beginning to colour.  Stir regularly, allowing the bottom layer to colour, then turning the mince over with a spatula, to set up a new bottom layer.  When you've done this some three or four times, turn the heat down to medium.


3.  Add the BBQ sauce and the water and stir to combine.  Allow the mixture to simmer and bubble gently for as long as it takes to reduce back down to a "saucy" consistency.  Remember to stir regularly, so as to prevent the sauce burning on the bottom of the pan.


4.  Add the beans and the coriander and stir to combine.  Check for flavour and seasoning and if you're happy, lay out the wraps and get filling.


5.  I usually add some soured cream and a little tomato salsa to each wrap, before wrapping them up and serving with a salad.


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