What I Made for Dinner :: Meatloaf

My mother makes a mean meatloaf. I grew up eating her fantastic version so it was never an "Ugh! Meatloaf!" kind of dish for me. It was moist and juicy, but not soft and squishy like there was too much wet bread in it. And she always put a surprise in her loaf: either a whole hard boiled egg or an entire sausage!

And because I was a spoiled, ungrateful child, I never learned to make any of my mom's amazing dishes. So, when it came time for me to make meatloaf on my own, I had no idea how to make it. In fact, I was so clueless, my first attempt entailed me slapping a package of ground meat into a pan and throwing it in the oven. Yes, just ground meat.

Thankfully, I've learned a bit about cooking since then and my few attempts at making meatloaf have been edible. Tonight's version is from Nina Planck's The Real Food Cookbook: Traditional Dishes for Modern Cooks and it's a keeper for its ease and tastiness. My one tweak would be to not use two whole slices of bread; I wish she had given an exact measurement of how much breadcrumbs to use.

Ingredients:

• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery stalk (optional)
• 1 small bunch parsley or sage
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• salt & pepper
• 2 slices bread
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 pound ground pork --> my version had Italian sausage instead (see Step 5 below)
• 2 eggs
• ketchup or tomato jam

Directions:

1. Heat the oven to 350°F
2. Dice the onion, carrot, celery, and herbs.
3. Sauteé the vegetables in olive oil until soft. (I only used a tablespoon or so of olive oil because of the high fat content of the ground meat I used.) Season with salt & pepper. 
4. Toast the bread, let it cool and dry out, and make into bread crumbs using a food processor.
5. In a separate bowl, mix the ground meat, eggs, and bread crumbs. Instead of the ground pork, I used Italian sausage, so I took it out of the casing and mixed it really well with the other three ingredients. Combine the sauteéd vegetables with the meat mixture.
6. Spray a loaf pan with non-stick spray (mine is olive oil spray), and coat the bottom of the pan with ketchup or tomato jam. Pack the meat mixture firmly into the pan and spread more tomato jam or ketchup on top. 
7. Bake for an hour, or until the meatloaf is bubbling. Let it cool a bit before serving.

[The ketchup looks like a ghastly shade of red, but it keeps the meatloaf moist in the oven.]

The Real Food Cookbook: Traditional Dishes for Modern Cooks
by Nina Planck
photographs by Katherine Wolkoff 
published by Bloomsbury © 2014
246 pages; $32.00