tasty meat

The word of the day is “lazy.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

I had all these big plans this week, but I got lazy. Already. My biggest big plan was to make cabbage rolls because they are so super awesome and they make lunches and leftovers all week long and no one ever went wrong with a big dish of meat. But then, I failed. I didn’t feel like it.

Then I remembered this handy tip I got awhile back from a reader named Jenn, a very funny high-school teacher from Saskatchewan, who suggested lazy cabbage rolls, and also this lazy pierogie thing I’m going to try another lazy time. I liked her idea, but I had all the stuff for non-lazy cabbage rolls, so I adapted. This is what happened. We are going to have leftovers forever.

Oh, one more thing. I used bratwurst here because I always seem to have it in my freezer, and because it’s flavourful and the point here is laziness. If you don’t have bratwurst, or if it isn’t dirt cheap at your local Polish deli, then you can use ground pork, or beef, or whatever you like, but you may want to add additional seasonings.

Lazy cabbage rolls

(Serves six to eight.)

  • 1/4 lb. bacon, chopped
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 2 cups diced carrot
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 lb. bratwurst, casing removed
  • 1 cup long-grain white rice
  • 1/2 cup chicken stock
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1 tsp. dried marjoram
  • 1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
  • Salt, to taste
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 1/2-2 lbs. green cabbage, cut into thin strips
  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella (or other mild cheese)
  • 1 cup bread crumbs

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Butter a 9″x13″ baking dish.

In a large pan over medium-high heat, fry bacon until brown and crisp. Add onions and crumble bratwurst into the pan, stirring until meat has browned. Add garlic, carrots, and rice, and then add stock to deglaze, scraping the bottom of the pan to ensure all those delicious meaty bits make their way into the sauce. Season with pepper and marjoram, then pour in the crushed tomatoes. Remove from heat and stir in parsley. Taste, and salt as desired.

Layer half of the cabbage along the bottom of the pan. Pour half of meat mixture over top, then add another layer of cabbage. Press down lightly to pack. Add the remaining meat mixture, then sprinkle with breadcrumbs and cheese.

Bake covered for 80 minutes, then remove the cover and cook for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until top is browned and bubbly. I’ll admit, the cooking time is a little longer than I like on a weeknight, so this might be something best served on Sunday night, so you can pack the leftovers for lunches.

Eat while wearing pajama pants. Know that this is going to make your entire office smell like eastern Europe tomorrow. And be okay with that. Believe me, there are worse things you could do.

Casseroles: Not totally gross?!

~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

I like the idea of casseroles. A whole meal in a single pan that will produce leftovers I can enjoy for lunch the next day? Yes please I want that. I think somehow, somewhere, the casserole went awry. I am not really sure who to blame for this – Kraft? Campbells? In any event, the casserole seems to have somehow fallen out of favour. But not around here. Here, it’s just coming back into style.

Kielbasa casserole

  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1/2 cup butter, divided
  • 1 1/2 – 2 lbs. potatoes, boiled, cooled, and cut into bite-size pieces
  • 1 lb. kielbasa sausage, cut into bite-size pieces
  • 1/2 lb. kale, stems removed and blanched
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups milk
  • 2  cups grated cheese (I used Cheddar, but you could use Swiss, or Havarti – anything you like or have in the fridge)
  • 1 tbsp. dijon mustard
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 tsp. ground black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. dried thyme
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • Salt, to taste
  • 1/4 cup bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 375°F. Thoroughly butter a 9″x13″ casserole dish.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt two tablespoons of the butter, and add onion. Sauté until translucent, then add potatoes, and cook until lightly browned. Add kielbasa, and reduce to medium heat.

In a saucepan over medium-high heat, melt remaining butter, and stir in flour until the mixture forms a paste. Whisk in milk and reduce to medium, stirring frequently until thickened, about two minutes. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of cheese, mustard, garlic, pepper, thyme, nutmeg, and salt. Taste before salting too heavily – keep in mind, your sausage will be plenty salty as well.

Add blanched kale to the potato mixture, then pour sauce over, tossing to coat. Pour mixture into casserole. Sprinkle breadcrumbs and remaining cheese over top, then slide into the oven, and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until bubbling and golden brown.

You could substitute bratwurst for the kielbasa if you wanted, sub in whatever kind of cheese you have or prefer, add mushrooms if you wanted, or use spinach instead of kale depending on the season. This was a nice, hearty, easy meal, and Nick has asked that it be made again. Because it’s so saucy, you might try over egg noodles or braised cabbage, or with a side of crusty bread to wipe your plate clean.

It’s homey, and sort of rustic, and I want to call this a casserole because it reminds me of something you’d serve on a weeknight, to your family or an apartment full of hungry friends, and not just for it’s delightfully cheap and easy attributes. And for all that cream sauce? It’s surprisingly not heavy or unpleasant once it’s in.

So, anyway. I think it’s time we made casseroles cool again. You in?

Things that are delicious: Pork belly.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Right up until the Olympics, every talking head on television and quote in the paper was saying that Vancouver would be nightmarish during the Olympics, and that residents should expect delays and difficulties getting around, and that they should leave their cars at home. The whole city (me included!) bought the hype, and now it’s quite easy to get around everywhere but downtown, where there isn’t much fun to be had on a Wednesday night anyway. So last night, I dragged poor, sick-day Nick out with some friends to the Westender Korean Café on Denman Street, where there is a place that only sells pork belly, and for which we had coupons that bought us 50% more pork belly.

Do you know what a pork hangover feels like? It’s as glamorous as it sounds.

The Westender Korean Café is a place that only sells pork belly, and they bring it to you with those hot-pot grill things that you use to cook it at your table. They bring you daikon pickles, kimchi, this shredded-lettuce salad thing, rice, and lettuce leaves, and you cook your pork belly and either pile it up with the Korean condiments on your rice, or load it into the lettuce leaves to eat like Korean fajitas.


From the outside, it doesn’t really look like anything but a dodgy old diner, which is perhaps why I’d never noticed it before Sooin brought us there about six months ago. On the inside, it’s usually packed full of young Asian ESL students from the various English schools in the city. They play nonstop Korean pop music videos – Sooin informed us that there are no fewer than twenty major girl groups in Korea, and as many boy bands, and that pop-culture is a huge deal there. She helped everyone out by pointing out which girl groups were comprised of girls too young for Nick to be ogling, and which boy-band stars we should pay attention to for dance skills and hotness. She says we can go to Korea and get thousand-dollar nose jobs and form our own group. If they’ll throw in free liposuction, I’m in.

When I say that it’s a pork-belly-only kind of place, I really do mean just that. When you sit down, the waitress will pretty much just bring your table a certain amount of food, which is determined by how many people make up your party. Be sure to also ask her for beer or shoju, which is also pretty cheap, and which you simply must have as an accompaniment to a pork binge.

All that food, and it costs practically nothing. Dinner for five, including four pitchers of beer, and more food than we could eat, was $125, including tax and tip. The only problem was that we were in such high spirits after dinner that we thought the fun ought to continue, so we stumbled down Denman past Robson to an izakaya Paul knew would be open, and then there was sake, and Nick held his head in his hands and waxed poetic about bedtime, and then Steve ordered us mackerel sashimi and a big bowl of edamame, and I was all, “We just ate and I’m too full!” “But we didn’t eat JAPANESE,” Sooin replied, and so we ate even more and drank the best cheap sake ever and now this morning I am not sure if I should bother eating or just go back to bed because I am still so full. I am not even sure I want bacon.

I’m sorry. I should never talk like that. Of course I want bacon. But maybe this morning, I’ll wrap it around a vegetable.

Here’s that meatball recipe.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

These are the meatballs that Tracy‘s vegetarian boyfriend ate, like, four of. They’re that good, they convert the herbivores. She asked me for the recipe – “they’re like my nonna’s!” she exclaimed – but I explained that there wasn’t one, you just use a little of this and a bit of that, you know?

And then Nick’s sister asked for the recipe, and Sooin did too, and they wanted to know if it was on this site, and I said no, it wasn’t, because it’s the kind of thing you just make. You need a recipe for these? I asked, and people nodded yes. I thought they were everyone’s meatballs. Apparently they are my meatballs, and they are delicious.

I’m a little bit biased though. I mentioned a little while ago that if you were bent on seducing me (and you hadn’t already fed me too much wine, which is my favourite), meatballs would get you most of the way there. I don’t know what it is about them; meatballs, in all their forms, make me sublimely happy. There are probably hundreds of ball jokes to be pulled from that statement, but I stand by it.

So anyway, some friends came for dinner tonight, and I decided that we would have spaghetti and meatballs, because it is one of my favourite things and I like to share it, and I wanted to write the recipe down at last. Really, I’m pretty sure that they’re everyone’s meatballs. There’s no secret to them. But in case they are special, or different, or if you’re looking to score, here’s the recipe.

The meatballs

  • 1 lb. lean ground beef (not extra-lean – please, not extra-lean)
  • 1 lb. ground pork
  • 1 medium onion, finely chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tbsp. (rounded) fat (butter or bacon fat, or olive oil if you want)
  • 1 tbsp. (rounded) tomato paste
  • 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 cup dry bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. dried oregano
  • 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Combine all of your ingredients in a large bowl. Squish it all together with your hands to ensure that crumbs and eggs are thoroughly combined. Don’t worry if the meat looks like it isn’t – it’s better to have the meat sort of separate, so that you can taste pork and beef distinctly. And you must use your hands. There is no other way.

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Roll meat mixture into balls roughly an inch and a half in diameter. This recipe makes about two dozen – if you have many more, your balls are too small. (Snicker.) And the reverse is true too. Place balls on baking sheet.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

And here’s where it gets interesting.

If you’re just feeding you and another person, or maybe two smaller, miniature persons, then use a dozen, or fewer, and freeze the rest.

If you’re insane and for some reason always end up feeding tons of people even though you’re poor and hardly anyone ever invites you to their homes for dinner even though you’re very nice and don’t always guzzle the wine or step on the cat, cook them all, but double your sauce recipe and use the two-pound bag of spaghetti.

Because these are deceptively large, I would bet that no one will be able to eat more than three. Four is pushing it.

For sauce, there are lots of options. A sauce I am loving right now is tomato sauce with onion and butter from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. In the summer, I use my special slow-cooked tomato sauce, and it’s very nice then too. Tonight, I made a simple sauce of one onion and three cloves of garlic sweated in olive oil, two 28-ounce cans of crushed tomatoes, simmered for forty minutes, then salt, pepper, and basil stirred in right at the end. Keep it simple with the sauce – these are hearty meatballs, and they will be the star of the dish. Stew the meatballs in the sauce for about twenty minutes before serving; they’ll cut the acidity of the tomatoes, and they’ll warm up nicely all on their own.

There it is. See how easy? So easy. Really inexpensive. No reason not to make them for me. I’ll bring dessert. And wine. And soft slippers, because of the cat.

Kroketten: Make your holiday leftovers into delicious fried snack food.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

Nick is all about croquettes. He demanded them for his birthday, and he gets very excited whenever the possibility of croquettes arises, which for him isn’t often. Croquettes, or kroketten, are a Dutch thing, and given Nick’s Vander-leaning heritage, he gets a little nostalgic over them, a little obsessive even, possibly the same way I do for good fish and chips. You can buy them at the Dutch store, but that’s an hour’s drive away, and you can get them at the little Dutch pancake restaurant in town here, but they close early and we sleep late.

This year though, we ended up with enough leftover meat to make a couple of batches. So, inspired in part by this recipe, in part by a recipe from my in-laws, Mark and Jess, and by the taste of the things, which is always fairly consistent, I made my first Dutch croquettes. They’re basically deep-fried soft meatballs, so by their very nature they’re delicious.

They seem like more trouble than they are. They weren’t all that time-consuming, because the majority of the work was not intensive and I could leave them in stages and do other things. So if you’ve got a lot of extra turkey, chicken, or roast beef, or even pork, and you’re tired of soup and sandwiches already, why not try kroketten? One batch makes about two dozen, and they freeze well, so you can enjoy your holiday leftovers as a snack anytime.

The recipe below is for a beef version, but I’ll include the variation I used for the turkey ones as well.

Kroketten

  • 1 tbsp. plus 1/4 cup butter, 1/4 cup reserved
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 large carrot, chopped
  • 1 stalk celery, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 1.5 lbs. cooked beef, roughly chopped
  • 1/2 lemon, zest and juice
  • 2 cups beef stock or reduced-sodium beef broth
  • 1 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 tsp. dry mustard
  • 1 tsp. ground black pepper
  • 1 tsp. dried rosemary
  • 3/4 tsp. dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
  • Salt, to taste
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 4 cups dry breadcrumbs
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 eggs, beaten

(Variation: For turkey kroketten, use chicken stock instead of beef stock, and use dried sage instead of rosemary. You could throw in a handful of raisins or dried cranberries here, and it would be lovely.)

Melt butter and sweat onion, carrot, and celery, and garlic cloves. Add the meat, lemon zest and juice, and stock. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, reduce to medium-low, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes.

Strain meat mixture, reserving stock. Transfer meat mixture to a food processor*.

Add parsley, dry mustard, pepper, rosemary, thyme, and nutmeg, and pulse until well-combined and mostly puréed. You want some texture, but not too much, as these aren’t really “chewing” snacks. They should be very soft.

*Alternately, if you don’t have a food processor, separate the meat and the veggies. Mash the veggies, and pull the meat apart with a fork, and then chop very finely. Mix meat and veggies together, and then proceed as below.

In a pot over medium-high heat, melt the reserved butter, and stir in the flour. Pour in your reserved stock and stir frequently until the mixture comes to a gentle boil and thickens. Add your meat mixture to this, and stir to combine. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Transfer to a 9″x13″ pan, cover, and refrigerate for up to three hours.

Go out, do other things.

When you come back, set a workstation up for yourself with one parchment-lined baking sheet, one bowl of the beaten eggs, a plate with the flour, and a pie-plate containing your breadcrumbs. Form into logs, about 3/4-inch thick and 2 1/2-inches long. Alternately, you can roll them into balls about the size of golf-balls. If you’re making two different kinds, it helps to make both so that you can tell them apart later when you want to eat them.

Dip first into flour (coat all sides), then into egg, and then drop into breadcrumbs, rolling each piece in your hands to thoroughly coat. Place on cookie sheet. You should end up with about two dozen. Make sure that the coating is thick and even, or else the meat will burst out of the croquette’s more delicate places when frying.

At this point, you can either freeze them or fry them. If you are going to freeze them, cover them (on their cookie sheet) with plastic and place in the freezer until frozen solid. Remove them to a large, sealed container, where you can store them in the freezer for up to six weeks. If you are going to fry them, return them first to the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Heat a pot of oil, about four inches, to 350°F. Drop kroketten in, four or five at a time, and cook each batch for three to five minutes, or until golden brown. Remove to a paper-towel lined plate, sprinkle with Kosher salt, and serve piping hot, with a big bowl of yellow American mustard.

If you’re not super comfortable with deep-frying, you can fry them in a regular frying pan, in about an inch of oil. Just give them a bit longer, and make sure you brown them on all sides.

At this point, your version of Nick, whether Dutch-inclined or not, will be all kinds of grateful, and will likely even volunteer to do things for you, such as washing the dishes and/or keeping your hand filled with cans of ice-cold beer for the remainder of the evening. Your version of Nick will also be hugely complimentary and will let you go to bed early and not get mad at you for not dealing with the last of the laundry or “forgetting” to put the sheets and duvet cover back where they should be.

The moral of the story is that there is something pleasant you can do with leftovers that doesn’t only involve turning them into soup or sandwiches. If you freeze them, these little croquettes will make a nice make-ahead treat for your guests on New Years Eve. Happy leftoversing!

Curry in a hurry?

~ wellfedemily ~ 10 Comments

Curry pot.There’s quite a lot to be said for pantry staples, and meals that come together in a half-hour while you drink the last beer and contemplate hibernation.

While I am not one to advocate one product over another, and would certainly never deliberately push a brand at you, I think that everyone ought to own a few key things to help themselves along on nights when it’s been dark all day and you’re cold and even your skin under your clothes is damp and your lips are chapping like snakeskin. For times like those, you ought to own a jar of madras curry paste. If you get yours in one of those little Indian shops, even better, and probably cheaper too.

Sure, you could make your own curry paste, but the point sometimes is not artistry or chemistry – it’s eating, fast. And because life’s too short to eat bad food, it’s got to be convenience food that tastes like slow-cookery, because it’s also got to soothe. So, on nights like these, a warm tomato curry is what you need. You can use madras, or any other curry paste that pleases you – I recommend an Indian-style curry paste, like madras or tandoori, because it goes so nicely with tomatoes. All that cumin and coriander. Use a hot paste if you like – I keep this pretty mild though.

Easy tomato curry

  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 lb. cubed boneless chicken thighs
  • 2 tbsp. madras curry paste
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 398 mL/14 oz. can of tomato sauce (make sure it’s pure – no spices, garlic, or onion powder … read the back of the can!)
  • 1 398 mL/14 oz. can of coconut milk (not the low-fat kind – it’s too watery)
  • 2 cups chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tbsp. red chili flakes
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • 2 cups whole spinach leaves

In a large pot over medium-high heat, melt butter and sauté onions until translucent. Add chicken, curry paste, and garlic. Brown chicken lightly.

Add your tomato sauce and coconut milk, scraping the bottom of the pan for any delicious brown bits as you do. Stir in the tomatoes and chili flakes, and reduce to medium. Simmer over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Season to taste, and then, just before serving, stir in the spinach leaves. Serve over rice, preferably rice that’s flecked with a little bit of toasted coconut, and maybe tossed with a handful of peas. The curry will cook in the same amount of time as the rice. Easy, simple, nourishing, and delicious. Which is what you want on a Thursday in October, you know?

Tomato curry plate.

Dinner was fabulous. Wish you were here.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

I didn't chop the mushrooms very finely because I'm sort of lazy like that.

At 6:30 pm, the apartment smelled like butter and garlic, and moist earth, as the mushrooms transformed themselves into duxelles. You could smell it down the hall, to the elevator, little whispers of thyme and bay leaf and a lick of white wine on top of everything, and it was like autumn decided on a signature fragrance and released it here, just for us. By 7:00 pm, it smelled like a grand sort of feast, the kind of thing you’d eat in a restaurant if you weren’t poor.

I wasn’t going to tell you about the burgers, because I figured they’d just be burgers like any other burger except with deer, and because I didn’t chop the mushrooms very finely, or even very well, so a lot of them were still in large chunks which means I did duxelles wrong. But they were marvelous, and sometimes things are better when you share them. If you have access to ground deer meat, you should absolutely make these. If you have a brother-in-law who hunts, hug him all the time.

Venison burgers with duxelles and brie

(makes four)

  • 1 lb. ground deer meat
  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • 2 large garlic cloves, finely minced
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 small round of brie, about 1/2 cup
  • 1 batch of duxelles, made from 1/2 lb. mushrooms (I used garlic instead of shallots)
  • 4 hamburger buns

In a large bowl, working with your hands, combine the meat, butter, olive oil, garlic, seasoning, and egg yolk. Form into four equal-sized patties, and grill over medium heat, four to five minutes per side.

Spread buns with the condiments of your choosing. I minced some basil into some mayonnaise, and spread that on one half, with a bit of sweet Bavarian mustard on the other side. Maybe don’t use ketchup. It wouldn’t be right.

Divide duxelles between the four buns, placing them on the bottom. During the last minute of cooking, place two slices of brie on the tops of each burger, then remove from heat and place on top of duxelles. Let sit two to three minutes before serving, so that the cheese melts somewhat and the meat rests a bit.

The smell is magnificent. The taste? Oh, wow. It’s a wild sort of taste, big flavours with grassy touches from the cheese and the mild game-flavour in the meat. The basil adds to that, perfumes the whole thing. Drink a big red wine with this, a zinfandel or something like that. It’ll stand up nicely to the whole thing. It’s earthy and homey and wonderful, something you’d imagine eating if you were dating a lumberjack who lived in a log cabin but who also had excellent taste in wine and cheese. Just like that. And wouldn’t that be nice?

Anyway, I just wanted to tell someone about it. When you share a meal with boys intent on watching hockey, you don’t get to wax ecstatic about stuff like you would if you were eating with anyone else. Though I noticed that when the game was over, they were hardly heartbroken that the Canucks had lost. I’d like to think it had something to do with the meal.

Perfect.

I pretty much just like saying “Wellington.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

I mentioned something the other week about my life exploding. It does that, from time to time, and I’m not sure if it’s an outward explosion as much as it is the disaster in my own head leaking out like biowaste, but the long and the short of it is that I am terrible with money. Just awful. I have bills, but in the past I have moved often and forgotten to reroute my mail or forgot I had certain bills, only to remember them six, eight, ten months later when the shit has not only hit the fan but spattered and slapped me awake at midnight on a work night and when that happens I can’t sleep and start filling out Expressions of Interest online in the hope that I’ll qualify for a move to New Zealand.

I do. Qualify, that is. As a “skilled migrant,” imagine that!

I paid off my last credit card last week. Paid it off in full. The cards are gone, chopped to bits, and that chapter in my financial saga has closed. That chapter, but not the one where I owe the government for that education it funded and now wants me to pay for. It’s an unnerving thing to realize that your moderate success in paying off an aggressive strain of debt is worth only minor celebration, because there’s this other bill that you haven’t been paying attention to, and you don’t know what’s going to come of it.

I have an appointment on Saturday to talk about debt consolidation and being a responsible adult. And, it’s almost midnight, and I can’t help but log in to my account with Immigration New Zealand and look at my in-progress application and sigh. Running away isn’t going to solve anything, is it?

This thing is dogging me in my real life, and the stress of this and work and finding a new apartment is making me quite insufferable. I’m cranky at work. I’m fussy at home. I ruined the polenta yesterday. And I scraped the seeds out of a very hot pepper this evening, using my thumbnail, and every time I habitually pick at my bottom lip, I feel burning and then I tongue it and then my tongue burns too.

It’s at times like these when comfort food is oh-so-necessary. I love meatloaf. I also like the way the word “Wellington” sounds and feels to say. And it’s coldish out now – long sleeves and leggings weather. Sweaters and jeans weather, almost.

You’re probably a million times more responsible than I am, and surely your life never explodes. Hopefully yours doesn’t keep you up at night. But I am certain that at some point this winter, you are going to want to be cuddled, and if your version of Nick is also addicted to oppressively loud and rather gruesome first-person shooter games, you’re going to have to find love in food.

Fortunately, meatloaf wellington will love you right back. And it never charges.

Make the meatloaf the day before you want to make this. It will be a bijillion times better, though make sure it’s at room temperature before you wellington the thing. The meatloaf part of the recipe has been adapted from Fannie Farmer, though I’ve made it so many times that it’s morphed some, and is now an improved version. Not as good for you as Fannie’s, but I don’t think you visit here for your health.

Meatloaf Wellington

  • 2 cups bread crumbs
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 large cloves of garlic, finely minced
  • 1 lb. ground beef (don’t use extra-lean – regular lean will be fine here. For moisture’s sake)
  • 1 lb. ground pork
  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 tsp. dried thyme
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 1/4 cup melted butter
  • 4 slices of bacon

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, combine all of your ingredients except the bacon, and mush together with your hands. You want the ingredients to mix together, but you also want the meat to keep a bit of texture.

Press into a greased loaf pan, and top to cover with the four strips of bacon.

Bacon!

Peek-a-boo!I like to make sure there’s no sticking at the bottom of the pan, so I always cover the bottom with a piece of parchment paper.

Bake for 45 minutes, and then pull out of the oven and let cool in the pan. Set aside, preferably overnight. Once again, it should be at room temperature for the next steps, so if you refrigerate the thing overnight, then take it out an hour or so beforehand to take off the chill.

Wellington part:

  • 1 large onion
  • 1 tbsp. butter
  • 1 1/2 tbsp. Dijon or Bavarian mustard
  • 1 large sheet of puff pastry (enough to wrap a meatloaf … if the piece you have isn’t big enough, layer the second piece [there are always two to a package] so that the meatloaf is completely enveloped.)
  • 1 egg, beaten

Slice the onion into very thin strips and caramelize in the butter over medium heat until dark golden. This should take 20 to 30 minutes, and you will periodically need to deglaze the pan with a few tablespoons of water.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out your puff pastry to a size that will suit your meatloaf, and spread with the mustard. When the onions are ready, spread them out over the pastry as well. Be sure to leave plenty of room around the edges for folding and sealing the pastry.

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Place the meatloaf in the centre of the pastry, bacon-side down. Paint the edges of the pastry with a bit of egg, and wrap the pastry around the meatloaf as if you were folding the world’s meatiest present.

Turn over and rest on a baking sheet lined with parchment, seam-side down. Paint the top and sides of the wellington with the egg, sprinkle with salt, if you like, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the pastry is golden and puffed.

Rustic?

Perfection.Serve with gratin potatoes and garlicky mushrooms and the kind of wine that’s tasty but also affordable. You can think about other things, like New Zealand, tomorrow.

Soothing!

And now for something completely different. Also? Pork Wellington.

~ wellfedemily ~ 10 Comments

Okay. So. I had an idea today, and bear with me, because this is the first time I’ve ever done this and also I was drunk. Which sounds like an excuse for crime or being in porn. No one’s ever invited me to participate in either.

And I now hate my own cartoonish square face. And my voice.

I taped myself assembling a pork wellington inspired by Laura Calder and something similar she made with beef. I think I also saw Alton Brown make something similar once. Also, the only time I’ve ever been on rolling film I’ve been inebriated, which obviously means I was awesome it wasn’t – and continues to not be – my fault. For whatever. Excuses. Excuses. Excuses.

Anyway, if you hate my face or if my awkwardness makes you horribly uncomfortable or if you can’t hear a word of what I said in the video, let me know, and I’ll either do better next time or hang my head in shame and never cook again.

The recipe and instructions are after the video, just in case.

(I have to preemptively apologize for everything in case you think I take myself seriously, and thus think I’m some sort of douchebag. Neither is the case, I promise. Unless you think I’m a douchebag for using “thus” in a sentence. For that, I have no defense.)

Pork Wellington

  • 1 cup oaked chardonnay
  • 1 tsp. butter
  • 1/2 cup dried cranberries
  • 1 package puff pastry, rolled out (one square, or one sheet if you buy it in rolls)
  • 6 pieces thinly sliced prosciutto
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp. dried rosemary
  • 1/2 tsp. dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp. dried sage
  • 1 pork tenderloin, sliced down the centre
  • 1/2 cup toasted chopped hazelnuts
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 400°F.

In a small saucepan, simmer cranberries in chardonnay and butter until plump, six to eight minutes. Set aside.

Roll out puff pastry on a floured surface until it’s large enough to completely wrap your pork tenderloin. Drizzle with olive oil (a step I forgot in the video), and then lay out your prosciutto. Sprinkle with herbs.

Place pork tenderloin in the centre. Spread apart, and spoon the winy cranberries into the opening. Add the hazelnuts, press to pack, and then sprinkle with salt and pepper, as much or as little as you’d like.

Paint edges of pastry with beaten egg, and fold over pork. Pat to ensure the thing is sealed, and then place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. I told you you should bake it until it’s 140 degrees, but, in all honesty, I don’t care about the rules and I baked it until it was about 135°F in the centre of the meat. It’s better that way. You won’t die of swine flu or whatever people think happens when your pork tenderloin is a tiny bit pink in the middle.

Let this sit for a few minutes before serving. I made a simple gravy out of some beef stock, a touch of wine, some garlic, rosemary, salt, pepper, cornstarch (to thicken), and mushrooms, and served it all with potatoes. We ate healthily yesterday, so I figure this meal makes up for it. Very simple, earthy, and an excellent start to fall.

Porkstravaganza.

I guess it’s fall now, the crock pot is out. Or, “A recipe for hearty baked beans.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

The musical fruit!

The other day I told you about the coronation grape granita I made for company, and how wonderful that was. Well, lately whenever we’ve got guests, Nick insists that we have ribs so before the granita, we had several racks of pork ribs, a batch of cornbread with blackberries that I was kind of disappointed in, and baked beans. Which I was not disappointed in, because they were awesome. It wasn’t just me who thought so, either, which is the mark of a good recipe. I suppose.

I made these in a crock pot earlier in the day and then set them aside because I wasn’t doing much in the morning – I let them cool and then reheated them in a much more attractive pot, which I served them in. And while from first step to final step actually took somewhere in the neighbourhood of 22 full hours, they weren’t actually much work. You don’t have to do much – it’s all waiting. And it costs, like, nothing to make. All you need is a crock pot – but if you don’t have one, you can make these in the oven – bake covered at 250°F for 8 hours, remove the lid and cook for an additional 30 minutes. I haven’t tried it that way, but it sounds legit.

Baked beans

  • 1 lb. dried small white beans, such as navy or pea beans (actually, dried black beans of about the same size would probably also be awesome)
  • 1 tbsp. kosher salt
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1/2 lb. bacon
  • 1 cup beer (whatever you’re using for the ribs, or else something in an amber or cream ale would be nice)
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup molasses
  • 1 5.5 oz. can of tomato paste
  • 2 tsp. dry mustard
  • 2 tsp. black pepper
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1 tsp. cayenne pepper

Worth its weight in beans!Pour dried beans into a 9″x13″ glass baking dish, and cover with water, to about 1/2 an inch over the tops of the beans. Soak for eight hours, or overnight.

When you’re ready to start, boil the beans in six cups of water, with the salt. Simmer for 30 minutes, uncovered, and then remove from heat and let sit, still uncovered, for 90 minutes.

Fry up your bacon and your onions, until the onions are golden and translucent and your bacon is brown and crisp. Deglaze the pan with the beer, scraping up any delicious flavour bits from the bottom of the pan. Pour over the beans, then add the sugar, molasses, tomato paste, cinnamon, mustard, cayenne pepper, and black pepper. Mixish.

Mix thoroughly, and then pour the whole thing into your crock pot. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours, or, like I did, on high for 5 to 7 hours. I ended up cooking mine about six, but I think it depends on your crock pot. My mom once made baked beans in a brand new crock pot using the low and slow method overnight, which was how she always did it, and woke to find that the pot had cremated the beans overnight, leaving a black, crusty mess behind. I like the 5 to 7 hour plan, because if you do it when you’re awake, you can monitor the beans’ progress. Taste and check your seasoning. They’ll be smokey delicious.

Crock pot beans,

As I said, you can totally take these and cool them off, and then reheat them before serving, and they’ll be fine. Delicious, even. You may want to cook them a bit over low heat to reduce the sauce, if it’s runny.

Serve, to all kinds of acclaim. I heard they might even be better than the ribs. Maybe. Says Nick, who only wants to eat beans and meat for the rest of his life. Enjoy!

Dinnerific.