Tantalizingly Tangy Meatloaf

 Perhaps it’s because I have such a fondness for cheeseburgers (dare I mention that it is my favorite food?), that I also have a fondness for meatloaf.  There is something so wonderfully comforting about both the making and eating that I am continually on the quest for new recipes.  For something seemingly so simple, there are a lot of variations.  The one I tried today contained an ingredient that I have to admit I’ve never used in meatloaf before, pineapple, but the results were delicious.  The meatloaf was moist and flavorful, and not overly seasoned to allow the sweet and tangy glaze to act as the perfect complement.  I scooped up what fell into the pan to use atop the meat like a relish.  Succulent!

Tantalizingly Tangy Meatloaf

Based on a recipe from allrecipes.com

1 pound ground chuck

1/2 cup dry bread crumbs

1 large egg

Garlic powder to taste

1 dash Worcestershire sauce

1/3 cup ketchup

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 small can crushed pineapple

Directions

Preheat oven to 350° F.  In a large bowl, combine the ground beef, bread crumbs, egg, garlic powder and Worcestershire sauce. Mix well, and pat into a 9x5 inch loaf pan.  Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.  (You’re not finished, stick with me here.)

Meanwhile, in a small sauce pan, stir together the ketchup, brown sugar and pineapple. Cook over medium heat until a lot of the liquid has evaporated.* Pour glaze over the partially baked meatloaf and bake an additional 30 minutes.

Remove from pan to a cutting board using a spatula (or two).  Allow to “rest” for 5-7 minutes before slicing.

*The original recipe called for pineapple preserves. I found them to be quite elusive, so chose to make it this way instead.  Essentially you want a thick-ish glaze for the meatloaf, so you can cook it down until it becomes a consistency that suits you.

This post is linked to:

On the Menu Monday

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

Foodie Friday

Foodie Friday at Simple Living

Sunday's Best Party

 For more wonderful meatloaf recipes, check out this book:

Halfway Cookies

I stumbled upon this delicious cookie on this site where there is a great tutorial on how to make them.  I was looking for a recipe for a simple, but chocolaty cookie, and this one, topped with a brown sugar meringue was most intriguing.  The high winds (for, what is it now, the tenth day in a row?) kept me inside, so I puttered around the kitchen putting these together.  The pictures don’t do them justice.  They are rich, chocolaty, chewy, with a crunchy, flavorful meringue topping.  Neither one of us could wait until they fully cooled so we had our first bite when the chocolate was still partially melted and oozing invitingly from the cookie.  They are a bit more work than the average bar cookie, but then these are far from average.  I’ve included the recipe below for your convenience, but do check out the site mentioned above, and then make these cookies!

Halfway Cookies

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cup brown sugar, separated
2 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon vanilla
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao)

Preheat the oven to 350°. Cut two pieces of aluminum foil and fold them to match the width of the pan. Press one piece into the pan lengthwise and the other into the pan crosswise with the ends hanging over the side. This makes it easy to lift the bars out of the pan once they're cooled. Spray the foil with nonstick coating.

Whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside. Cream together the butter, granulated sugar, and just 1/2 cup of the brown sugar until smooth and creamy, roughly 5 minutes at medium high.

Separate the eggs. Mix the yolks into the butter-sugar mixture one at a time until they are completely absorbed, then mix in the water and vanilla. With the mixer at a low speed, add the flour mixture and beat gently until all the flour has been absorbed.  Do not overmix.

Press the cookie dough gently into the pan with your hands, making sure the surface is even.

Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top of the cookie dough and use your palms to press them slightly into the dough. This will help keep them from moving when you add the meringue.

Using a stand or hand mixer with a clean bowl and a clean whisk attachment, start whisking the egg whites. Gradually increase your speed to medium-high. When the egg whites are very frothy, slowly add the remaining cup of brown sugar a little at a time. Continue increasing your speed to the highest setting. When all the sugar has been added, continue whipping the meringue until it holds a soft peak.  It should look like glossy, soft-serve ice cream.

Scoop the meringue from the bowl and mound it down the middle of the pan. It will be very sticky! Use an offset spatula to gently spread the meringue from the middle to the edges.

Lightly press a piece of parchment or wax paper on the top of the meringue (this makes an even layer and protects the meringue from scorching). Bake for 20 minutes, remove the parchment, bake for an additional 5-10 minutes more, until the edges look toasted and are pulling away from the sides of the pan.

Wait until the pan is completely cool before lifting out the bars and cutting them into squares.

This post is linked to:

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

What's Cooking Wednesday

Wild Wednesday

Foodie Friday

Sunday's Best Party

Sweets for a Saturday

Themed Baker's Sunday

Hungarian Mushroom Soup

It’s National Soup Month, and I’m doing my part by making a big pot of soup as often as I can.  A sale on mushrooms at the local market came just at the right time, giving me an opportunity to try a recipe for Hungarian Mushroom Soup, just one of the many luscious recipes in The Moosewood Cookbook.  It gets its rich color and smoky taste from a good dousing of Hungarian paprika, something that we should all try to increase in our diets as it is high in antioxidants and contains more vitamin C by weight than lemon juice.

This soup is rich and hearty, so a little goes a long way. It does warm up both body and soul, something much needed during the month of January.

Hungarian Mushroom Soup

12 ounces mushrooms, sliced

2 cups onions, chopped

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour

1 cup milk

2 teaspoons fresh dill weed

1 tablespoon Hungarian paprika

1 tablespoon soy sauce

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups stock (I used homemade chicken stock)

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/4 cup parsley, chopped

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1/2 cup sour cream (optional – I skipped it)

Sauté onions in 2 Tbsp. stock until transparent; salt lightly. Add mushrooms, 1 tsp. dill, 1/2 cup stock or water, soy sauce, and paprika. Cover and simmer 15 minutes. Melt butter in large saucepan. Whisk in flour and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add milk and cook, stirring frequently, over low heat until thickened, 5-8 minutes. Stir in mushroom mixture and remaining stock. Cover and simmer 10-15 minutes. Just before serving, add salt, pepper, lemon juice, sour cream, and, if desired, extra dill (1 tsp.). Serve garnished with parsley.

This post is linked to:

Seasonal Sunday

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

Tasty Tuesday

What's Cooking Wednesday

& Foodie Friday

Fortune Cookies

I’m still in the recovery stage from last month’s holiday when another is in the offing.  No, I’m not talking St. Valentine’s Day -- I haven’t even begun to think about that -- I’m talking Chinese New Year.  Don’t celebrate?  Well, honestly, neither do I, but I’m all for any excuse to eat Chinese food, even when it’s more American than Chinese.

I’m talking about the dessert aspect of the meal, specifically the fortune cookie.  I turned to Martha Stewart for this recipe featured in Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share (Martha Stewart Living Magazine).

If you have this book (and if you don’t, buy it!), a word of warning about the recipe -- the taste was wonderful (even though I used light instead of heavy cream), and the batter is very easy to work with, BUT the directions were not good at all.

Martha suggests folding the cookie in half, pinching it closed, and then putting your two index fingers into either end and sliding your thumbs toward the middle. What?!  No! That is a lot of work for nothing, and time is of the essence here, you only have 10 seconds before the cookie hardens. The best way to make a fortune cookie is to indeed fold it in half, but then just bend it over a glass. You can see how beautifully mine came out in doing so.

Also, she suggested greasing a cookie sheet. Again, no. Use a Silpat Non-Stick Silicone Baking Liner, 11.75-Inch by 8.25-Inch, it is much easier to get the cookie off of it than a greased sheet. I tried the greased sheet, parchment paper, and a Silpat, and the later worked the best, the parchment second best, and the greased sheet not well at all.

She also doesn't mention something that will definitely determine a pretty cookie and that is that when you take the cookie off of the sheet and put it onto your clean kitchen towel, flip it over. With her instructions, the rough bottom of the cookie becomes the exterior; with my suggestion the smooth side becomes the exterior.

The cooking time is also wrong. Her suggestion of 8 minutes (turning the pan at four) yields a dark, overdone cookie.  I found that 6 minutes worked out perfectly. You need to test this with your own oven, but this worked best for me.

Making these small changes will help in making these fun cookies. It takes practice, so plan on trashing the first three or so, but after that you'll be a whiz, will have fun doing it, and will dazzle your friends!

Awk! The first one.  Obviously something went SERIOUSLY wrong.

My second try.  Not as horribly awful as the first one, but still not what it should be.

Martha's recipe.

This post is linked to:

Seasonal Sunday

Totally Tasty Tuesdays

Tasty Tuesday

What's Cooking Wednesday

& Foodie Friday

Shrimp Alla Crema

Sometimes it takes us a long time to try new recipes.  Sometimes a realllly long time.  Such was the case with this delicious, surprisingly easy, great for weeknight/perfect for company dish.  We have something we call an “agenda book.”  Essentially it’s a rather ratty three-ring binder that holds photocopies of recipes, divided by category, that we someday hope to try.  Since our everyday cookbook (also ratty, also three-ring – can you say “classy?”) is so full of recipes that we love and are tried and true, it’s not often that I ever reach for the agenda book.  Today I had a craving for shrimp, and was looking for a new way to prepare it when I found this faded recipe, placed in our book nearly six and a half years ago.  “Why did we wait?” I asked my husband, my mouth full of succulent delicious shrimp, “This recipe is amazing.”  Truly, it is.  But then why shouldn’t it be?  It’s from a restaurant that has been known to provide one delicious dish after another, some of which I’ve posted previously on this blog.  Originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday, July 6, 2005 (See here), I cut it in half to serve two.  Give it a try; don’t wait six and a half years like I did.

Shrimp Alla Crema

Roberto's Trattoria

20 colossal shrimp (8 to 12 per pound), cleaned and deveined

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

2 tablespoons butter, divided

2 cups mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

1/4 cup brandy

2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 pounds baby spinach

1 tablespoon minced garlic (about 2 cloves)

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, divided

Dust shrimp lightly with flour. Combine 2 tablespoons oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a large skillet. Place over medium-high heat. When butter melts, add shrimp; cook 1 minute per side. Remove shrimp from the skillet; set aside.

Add mushrooms to the skillet; sauté until they release their liquid, about 2 to 4 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat, add brandy, then return the skillet to the heat. Sauté for 1 minute. Add cream and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook until the sauce has reduced by half.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil and the remaining 1 tablespoon butter in a large frying pan or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add spinach; sauté until limp, about 4 to 5 minutes, adding the garlic during the last minute of cooking.

Just before serving, add shrimp to sauce; as soon as shrimp are warm, remove from heat.

Divide the spinach among four plates; top each with about 1/2 cup sauce, 5 shrimp and 2 tablespoons Parmesan. 

Yield: 4 servings.

 This post is linked to:

Foodie Friday