Artisan Meatloaf

Meatloaf is very trendy right now - don't be surprised to find it on restaurant menus.  They typically will give it their own special twist, like this recipe.  I know the term "artisan" is over-used but it's the best term I can think of to describe this meatloaf.  It's the best meatloaf I've ever tasted and definitely worthy of company.  What makes it so special?  For one thing, the amazing variety of ingredients - everything from spinach to rosemary to parmesan.  For another thing, it uses a mixture of mild bison and spicy Italian sausage as the meat base.  It's stuffed with mild creamy fontina cheese and finished with a homemade tomato herb sauce.  The combination of flavors is absolutely irresistible.  It cuts beautifully and the leftovers make great sandwiches.

So let's talk about bison.  That probably gave some of you pause when you read it in the sentence up above, but it shouldn't.  Bison is a very mild meat that tastes almost identical to beef but it's better for you.  The animals eat grass for food, spend almost no time in feedlots, and are not given drugs, chemicals or hormones.  Bison is higher in iron and vitamin B-12 than beef but has much less fat, cholesterol and calories.  It's even lower in fat and calories than chicken!  Check out this handy little chart that I found online.  I knew bison was lean but I didn't know it was THAT lean.

 

 

I don't eat beef but I love (and eat) bison. We often use it as a substitute for beef in recipes. This particular recipe is made even healthier by substituting turkey Italian sausage for pork sausage. Even though the proteins are lean, the result is still very moist because of all the other ingredients that are added to the meatloaf.  If you're still not convinced, you could certainly make this recipe with ground beef but I would still save the fat and calories in the Italian sausage by using turkey sausage.  You can find spicy turkey Italian sausage links with the other turkey products in your grocer's meat case, and you can find ground bison next to beef in almost every meat case these days.  It costs a little more than ground beef but I really think it's worth it.

 

If you have leftovers and plan to make sandwiches, think about adding something crispy or crunchy for texture variation since the meatloaf is relatively soft.  I had tomato slices and fresh spinach in addition to the meatloaf so I added texture by grilling the Italian roll until crispy.  You could also add crunch by layering sliced radishes or fresh zucchini into the sandwich.

 

 

 

Tip of the day: next time you're at the grocery store pick up a package of plastic gloves like the ones that  doctors use - they're usually by the cleaning products. They come in handy for recipes like this where you need to mix raw ingredients by hand.  That way you know you aren't contaminating the ingredients or vice versa, espcially if you happen to have a cut or scratch on your hands.  Plus they protect your manicure.  Very important.

 

* * click here for a printable recipe * *

 

 

Cheese-Stuffed Meatloaf with Tomato Herb Sauce

Makes 4-6 servings

Like all good meatloaves, the leftovers make great sandwiches, especially in a French or Italian roll.

Meatloaf
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/3 cups chopped onion
1 ½ tablespoons finely chopped garlic
2/3 cup fresh bread crumbs (not dried or packaged)
1/3 cup milk
1 lb ground bison
1/3 lb spicy turkey Italian sausage, removed from casings
2 eggs, beaten
10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and moisture squeezed out
2/3 cup shredded parmesan cheese
1/3 teaspoon ground fennel seed
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 ½ teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped
5 ounces mild fontina or provolone cheese, cut into 3” long, ½” by ½” strips

Tomato Herb Sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup carrots, finely chopped
¼ cup celery, finely chopped
¼ cup shallots, finely chopped
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 cups Italian-style diced canned tomatoes
1 tablespoon fresh basil
Salt and pepper

For meatloaf: Preheat the oven to 350d. Heat oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Add onions and cook 5 minutes until soft. Stir in garlic and cook 1 minute. Spoon mixture into a large mixing bowl and set aside to cool.

Combine bread crumbs and milk in a small bowl, and soak 5 minutes. Squeeze any excess milk from bread and discard. Add bread to mixing bowl along with all the remaining meatloaf ingredients except the fontina cheese. Using clean hands, mix until well blended.

Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread half of the meatloaf mixture onto the paper to form a rectangle 4 to 5 inches wide and approximately 9 to 10 inches long. Lay the cheese in 1 or 2 rows down the center of the rectangle, leaving a 1 inch border on all sides. Cover rectangle with remaining meat mixture, ensuring edges are well sealed. 

 

 

 

Plump up loaf with your hands to be 3 to 4 inches thick. Bake 60 to 75 minutes until the internal temperature reaches 150d.

Meanwhile, make the sauce while the meatloaf bakes. Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat and add carrot, celery, shallots, and garlic. Turn down to low, cover and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add tomatoes, cover and simmer 30 minutes. Chop basil and add to the sauce; simmer 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Cool 10 minutes. Puree in a blender or food processor, adding water if too thick.

Remove meatloaf from oven and let rest 10 minutes. Cut into ½” thick slices and serve with sauce.



Lentil Soup with Spicy Italian Sausage

This soup is just perfect for a cool fall day - it's warming and hearty with rich lentils, spicy Italian sausage and a wonderful mixture of vegetables.  Serve it with some crusty bread and you have a rustic feast that will warm you from the inside out.

It's easy, it makes a lot and freezes beautifully, and it's very healthy besides being completely delicious - you can see why it's one of my favorite soups.  Be sure to use spicy Italian turkey sausage because it really makes a difference.  Regarding the lentils, I actually used the remnants of three different packages when I made it this time (I collect lentils) so the specific type doesn't really matter.  If you can find the small green french lentils called "lentils du puy" I would suggest adding some for a quarter or third of the total amount of lentils.  They retain a nice firmness that adds texture to the soup but used exclusively they won't thicken the soup properly.  If you can't find them or don't want to buy two different varieties, don't worry about it.  The soup will be perfectly delicious anyway.

Although it doesn't take all that long to make, I like to make soup on the weekend and have it ready for that worst day of the week when you know you're going to come home brain dead.  Even on that day you should be able to manage heating soup and bread, right?

It certainly came in handy recently as we returned from a trip to Africa and had no idea where we were or day it was.  To show you my mental state, the morning after we returned I woke up and heard a noise outside the window and thought to myself, "it must be the baboons".  These are the days when you need soup.


* * click here for a printable recipe * *

Lentil Soup with Spicy Italian Sausage
9 main course servings

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 lb spicy Italian turkey sausage, removed from casings
1 large onion, chopped (about 3 cups)
2 large carrots, peeled, chopped (about 1 ¾ cups)
2 large parsnips, peeled, chopped (about 1 ¾ cups)
1 large celery stalk, chopped (about 1 cup)
2 ½ teaspoons dried Italian seasoning
1 lb brown or green lentils, rinsed
3 quarts (or more) low-sodium chicken broth
1 5-ounce package baby spinach
Shredded parmesan, optional


Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook until browned, crumbling as it cooks, about 5 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer sausage to a bowl. Add onion, carrots, parsnips, celery, and Italian seasoning to drippings in the pot; cook until onion is translucent and vegetables begin to soften, stirring often, 7 to 8 minutes. Add lentils; stir to coat. Add 3 quarts broth. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium and simmer until lentils are tender, stirring occasionally and adding more broth by ¼ cupfuls if soup is too thick, 20 minutes.

Add sausage to soup and simmer until vegetables are tender and flavors blend, 10 to 12 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in spinach. Cook until spinach is wilted, about 3 minutes.

Serve topped with shredded parmesan, optional.

Apple, Bacon and Fontina Stuffed Acorn Squash

It's squash time of the year!  Acorn squash is one of my favorite varieties both for its flavor and because it's the perfect size to stuff for a meal.  I posted a stuffed squash recipe last fall that included rice, spicy sausage, parmesan, and mushrooms.  If you're interested in that recipe, click here or check the archives at left for September, 2011.

I thought that this fall I'd post a variation that's more fruity with fresh apples, dried cranberries, pecans, couscous and fontina cheese in addition to bacon.  This is my own ingredient combination. I initially thought about adding Brie cheese because it has a mild flavor that I thought would complement the apples, bacon and pecans. The problem with Brie is that it's so soft that I figured it would melt away completely as the squash bakes. My solution was to substitute fontina, which is also mild but firmer than Brie. Ask the person at the cheese counter for a mild fontina since they can range from very mild to quite a bit stronger in flavor. You can always change up other ingredients by adding raisins or currants rather than the cranberries, or by substituting walnuts or pine nuts for the pecans.

The basic concept is to cook the squash first because it takes a long time to get tender, then you stuff the squash and bake some more until the squash is very tender and the filling is hot.  Pretty easy.  All the stuffing prep can easily be done while the squash cooks the first time.  If you're pressed for time, prepare everything in advance and refrigerate the stuffed squash, then just bake until everything is hot again.

* * click here for a printable recipe * *

Apple, Bacon and Fontina Stuffed Acorn Squash
4 servings

2 small acorn squash
3 tablespoons butter, divided
3 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
½ cup couscous
¼ cup onion, finely chopped
¼ cup celery, finely chopped
1 firm apple, cored and chopped
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped
1/3 cup fontina cut in small cubes
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut a thin slice off each end of the squash, then cut in half crosswise. Carefully scoop out seeds and fibers. Line a baking dish with parchment. Place squash halves in the baking dish and rub the cut surfaces and the interior of each with 1 tablespoon butter. Place a small amount of butter in the bottom of each half. Season with salt and pepper. Roast at 400d for 60 minutes.

 
While the squash is roasting, cook the couscous according to directions and set aside to cool. Preheat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add the remaining tablespoon of butter, then sauté the onion and celery for 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the chopped apples and sauté for two more minutes. In a large bowl, combine the couscous, apple mixture, bacon and pecans. When completely cool, add the fontina and parsley and mix thoroughly. At the end of 60 minutes, remove the squash halves from the oven and fill each until mounded. 

If you have stuffing left over, it makes a great lunch the next day. Cover the baking dish with foil. (At this point the squash halves can be refrigerated for baking later. If refrigerated, add 10 minutes or so to the baking time.) Place the squash halves back in the oven for an additional 30 minutes, until the filling is hot. Uncover and serve immediately.

Chicken Noodle Soup - The Ultimate Comfort Food

If you would like to receive notification of future Cracked Pepper posts by email you can sign up at the upper left.

How to be a Soup Fairy
It might seem odd to post a recipe for chicken noodle soup at the holidays.  But here's my reasoning - you're probably going to have some time off over the next few weeks, right?  Why would you want to spend some of it making soup?  Because it's a really good bet that a friend or family member is going to come down with a bad cold or flu in the next month or two.  Just think how happy they'd be if you were able to whip out a container of homemade chicken soup as a get-well present.  You'd get big-time gold stars for thoughtfulness (not to mention think-aheadfulness).  I was planning to make this soup for blog purposes a week ago when I saw a Facebook post by my friend Kathy that said she had a lousy cold and felt like "caca".  It would have been even better if I could have brought her soup immediately but I was able to stop over the following day (after I actually MADE said soup) and she was very grateful.

Making homemade soup does take some time, but you can spread it out over two days (recommended) and it doesn't take more than an hour or two each day.  Plus, if you have various family members hanging around the house you can enlist their aid and it makes a fun project to do together.  Really!  Your house smells wonderful and you feel like you're doing something to help someone else - very appropriate at the holidays.

The big secret to this recipe is the noodles.  Don't buy dried noodles, buy frozen egg noodles because they're just like homemade.  They make a homemade soup seem even more homemade.  Kathy later asked me "did you even make the NOODLES?"  I had to confess.

Day one you cook the chicken, which creates the broth.  You let the broth cool in the refrigerator overnight so you can skim off the fat the next day.  Day two is all about chopping ingredients and dumping everything into the broth to cook. 

By the way, this recipe makes a LOT of soup - about four quarts.  The good news is that you'll have plenty for yourself as well as others.  But be aware that if you try to make it in a standard Dutch oven you might run into problems.  You need a real soup pot.

Do you like my pot?  I love nice shiny pots. If you don't have one, borrow one from a friend or make half a recipe in a Dutch oven. Or buy one and use it often.

This recipe includes an optional small amount of cream and parmesan.  They really add to the flavor but you can leave them out if you're being careful about calories.  My rationale is that the cream makes the soup more slidey for sore throats (technical term).

If you're watching your sodium intake, know that you can buy chicken base in a low sodium version.  I'm not sure if the same is true about chicken bouillon cubes.  As a general rule of thumb I always try to use low sodium products whenever available and then salt to taste at the table.  You'll end up using less sodium that way.  Not familiar with chicken base?  Here's what it looks like.

You'll find it, along with beef base and sometimes turkey or pork base, in the spice aisle of most grocers (near the bouillon cubes).  I like these products better than bouillon cubes because they seem fresher with more depth of flavor and have less sodium.

I think I had Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup pretty much every single school day when I was in 3rd grade - brought to school in a Barbie lunch pail with a peanut butter sandwich.  It took me a while to recover enough to think about chicken noodle soup again (kind of like when I came down with the flu immediately after having a shrimp dinner, but different).  This recipe will be a revelation for those of you whose soup normally comes out of a can.

Happy Holidays to all!!!!!!



* * click here for a printable recipe version * *


Chicken Noodle Soup
Makes approximately 4 quarts

Step 1:
4 bay leaves
3 chicken bouillon cubes or 3-4 tsp chicken base (preferably low sodium)
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 tsp lemon pepper seasoning
3 cloves garlic, minced
One 2.5-3 lb fryer chicken, cut up
1.5 tsp Italian seasoning
3.5 quarts water
Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Step 2:
2 cups sliced carrots
2 cups sliced celery with leafy green tops
12 oz package homestyle frozen egg noodles
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/3 cup cooking sherry
1-2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste
¾ cup heavy cream (optional but good)
¾ cup grated parmesan (optional but good)
Additional fresh parsley for garnish


For step one, add all the ingredients to a large soup pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer approximately 35 to 45 minutes until the chicken is tender. Remove the chicken and set aside to cool. Remove and discard the bay leaves and onion. You should have approximately 3 quarts of stock. When the chicken is cool, discard the skin and bones and shred or chop the meat into bite-sized pieces. Refrigerate the stock and the chicken separately overnight.

For step two, skim the fat from the surface of the stock and bring back to a boil. Add the carrots and celery and cook for 5 to ten minutes. Add the egg noodles and cook according to package directions. When the noodles are done, add the chicken, mushrooms, parsley, sherry and rosemary. Add the cream and parmesan, if using. Cook for another 2 minutes until heated through. Adjust salt and pepper if needed.

Chicken Chow Mein

If you would like to receive email notifications of Cracked Pepper posts, you can sign up at left.


It might sound dorky but I've loved chicken chow mein since I was a little kid.  It was the first "exotic" food we ever had as take-out.  I liked the little white boxes with metal handles but what really sold me was the transluscent paper bag of crunchy noodles.  Chow mein is not chow mein without the crunchy noodles.  I now realize that most takeout chow mein is green goo with little bits of diced meat on the top so I was happy to find a healthy and updated version a few years ago.  In this recipe, the flavors are vibrant and the overall texture is very crunchy from crisp-tender celery, onions, and water chestnuts. Did I mention the shiitake mushrooms? Gourmet chow mein, indeed.

It might seem odd to post a chow mein recipe during the holidays but you can't eat cookies and fruitcake every day for the next month, right?  Do your body a favor and give it something healthy to eat every once in a while.  Six ounces of chicken for four servings doesn't sound like much, but chow mein has lots of vegetables too.  I think you'll be surprised at really how much chicken there is per serving when you're done - much more than in the takeout versions. 

If you haven't made many stir fries from scratch you might not be familiar with oyster sauce and dark sesame oil.  Both are readily available in the Asian section of your grocery store and give the sauce wonderful flavor so don't be tempted to leave them out.  Just be aware that sesame oil comes in two varieties - regular which is pale in color like other oils, and toasted which is dark in color.  The flavors are completely different.  The toasted variety may or may not say "toasted" on the label, so the most reliable way to know is simply to look at the color.

Left to right in the photo above you see oyster sauce, regular sesame oil, and toasted sesame oil.  Oyster sauce is very thick and dark with a mild flavor that I can't describe, you just have to try it. (But it doesn't taste like oysters.)  Regular sesame oil also has a mild flavor and is so pale it almost looks clear in the little glass bowl above.  Toasted sesame oil is much stronger with a rich nutty aroma and flavor, and it's always used sparingly in recipes for that reason.  If  I come across a recipe that specifies sesame oil but not the specific variety, I make a decision regarding which they intended based on the amount called for - toasted sesame oil is rarely specified in amounts greater than a teaspoon or two.  If you're intimidated by the unfamiliar ingredients, don't be.  They come together in a very tasty sauce and you would never guess the specific ingredients.

Like all stir fries, once you start cooking everything goes fast and you can't stop, so prep all your ingredients in advance.  The whole recipe takes maybe a half hour to prepare from start to finish with most of the time spent slicing ingredients, so this could be a great weeknight meal.

* * click here for a printable recipe version * *

Chicken Chow Mein

serves 4

Note: prep all ingredients in advance – cooking goes really fast once you start.

½ cup low-sodium chicken broth
3 T. oyster sauce
1 T. dark soy sauce, plus more for the table
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon sugar
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, about 6 ounces, cut into thin 2” long strips
1 teaspoon dark (toasted) Asian sesame oil
2 T. peanut oil
1 heaping tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
3 cloves of garlic, minced
4 scallions, white and green minced, divided
salt
black pepper
½ medium yellow onion, thin sliced
2 stalks of celery, thin sliced on the diagonal
10 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded and caps thin sliced
1/3 cup thin sliced canned water chestnuts
6 ounce bag of chow mein (rice) noodles
6 ounces fresh bean sprouts


Whisk together the chicken broth, oyster sauce, soy sauce, cornstarch, and sugar in a small bowl and set aside. Season the chicken with the dark sesame oil, salt and pepper and set aside.

Heat a large skillet or wok over high heat. Heat the two tablespoons of peanut oil until hot, then add the ginger, garlic and one minced scallion and stir fry for 30 seconds. Add the chicken and stir fry until lightly browned, about 90 seconds. Add the onion, celery and mushrooms and stir fry until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Add the water chestnuts and spread the ingredients to the outside of the pan to make a well in the center. Pour the chicken broth mixture into the well, bring to a boil, and stir to coat all ingredients. Remove from the heat and season generously with black pepper.

Place approximately one cup of chow mein noodles on each plate, then top with the chow mein mixture, bean sprouts, and remaining green onions.  Serve with additional soy sauce, if desired.