Juicy Meatloaf

I should start with a warning: unlike almost everything else I've posted here, this recipe is not low fat.

I cooked it mostly as a challenge. I've had little experience with beef and I wanted more. Moreover, meatloaf is not common in Mexico, making it a bit exotic (it is a matter of perspective). I was pleased with the result.

I do apologize for the poor quality of the picture. I was already storing it before I thought to take a photo.

I'll post the glaze/sauce first, then the rest. Here we go:

220 gr. tomato puree or tomato sauce
1/4 Cup Ketchup
4-5 Tbsp. mustard
4 Tbsp. Balsamic vinegar
4 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 Cup beef broth (or even chicken broth or hot water)
1/2 teaspoon ground or powdered ginger
1.5 Tbsp. Paprika


Mix the ingredients in a big enough bowl and whisk them well. The result should be rather thick, but fluid. Save 3/4 cup of it to mix in with the meatloaf.

Now the meatloaf:

3/4 Cup glaze you saved from the first step
1 Kg. ground beef, preferably lean
1/3 onion finely chopped
2 Cloves garlic finely minced
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup cilantro, chopped (optional; it tends to wilt a bit)
1 Cup wheat bran or breadcrumbs (by this I mean a coarse powder, like that used for milanesas)

First get a really big mixing bowl, next put the ground beef in it and break it up. Add the beaten eggs and mix them with the beef. Add the onion, garlic and cilantro, and again mix well with the beef.

The next step is important. Add the 3/4 cup of glaze you saved, but don't add it all at once. Add about 1/4, mix well with the beef, then another fourth and mix again, and so on until you've added all. I was advised to do this by someone who does make meatloaf often. The idea is for the beef to gradually absorb the glaze. I don't know if this is so or not, but the results were good.

Next add the wheat bran or breadcrumbs and, again, mix well.

We're done mixing now... Anyway, shape the mixture in a loaf or use a baking mold for bread (grease it first). If you shape it without a mold, as I did, just grease an oven safe baking dish or a roaster and place the loaf in it. Pour the glaze over the meatloaf. Use as much glaze as needed, but don't feel you must use it all. It's ok if some spills over onto the baking dish.

Put it int he oven at 180 C (around 350 F) for one hour. Periodically you'll want to baste it with the beef juices that will come out, and if desired add more glaze. You should also check from 45 minutes onward how things proceed. You want the center to be brown rather than pink in the end, that's when you're done.

I ate it by itself, which was ok, but it would go well with mashed potatoes, or oven roasted potatoes, and perhaps even with sauteed mushrooms.

Enjoy.

Upcoming

I really should stop cooking so late...

I made meatloaf, my first (yay!), following my usual method of finding a recipe online and adapting it to my taste (and my fridge and my pantry, too). It came out rather well, very moist and tasty, with a nice glaze. I'll post the recipe as soon as possible.

Bye for now.

Enchiladas Rojas (Red Enchiladas)

Traditionally enchiladas are either green or red, depending on whether you use red or green tomatoes to make the sauce. In fact, table salsa usually is also green or red for the same reason.

Again I made these with cottage cheese as a filling, but you can use anything else you want. Shredded chicken and pork carnitas are popular, and tasty, fillings.

Fresh from the oven!

As with the past enchilada recipe, I'll post the salsa apart from the rest:

Salsa
Ingredients:

4-5 red tomatoes
1/2 onion, quartered
2 cloves garlic, quartered
Cilantro to taste (about 3-5 branches, stems and all)
2-4 Serrano chilies, or other small green chilies.
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 Teaspoon cumin
1/4 cup water.

Blanch the tomatoes and peel them, or peel by your preferred method. I tried roasting them this time, at first, but I had trouble doing so. Next quarter them and put them in the blender, removing the core and seeds first. Add the other ingredients to the blender and liquefy the whole thing. You may want to do this in two batches unless you have a big blender. BTW this is the time to taste the salsa and see whether it's too hot or no hot enough, and to adjust the ingredients accordingly.

Pour the salsa into a deep saucepan or pot and turn the heat on low. Let it come to a boil slowly, stirring from time to time. Let it boil for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Then remove from heat and set aside.


Enchiladas
Ingredients:

The salsa from the previous step
200 gr. Cottage cheese (or more)
70 gr. grated white cheese suitable for melting
2 Tablespoons reduced-fat sour cream (optional; personally I don't like it in my enchiladas)
Fresh, wide, corn tortillas, as many as necessary
Chopped onion to taste

First the tortillas handle better when hot. My preferred method is to heat them on a comal on the stove. A comal is a flat, round piece of thin metal that holds 3 or four tortillas. If you don't have one, you can use a wide skillet, or even put them in the microwave for thirty seconds wrapped in a clean kitchen cloth.

So, heat the tortillas a few at a time. Carefully, as they're hot, spoon some cottage each on one and fold it in on itself. Place it on an oven safe baking dish with the fold side down. If it opens as soon as you let go, you have the wrong kind of tortilla. Repeat as many times as necessary. In the photo above there are about 8 enchiladas.

Next pour salsa generously on top, making sure to cover all the enchiladas. Try not to use it all, as a reserve may come in handy later. Sprinkle the grated cheese evenly on top and, if you want, the sour cream as well.

Place in an oven pre-heated to 300 degrees F (you may want to pre-heat the oven before you get started) for thirty minutes. Remove from the oven, let it cool and serve.

For serving, put freshly chopped onion on the table to sprinkle on top. Also perhaps additional salsa, as you should have some left over. If you reheat them in the microwave, BTW, they tend to dry out. When I reheat them I pour some salsa on them before putting them in the microwave, so they'll be moist when done.

I also like to serve them with Mexican rice.

Bonus recipe:

For making red chilaquiles, simply use the same sauce recipe and pour it over tortilla chips. Fried chips keep better, but baked chips do well for a fresh serving. Top with chopped onion. Some people like adding grated fresh cheese and sour cream as well.

Good news, Bad news

The good news is I tried new recipes today. The bad news is I'm beat and won't be posting them til later in the week.

I made mushroom soup, which was not as good as I'd hoped but better than my earlier attempts. I also made red enchiladas. which as you might guess differ little from green enchiladas.

Kathy's Italian Chicken

This is the one that wore me out today. It's a brand new, 100% original recipe. t began with some 1/2 kilo of ground chicken breast I had in the freezer...

Anyway, it's a bit involved and takes a long time, but it's worth it.

Fresh from the oven

It even rates two photos:

Served with Garlic oven-roasted potatoes

The dish consists in flat chicken croquettes covered in tomato sauce. But it's a bit involved as it takes multiple steps. I'll post the ingredients in parts to make this easier, or so I hope.

1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat bran (or regular breadcrumbs)
2 Tbsp. paprika
1/2 Tbsp. ground black pepper
1 Tbsp. thyme
1 Tbsp. Fine herbs, crushed
1 Tbsp. oregano, crushed
1 Tbsp. garlic powder.

Mix all these ingredients in a bowl and set aside for the moment.

1/2 kilo (1+ lbs.) ground chicken breast
1 whole egg, beaten
1/3 cup green bell pepper, diced very small
1/3 cup jicama, diced very small
2-4 twigs of cilantro, chopped (without stems)
Oil for frying as needed

In a bowl mix the chicken, bell pepper, jicama, cilantro and egg. You'll have to use your hands, sorry! I used disposable plastic gloves (stolen from a supply at the office), but you can get disposable latex gloves if you don't like handling raw ground chicken. Mix well so there's an even mix of vegetables in the chicken.

Now, form small, flat croquettes and roll/dredge them in the mixture you set aside before. Then fry them in s skillet with a little oil of your choice until both sides are golden brown and/or the chicken has cooked through (that's why I want them nice and flat). Set aside.

It's likely you'll be doing them in batches of two or three, as I wound up doing, adding a bit of oil to the skillet. If so, you'd best turn the heat down to minimum, or nearly so, in order to keep the croquettes and the oil from burning. Skillets can get very hot after a while on high flame.

By the way, the mixture of flour and wheat bran above may be too much for 500 gr. of chicken. So if you can't think of another use for it, better adjust the quantities downwards.

Now we make the sauce. This is the easiest part.

1 bottle 680 gr. (about 1lb 8 oz) your choice Spaghetti sauce
1/4 small onion finely chopped
1 small clove of garlic finely minced (if you don't like too much garlic, omit this ingredient)
4-6 mushrooms thinly sliced
1/2 Tbsp. oregano
2 1/2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce (optional)
1 teaspoon olive oil
Grated Parmesan cheese to taste

In a saucepan heat the olive oil and add the garlic and onion. When the onions begin to turn translucent, add the mushrooms. Cook on medium heat until the mushrooms are golden all over. Reduce the heat to low and add the sauce. Stir well, add the oregano and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a slow boil. When it begins to bubble, remove from the flame.

Now get a baking dish and place the croquettes previously set aside on he bottom. Ladle sauce to cover them and sprinkle Parmesan cheese to taste on top of each one. According to the size of your dish, you may need a second layer of croquettes, again ladling sauce and sprinkling more cheese. In the top photo there are two such layers.

Place in an oven pre-heated to 300-350 F (I had to experiment on mine) until the sauce bubbles and the cheese melts. Let it cool and serve.

Whew! This is by far the most complicated dish I ever thought up. And I omitted "stretching" the chicken by adding textured soy to the mix. I didn't simply because I judged I had enough chicken. It was a great dish to cook, too.

One more thing, as the fur mix for coating the croquettes already contains garlic, using more garlic in the sauce may be too much. I love garlic, so for me it was fine. but you can omit either one without affecting the outcome too much.

Enjoy!

Garlic oven-roasted potatoes

It's not easy to make nice, tasty low-fat potatoes.

Potatoes are low in fat, but the ways to making them tasty are usually not. This one's no exception, but I think it goes towards the lower range of fat content. So:

I'll post the recipe for the chicken in the photo later (that one takes some doing).

Ingredients:

4 large potatoes, diced into small cubes
1/4 cup olive oil
3 large garlic cloves, mashed with a garlic press (I tried grating them, but the pres worked better)
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon fine herbs, crushed.
A few fresh parsley leaves, cut small

Place the olive oil and mashed garlic in a large bowl. add the pepper, fine herbs and parsley. Stir well and let it sit for an hour at least at room temperature. This is to infuse the oil with the spices.

Next add the diced potatoes (you may peel them or not, your choice) tot he bowl and toss until they are all covered with oil and spices. Place on a baking dish, preferably a large one so the potatoes are on a single layer. Put it in the oven preheated to 350-400 F (my oven is set to Celsius and I set it to 200 C) and bake for 45 to 60 minutes, or until the potatoes are cooked. be careful not to burn them, which is easy to do at such high temperatures.

And be very careful with the oven! Ok. I admit I'm a bit phobic about ovens. I tend to be extra careful when using them.

Re: Cabbage Soup

As I was saying, I updated the recipe for cabbage soup. This version tastes more like cabbage with chicken broth than chicken broth with cabbage.

And I took a photo:

I used green cabbage rather than red, because the red tends to dye the other ingredients. Not to mention the broth turns purple. But you can use red cabbage if you like it better. 

1/3 of a head of green cabbage chopped or 1 small red cabbage
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 onion, chopped
4-5 mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup green bell pepper, diced
1.5 carrots (I cut it into sticks, but go any way you like)
About 1/4 of a medium sized jicama (in sticks, too, or see about the carrot)
3/4 cup soybean sprouts
2.25 liters of water
2 cubes chicken bullion low-fat, low-sodium
1 teaspoon olive oil 1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
Ground black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon Oregano
1 teaspoon fine herbs
Worcestershire sauce

Preparation

Saute the garlic and onions with the olive oil in a soup pot until the onion turns translucent. Then add the bell pepper and mushrooms and cook for two minutes. Add the carrot and jicama and cook for another two minutes. Add the cabbage and soybean sprouts. Cook for about 10 minutes, don't let the veggies get too soft. While this is going on, add pepper to taste.

Lower the heat to medium and add the water. Add Worcestershire sauce, ginger and fine herbs. Stir.

When it warms up, add the chicken bullion cubes and stir until they dissolve (if possible, crumble them first). Reduce the heat to minimum and bring to a slow boil. When the soup begins to bubble let it simmer for 5 to 10 minutes and then remove from heat.

I do like the stronger cabbage flavor.

Updates later today

I have been cooking for a few hours and am too tired to post the recipes. But I should have something later today, or tomorrow at the latest. I updated the recipe for cabbage soup, and succeeded in making garlic oven-roasted potatoes, and a new, original chicken recipe.

Coffee Yogurt Gelatin

I can't claim I was successful, but it was far from a failure. I did make a reasonably good coffee and yogurt gelatin yesterday. I had some for dessert today and it was pretty good. Look:

I do like the little individual serving cups

I used instant coffee.

I'm not a coffee purist. I do drink instant every morning with breakfast. But at such times I care only for the caffeine and convenience, not the flavor. At any other time I have fresh-brewed.

The problem is that the brewed coffee does not mix with yogurt. I mean if you let the mixture seat for any amount of time, it will separate. The coffee goes tot he top and the yogurt to the bottom. So what I did was get drinking yogurt, like this:

And the instant did dissolve in it....

Oh well. Here's the recipe:

2 Bottles drinking yogurt (225 gr. each) low-fat
1/2-1/3 Cup of skim milk (I mean fill it halfway between the 1/2 and 1/3 mark)
2-3 Teaspoons instant coffee
1/2 Teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
1 Packet flavorless gelatin (7 gr.)

The yogurt is sweetened with Splenda, so I didn't add any extra sweetener

The drinking yogurt is a very thick fluid, but it flows reasonably well. Still, you'll have to hold the bottle upside down over the pot and shake it to get most of it out.

So, in a small pot pour both bottle of yogurt. Add the coffee, milk and vanilla extract and stir until it assumes a coffee and cream color. You will see some bits of undissolved coffee. This is normal. Turn on the heat on medium. Stir from time to time, and you should see the rest of the coffee dissolve. When it begins to bubble around the edges, add the gelatin.

Now, there are at least two kinds of flavorless gelatin. One you just add to the mix, but it requires you to boil what you're making,. The other you moisten with some of the mix in a container and then heat it (according to the directions). This second type dissolves and mixes well at lower temperatures, and it's the kind I used.

Stir the gelatin in well and then turn the flame off. Pour into individual cups or a mold, let it cool to room temperature, and then place in the fridge until it sets.

I used more liquid than you should for 7 gr. of gelatin. That was on purpose, in order to get a creamier, semi-solid texture. If pressed, I'd describe it like a very thick mousse. That, at least, came out exactlya s I intended.

So I'll be looking for ways to incorporate brewed coffee. That means finding an emulsifier, I guess. Any ideas are welcome.

Chicken with White Wine Sauce

Given my recent success making onion soup, I looked up other recipes using wine of some sort. Between reading and my own ideas, I came up with this:

Now, I made some mistakes with the preparation. Take note: make sure you have all the equipment you'll need! I could have sworn I had a mallet to flatten meats with, but I couldn't find it. So I wound up with rather thick chicken breasts. I wasn't going to pound them flat, I'm not making milanesas after all, but I did want to thin them so they'd cook better. Oh well.

First you prepare and cook the chicken:


Four thin boneless, skinless chicken breasts, not pounded flat.
1/4 Cup flour (I used whole wheat flour)
2 Tbsp. paprika
2 Tbsp. garlic powder
1 Tbsp. ground black pepper
1 Tbsp. oregano, crushed
1 Tbsp. thyme, crushed

1 Tbsp. olive oil

2 thick onion slices, separated into rings

In a large bowl, mix the flour and spices well. Dredge the chicken in the mix so it's evenly covered on both sides, shake off any excess. In a deep sauce pan heat the olive oil on a medium flame and cook the chicken along with the onions. Times vary, but cook each side of the chicken until it's golden brown. You don't want to overcook it, as it will dry out. You also don't want to leave the center raw or half-cooked. Therefore use reasonably thin pieces (as noted I didn't do).

When it's done, set the chicken aside and leave the onions in the pan.

Next:

2 Cups mushroom, sliced
2 Cups half-cooked (boiled) potatoes, thinly sliced but not potato chip thin.
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Teaspoon butter or margarine
1 Cup chicken broth
3/4 Cup white wine (I used a Riesling from Baja California)

In the same pan, still with the onions, add olive oil and margarine (or butter), and cook the mushrooms and potatoes. Again, times vary. You want the mushrooms to release their juices and turn brown around the edges only. When they're done, add the wine.

Keep cooking until the wine is reduced by about half. Add the chicken broth, and keep cooking for a few minutes, letting the sauce thicken. The sauce may not thicken enough by itself, though this can differ according to taste. If you want a thicker sauce, take a tablespoon of the left over flour and spices mix, and dissolve it in 1/4 cup of hot water. Make sure to use hot water, as wheat flour tends not to dissolve in cold water. Add the mix to the sauce and stir.

Add the chicken you'd set aside. If you like, add also another teaspoon of margarine or butter. Let the whole thing cook for another three to five minutes and you're done.

This dish would go very well with mashed potatoes or white rice.

Early morning cooking

I've been cooking all morning. I must say it's a nice way to start the day, albeit a bit tiring...

I'll be posting my recipe for today later. For now, I made a slight change to my Stir Fried Red Cabbage with Soy Sauce. Basically follow the same recipe, only first fry some turkey bacon before doing everything else. Or regular bacon, if you prefer.

I'll also be trying my latest idea for coffee-yogurt gelatin. After the Steelers game, probably.

See you later!