Hellooooo hope you are all well. It’s good to be back 🙂
I’ve been dying to share this meaty recipe with you all. Before I made this, I had only associated Meatloaf with The Simpsons cartoon, where the kids and Homer moan about how boring it is! But, reading the ingredients, it didn’t sound boring to me!
I was given Nigella Lawson’s “Kitchen” cookbook as a Xmas gift (thanks Colin :D) and this is the first thing I’ve made from it (although I’ve got my eye on the chicken, chorizo & potato bake llarrr!). When I’m looking through recipes, I usually look for one that will use up the things I already have at home (waste not, want not and all that jazz). So this one was perfect.
The recipe calls for beef mince, but I used half beef, half pork (I got the pork for £1 out of Asda, in the “reduced” aisle as it was nearing its sell-by date. I froze it on day of purchase and let it defrost overnight. Bargain!). Here’s what else I used:
Ingredients (Serves 8, apparently. I’d say 6…):
4 eggs
4 onions, diced as finely as you can
500g beef mince
500g pork mince
1 pack of smoked bacon (the recipe calls for 225g thin cut streaky bacon, but I had the thick cut bacon…)
100g breadcrumbs
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
First, I boiled 3 of the eggs (leaving one remaining) and fried the onions till translucent, then allowed to cool. I also preheated the oven to 200 degrees.
I put the beef, pork, onions and Worcestershire sauce in a bowl, then squished it all together with my hands. I added the remaining raw egg and breadcrumbs then mixed again.
I took half the mixture and moulded it into a long oval shape, and placed my wee boiled eggs on top.
I moulded the rest of the mixture over the top, pressing down gently to get in all the nooks of the eggs. I wrapped the lot with my bacon, tucking in at the bottom.
I put in the oven for 1 hour, then let rest for 15 minutes.
I clearly didn’t tuck it in enough, as it started curling up during cooking. It’s probably because I used the wrong type of bacon, but I wasn’t bothering. It’s all getting cut up anyway!
I was so impressed when I cut it open! 🙂
I served this in big, hearty chunks with creamy mash, roasted parsnips, marrowfat peas (I HATE garden peas), and smothered it in a gravy I made up using: a glass of red wine and an Oxo cube dissolved in about 200ml water, boiled till reduced slightly, then added a tsp of beef gravy granules, giving it the consistency I wanted (it doesn’t sound like much, but mmmmm it was flavoursome!).
Definitely a lovely, comforting dinner for a miserable day!
Nigella says she likes to put her leftovers in a sandwich the next day. I wrapped mines up in foil, put in the fridge and completely forgot about them! Oops! What was that I was saying about waste not, want not?
In other news…
I follow a wonderful blog called A Glug of Oil, and one day she posted about a Fairy Hobmother doing the rounds. He was granting wishes to food bloggers and he gave her an Ice Cream Maker! I commented on her blog (chanced my arm), and look what came my way…
I’m so unbelievably chuffed with my teeny food processor; it’s so cute!
Anyway, it was lovely posting again. Now time to go and visit all the food blogs and drool over food (I’ve missed it so!).
Enjoy 🙂 x