Meatloaf.

I tease my mother sometimes about eating nothing but meatloaf and tuna noodle casserole as a child. This is, of course, not true. My mother made some delicious chicken and pork dishes, but for some reason the meatloaf sticks out in my memory. Maybe because I didn't like it very much. Even as a child, I thought if we were going to eat copious amounts of ground beef baked together, it was better served in burger form.
That said, after making my croquettes I was faced with a pile of ground meat and no clear idea what to do with it. My mother had recently bought me a fun magazine that had a feature on meatloaf. I decided tonight was the night I would revisit the meatloaf, possibly for the first time since I moved out of my parents' home.

The magazine offered guidelines on how to pick and choose ingredients. That in mind, I kind of made up my own recipe. I used onions, garlic, Chinese celery, and shiitake mushrooms for my aromatics, cooked in a little bit of Kirin beer. Then the meat and breadcrumbs, salt and pepper, some fresh chopped parsley, nutmeg, and garam masala. Finally I added some gruyere cheese, because I found a chunk in the back of our fridge that's been frozen for two years and I'm trying to use it up. In retrospect, the gruyere didn't add much to the dish.

This would be my husband's dish.
"It's better than I thought it would be, it's not bad at all," he said, and then he had three helpings, so I think it was pretty good.



I served it with a couscous and quinoa for our grain, and then some cabbage I've been trying to use up, and okra in a ginger-soy sauce. Overall, it was a filling and sort of healthy meal. I do need to work on my presentation. How does one make a "meatloaf" look nice? Even its name is unappealing.
That said, I think this meatloaf redeemed the dish a bit, and I'll try it again in the future at some point. Maybe.