How to make a cold meatloaf sandwich
Dear M. Baroquians: Here is my last Ode to America for these hallowed pages. I am unable to convert the measurements to metric. Sorry, but it's early over here. Do note that "three good squarshy shots of ketchup" is the same in all languages. Many thanks to our lovely hostess for having me and good luck with the recipe.
Love,
Erin
1. Plop a 2-pound package of meatloaf mix (like your mom used to buy: that three-different-ground-meats thing in the butcher case, usually 1/3 beef, 1/3 pork and 1/3 veal) in a bowl.
2. Add a good shake of dry parsley, lots of salt and pepper, two or three good squarshy shots of ketchup, a shake of worcestershire, a handful or so dry bread crumbs and one very finely chopped medium yellow onion.
3. Bask in a surge of overconfidence and tell self, "self, you have made this meatloaf so many times that checking the recipe is redundant."
4. Get your damn hands in there and mix it up (use disposable latex gloves if you don't want to get icky meat stuff under your fingernails).
5. Add more ketchup if too dry and more breadcrumbs if too blucky (you just sort of have to know what is too dry and too blucky, sorry).
6. Plop resulting mixture onto a large piece of foil and form it into a loaf.
7. Discard gloves. Wash hands.
8. Wrap loaf up tightly in tinfoil.
9. Put loaf in freezer.
10. Sit down and pop a beer.
11. Realize you forgot the egg.
12. Say "aw shit" and let out a big sigh.
13. Retrieve meatloaf from freezer.
14. Say "aw shit" again when you look at the mixing bowl full of soapy water in the sink.
15. Wash and dry bowl.
16. Open meatloaf and plop into bowl.
17. Beat and add one egg.
18. Get out another pair of gloves.
19. Get your damn hands in there and mix in the egg, repeating step 5 as necessary.
20. Not wanting to use yet another pair of gloves, remove only the left one and retrieve meatloaf recipe card Mom wrote out for you 20 years ago and make sure you haven't forgotten anything else.
21. Add some oregano and basil per Mom's card.
22. Using only the one hand that remains in a glove, mix that in as best you can.
23. Plop meatloaf back onto the tinfoil you used previously.
24. Realize that the used tinfoil is too crinkly to reuse.
25. Take off other glove and say "goddamnit."
26. Fumble around in the impossible plastic-bag-and-tinfoil-and-Saran Wrap drawer and get out a new sheet of tinfoil.
27. Internally refuse to use another pair of gloves.
28. Using bare hands, form meatloaf into a loaf.
29. Wash hands, making sure to get icky meat stuff out from under fingernails.
30. Put meatloaf in freezer.
31. Finish the beer you started earlier.
32. Live your life for a few weeks.
33. Wake up one day and realize there is nothing for dinner.
34. Remember frozen meatloaf.
35. Start your day and forget to take meatloaf out of freezer to thaw.
36. End up ordering pizza for dinner.
37. Take meatloaf out of freezer for tomorrow's dinner.
38. Live another 23 hours or so.
39. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
40. Put meatloaf in shallow baking pan with 1/2" of water.
41. Bake uncovered for about an hour and a half.
42. Make some mashed potatoes or salad or something while the meatloaf is baking.
43. Open a five-dollar bottle of wine.
44. Knowing that this is nothing more than an obligatory stop on your quest for a great cold meatloaf sandwich, consume meatloaf (deluged with A1 Sauce if desired), potatoes and wine with family.
45. Refrigerate leftover meatloaf.
46. Live another 18 hours or so in sublime anticipation of forthcoming lunch.
47. Remove cold meatloaf from fridge and precisely cut one or two slices, depending on cross-sectional area of meatloaf and bread.
48. Marvel at how much easier it is to cut cold meatloaf than hot meatloaf.
49. Lightly toast two pieces of bread.
50. Slather one or both pieces of toast with mayonnaise.
51. Build sandwich: toast, meatloaf, shake of salt, shake of Tabasco, lettuce, mayonnaise-slathered toast.
52. Cut sandwich in half and part the halves such that satisfying cross section of sandwich is viewable.
53. Put a handful of Ruffles Reduced Fat potato chips on plate, along with a pickle spear.
54. Turn on some Van Morrison, set plate on kitchen table.
55. Sit down.
56. Smile and consider sandwich.
57. Bite sandwich.
58. Inflate with breath as waxen wings bloom from your back.
9 comments:
Erin, you've got it! Dear other readers, please make Erin's meat loaf. And eat the sandwich. You will never regret it.
In England they don't sell those meatloaf packs of meat. I use about steak mince, pork and lamb.
(I also can't see anyone English using rubber gloves for cooking!)
And I'm a little confused: do you place the wrapped-up foil parcel of meat loaf right into a pan with water in it? How does it get a crust? Or doesn't it? I bake my meat loaf in a loaf tin.
Superb post!
You know, my best friend, Ms Rational Self-Determinism, came over the other day and said she has just made some cornbread for the first time in years - that's another one of those wonderful indispensible American foods.
And I've just today made one of my famous American pancake breakfasts for the girls...
Excellent!
I place the wrapped foil loaf in the pan, then carefully unfurl the foil and ease it out over the pan, so it ends up being a liner. The water goes in the foil, so you basically have an unwrapped meatloaf in 1/2" of water in a tin-foil lined pan.
You could throw the foil away altogether, but it does make the pan easier to clean.
Thanks so much for having me Ms. B!
Okay, the foil in the pan to make it easier to clean - I am SO behind that. You are a genius. I am going to try it this way! People, you heard it here.
Oh, this is fabulous! I had meatloaf at someone's house once, and it was THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER.
I want to make this NOW. D'you have to do anything to the mince, Ms B? Like chop it, food-process it or anything like that? Or just bung it in a bowl?
I loved that!
Mayonnaise, toast, beer,
and Van The Man.
bliss.
what a wonderful night for a moondance ...
Good luck Dandy and Ann!
ummmmm, just like Mom used to make. PC Bitseach may try to duplicate, but will never match the above receipe! (And why, because she can't comprehend that the packets are NECESSARY!)
BTW Ms B, we keep an Aunt Jemima rotation going. They sell it at Selfridges and I'm just waiting for the right moment to bust out the cornbread mix.
PS, you know, ever since I mentioned the Damian Lewis thing here, I've had the entire Damian Lewis fan club at my page ever since. Girls please. Let the man live his life. I dread to thing women are flying over from the states as we speak to stake out Holloway Waitrose! For crying out loud!
Kris, me too. Poor Damian Lewis! I had no idea who he even was till I followed their sorry little trail & saw his picture. Damian, I'm sorry. And I did like you in The Forsyte Saga... Can you imagine!
I confess I keep a little supply of Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup in the house - they sell them on Ocado for a crippling sum, but I do love it. As to the cornbread, you can't beat the Joy of Cooking. but corn muffins!? How do they get them the way they are in cafes in the States? Toasting a homemade one does NOT give you a "toasted corn muffin." (It just gives you a pile of crumbs.)
Whose "sorry little trail" ?
what am I missing about the delectable Damian ?
I wept at the end of his Forsyte Saga.
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