Dark Days Challenge/Every Thursday: Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and butternut squash

I like to cook. Love it, really. But even so it's nice to have something in the freezer for those busy days when I'm getting home too late to start from scratch or just don't feel like it. One of my go-to meals is meatloaf, which I usually serve once a week with the mashed potatoes I put up while potatoes were in season and the butternut squash I stocked up on in October. (I'll post my make-ahead mashed potatoes recipe in a future post.)

I generally make four batches of meatloaf at a time and produce five slightly-smaller-than-usual loaves with them, as we aren't huge eaters at my house. (My husband and son are lobbying for larger loaves to facilitate leftover production, as this is one of their favorite meals.) Last Thursday we ate the last of the meatloaves I had in the freezer, so yesterday I made up another batch. This recipe is adapted from Pam Anderson's The Perfect Recipe.

MEATLOAF

2 T olive oil
4 c chopped onions
8 garlic cloves, pressed (if you don't have a garlic press, mince)
8 eggs
1 1/2 T dried thyme
1 T salt
2 t ground pepper
1 1/2 T Dijon mustard
1 1/2 T Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 t hot sauce
2 c plain yogurt
4 pounds ground beef
4 pounds ground pork
2 2/3 c panko breadcrumbs (if you can't find panko, substitute quick oats)
1 1/3 c minced fresh parsley

2 1/2 pounds of bacon, divided into 1/2-pound portions and wrapped for the freezer.

Heat oil and saute onions and garlic five minutes. Set aside to cool.

Mix eggs with thyme, salt, pepper, mustard, Worcester- shire, hot sauce, and yogurt, whisking to blend well. Add to meat in a very large bowl along with breadcrumbs, parsley, and onions/garlic. Mix gently with a fork until evenly blended.

Divide into 5 portions, weighing to even them out. (If you don't have a kitchen scale, just eyeball it.) Form into loaves and wrap tightly in foil.

Package each loaf with a half-pound portion of bacon and freeze.

On serving day:

Thaw meatloaf and bacon. Preheat oven to 350. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Wrap a cooling rack in aluminum foil and poke the foil full of 1/8" holes in an area larger than the size of the loaf. Set the rack on the cookie sheet and center the loaf over the holes.

Make glaze:

1/8 c chili sauce
1 T sriracha sauce (this is usually in the asian section, or you can make your own.)
2 T brown sugar
2 t cider vinegar

Mix together well.

Brush glaze over meatloaf. Cover glazed loaf completely with bacon, using toothpicks to secure the ends. Insert thermometer and bake at 350 until loaf registers 160, about 45 - 50 minutes. Cool 15 minutes before removing thermometer (if you remove the thermometer too soon, you'll lose a lot of juice), then slice and serve.

Dark Days Challenge/Goodwinter Soup

I can't decide whether this one qualifies as local or not. The kale, tomatoes, squash, chicken, onions, carrots, celery are local. The pasta is semi-local. The chickpeas aren't local, and neither are the porcinis or the parmesan.

I adapted this recipe from an excellent one found on Restaurant Widow's wonderful blog. Her version is quicker if you have parmesan stock and leftover chicken on hand but requires several pots if you don't, so while I've made some ingredients changes my adaptation is primarily to trade time for dirty pots. I changed it enough that I decided it needed a new name, so as the ingredients are wintery and the instructions now call for an all-day babysit (though requiring little attention; perfect for a long winter day spent at home but with only occasional visits to the kitchen), I decided to call it Goodwinter Soup.

My husband, who is not generally a fan of chickpeas, asked me to add it into the regular rotation. And it's gorgeous enough to serve to guests -- the combination of the different shapes (round chickpeas, diced squash, spiral gemelli, julienned tomatoes) and colors (the bright orange of the squash, dark green of the kale, and deep red of the tomatoes set against the muted earthtones of the chicken, chickpeas, pasta and stock) have a homely beauty.

GOODWINTER SOUP

1 c chickpeas with water to cover
10 c water
1 3" x 4" piece of Parmigiano Reggiano rind
1/4 oz dried porcini mushrooms
1 med onion, quartered (or several onion ends)
1 carrot, halved lengthwise and cut into 3-inch pieces (or equivalent trimmings)
1 stalk celery, cut into 3-inch pieces (or equivalent trimmings)
1 parsnip, halved lengthwise and cut into 3-inch pieces (or equivalent trimmings)
1 T peppercorns
3 bay leaves
1 boneless skinless chicken breast (or two half breasts)
3 - 4 c chicken stock
4 oz sundried tomatoes, cut in fine julienne
1 bunch kale, cleaned, veined, and roughly chopped
1 butternut or other orange-fleshed winter squash, peeled and cut into 1/2" dice
1 c gemelli, cooked until not quite al dente (about a minute less than the package instructions.)
Salt and pepper to taste

Wash chickpeas well, cover with water, and set aside to soak.

Place water, parmesan rind, porcinis, onion, carrot, parsnip, celery, peppercorns, and bay leaves into a soup pot, bring to a boil, lower to simmer, and let stew for several hours, adding water as necessary to keep covered.

Add chicken breast and more water if necessary to cover completely, return to boil, cover, remove from heat, and allow to cool. (This will poach the chicken breast perfectly; do not remove cover until pan feels just warm to the touch.)

Remove chicken breast, cut into 1/2" dice, and set aside. Drain chickpeas, reserving a cup of the soaking water.

Strain stock in a fine sieve and return to pan. Add drained chickpeas, the reserved chickpea soaking water, and enough chicken stock to cover completely, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered until chickpeas are tender (1-3 hours depending on how long they soaked), adding more chicken stock as needed to keep chickpeas completely covered.

When chickpeas are tender, add reserved chicken, kale, tomatoes, and butternut squash, add more chicken stock to barely cover, return to boil, and reduce heat to simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Add cooked gemelli and heat through*. Correct seasonings (NOTE: the parmesan rind contains a lot of salt and your chicken stock may, too, so taste before adding salt) and serve with rustic bread and a salad.

*One additional way to avoid dirtying more pots is to cook the gemelli actually in the soup -- throw the cup of uncooked pasta in during the final few minutes of the cooking process, stir to prevent sticking, cover the pot and allow the pasta to steam for five minutes. This is tricky, though -- for your laziness, you risk overcooking your pasta, and the texture of the finished pasta will never be as good as pasta that is cooked in plenty of water until not quite al dente, drained, rinsed in cold water to stop the cooking, then added to the dish to reheat just before serving.

Dark Days Challenge/Pepper Chicken and Buttered Radishes

Yeah, I know. It sounds like a bizarre combination for a meal. And there's no good reason behind the combination. It was pure coincidence and unwillingness to delay gratification. (I'd already done my Dark Days Challenge Meal for the week, but I got it in my head to make a Pepper Chicken and ran out to Red Sun Farm and Greenacres for the necessary ingredients, figuring this would be an easy second meal.) Then when I got to Greenacres they had three bunches of radishes. I've been craving buttered radishes for weeks. I snapped up all they had, and that became the side dish du jour.

Greenacres also had all the peppers and onions my heart could desire in early December: Green bell peppers, pimientos, jalapenos, red onions, yellow onions, shallots. (They're growing in hoophouse over the winter, and the gardener says they'll harvest once a week as long as snow or ice doesn't collapse the hoophouses.) At any rate, their peppers were beautiful, and I grabbed an assortment figuring the more flavors the better. At Red Sun Farm I'd picked up garlic and several boneless chicken breasts. The only things I needed to pick up at Pipkin's were flatbread and cilantro.

For the Pepper Chicken, I used more or less the same seasoning mix I use for taco meat:

PEPPER CHICKEN

1 T olive oil
4 chicken breasts, sliced thin against the grain
3 - 4 c sweet and hot peppers, to taste, cut into 1/4" dice
1 1/2 c onions, cut into 1/4" dice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 t corn flour
4 1/2 t chili powder
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t seasoned salt
1/2 t paprika
1/4 t cumin
1/4 t cayenne
1 t salt
2 c chicken stock

In a medium saute pan, heat the oil on medium heat. Saute the chicken breasts until just opaque, then remove the chicken to a plate. Add peppers, onions and garlic to hot pan and saute over medium-low heat until onions are translucent. Add chicken stock and seasonings and bring to a boil, then lower heat, cover, and simmer for twenty minutes until veggies are tender. Return chicken to pan, heat through, and serve on pita or flatbread.

The buttered radishes are a strange concept that I suspect is French in origin, but I like them nevertheless. The combination of butter, pepper, and tender-cooked radishes is irresistible. I'm experimenting with other additions. This version includes dill, but I'm not sure that's the perfect enhancement.

BUTTERED RADISHES

2 T butter
salt to taste
~25 radishes, trimmed
2 t sugar
1 t red wine vinegar
1 T dill, minced
1 1/2 t ground pepper

In a small skillet, melt butter. Add radishes and salt, coat radishes with butter, then cover pan and leave over low heat for 4-5 minutes depending on the size of the radishes. Add sugar and vinegar and saute 2 minutes, then add dill and pepper, remove from heat, and serve.

Dark Days Challenge/Fettucini and Meatballs in Marinara

This one is a stretch to call 90%, I think. Certainly 90% of the cost of this meal went to local ingredients, but some of the bulkier ingredients weren't local.

The marina is the least-local portion of the meal, and that's my husband's mother's fault, god rest her soul. My husband's favorite meal is his mother's spaghetti, which family legend has it was passed down to her by her husband's mother, an Italian woman who immigrated in 1906. So of course when I married him, I got the recipe from his mom.

Well, maybe old Mrs. Finocchiaro had to make do with what she could find when she moved to South Philly from Sicily as a young married woman, but I really can't believe she strayed this far from her roots:

GRANDMA FINOCCHIARO'S SPAGHETTI SAUCE

1/2 stick Olio
1 pound ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1/4 c dried parsley
1 T salt
1/4 t pepper
1/4 t garlic powder
1 28-oz can chopped tomatoes + 1 can water
1 15-oz can Hunts sauce
1 12-oz can Hunts tomato paste

Brown the beef in the olio, drain off excess fat, and add the onion, parsley, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Saute 10 minutes and add remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and simmer 2 - 3 hours.

When I first saw this recipe, I suspected my (of Swiss extraction & raised in Bucyrus, Ohio) mother-in-law had massively adapted her mother-in-law's recipe to what could be found at the Foodarama (I swear that was the name of our local grocery store) in Dayton Ohio in the 1950s. So the first time I made it for my husband, I tried to take it back to Italy at least a little. I skipped the olio, used fresh parsley and garlic, and used nothing but whole San Marzano tomatoes plus a little beef stock to make a long-cooked sauce.

My husband said, 'This is really good, but it's not my mom's sauce.'

So I relented. Other than starting with a 'half stick of olio' and then draining it off (I just saute the onions and seasonings while the beef is browning in its own juices) I now use The Recipe. It's become my son's favorite meal. Someday I'll probably be handing it over to a daughter in law. Sigh. On the bright side, it's the easiest dinner I ever make, the ingredients are always in my cupboards, and my husband and son are delighted to see it every week. So while I'll never love this sauce, I do love having a go-to recipe for crazy days.

The meatballs have only one non-local ingredient (the romano -- cheese as always is a challenge to find locally.) These are adapted from the recipe used at Maroni's in Northport, NY on Long Island and featured on one of my guilty pleasures, Throwdown with Bobby Flay. It's an odd meatball recipe, with four times as much egg and breadcrumb and twice as much milk as most meatball recipes contain. Maroni jokingly refers to it as 'more of a quiche' and I have to agree. They're probably not for everyone, but they're growing on me. Changes I made: I used half beef/half pork because that's what I prefer (the recipe calls for all beef.) I didn't have enough garlic, parsley, or basil in the house to meet the recipe's specifications and ended up halving the amounts -- for instance, the recipe called for 2 ounces of garlic. Well, a full head of organic garlic weighs less than an ounce. Same with the parsley and basil -- I chopped a mountain of both and ended up with just an ounce of each, so while the recipe called for 2 ounces of each, 1 ounce is what I used. I'll probably try to follow the specified amounts next time, and probably I'll add ground pepper, too, now that I've tasted the finished meatballs.

MEATBALLS VIA MARONI'S

1/2 pound ground chuck
1/2 pound ground pork
4 ounces dried bread crumbs
4 large eggs
4 ounces whole milk
6 ounces grated Romano
3 ounces grated onion
1 ounce pressed fresh garlic
1 ounce Italian parsley, chopped
1 ounce basil, choppped

Preheat oven to 350. Coat a baking sheet lightly with olive oil.

Mix all ingredients thoroughly in large bowl.

Roll meatballs loosely to about the size of a large golf ball and place on baking sheet. Place into preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes. Serves six (about 3 large meatballs each.)

For pasta, I used the garlic fetuccini made by Rossi's, which is made in Marietta Ohio, about 200 miles from here and probably not with local grains. I'm going to keep my eyes open for a truly local product made with local grains, because that seems like something I ought to be able to find here in the middle of farm country.

Dark Days Challenge/Turk-a-leekie soup

Thursday's turkeys are picked over and the carcasses in the freezer for stock. I have a lovely bunch of leeks from Boulder Belt Eco-Farm, picked up at the November Winter Market in Oxford the weekend before Thanksgiving along with carrots, celery, and garlic, so I decided to make Turk-a-leekie soup. Like Cockaleekie, only with turkey.

First I started the stock. Into my largest stockpot I put one of the turkey carcasses plus several bags of vegetable trimmings I've been saving for the past week or so -- some carrot tops, onion ends, a celery end, some garlic ends, and potato peelings. I save these trimmings as I prepare veggies from week to week and stick them into the freezer for stockmaking. Seems a shame to put a perfectly good carrot into my stockpot when I can just save the trimmings which would otherwise go to waste. I also added a couple of bay leaves, a few peppercorns, a piece of ginger, and some allspice berries. Bring to a boil, lower to simmer, and leave for a couple of hours.

In the meantime I started the veggies for the Turkaleekie. I heated some good homemade butter in my 6-quart soup pot, pressed a couple of garlic cloves, and sauteed them for a few minutes. I ground a lot of pepper in, diced my carrots and added those, then the celery and leeks and turned the heat to low. All the trimmed ends went into the stockpot to help out.

While the veggies sweated, I cut up turkey into medium dice and set it aside. When the veggies were tender, I added the turkey, covered the pot loosely, and set it into the fridge. Then I waited for my stock. I let it simmer for a couple of hours, then strained it into a bowl and added enough to the veggies and turkey just to cover and returned the pot to the simmer. For a bit of added interest I stirred in some hot sauce and a couple of spoonfuls of leftover mashed potatoes. I didn't need to add any salt, probably because the turkey had been brined prior to roasting. The resulting soup was rich and flavorful.

We served it with rye rolls that were purchased from a local baker, but I doubt the grain was local. But with local turkey, local butter, local garlic, carrots, celery, leeks, and potatoes, we're still calling this a 90% local meal.

TURK-A-LEEKIE

3 T butter
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 C diced carrots
2 C diced celery
3 C leeks, halved lengthwise, cleaned well under running water, then sliced thin
3 C diced cooked turkey
4 - 8 C turkey stock
Dash of hot sauce (optional)
1 C leftover mashed potatoes (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, melt butter and saute garlic. Add carrots and saute briefly, then add celery and leeks and turn heat down to sweat vegetable until barely tender. Add turkey and stock and bring to a simmer. Add hot sauce and potatoes if desired and correct seasonings. If you aren't starting with good homemade stock, you may want to add a bouquet garni when you add the carrots. A good addition to this soup would be barley, potatoes, or wide noodles.

I had lots of stock still left, so I packaged that up for the freezer. I still have another turkey carcass, too, but as I used up all my veggie trimmings I'll probably wait a week or so before I make the second batch of stock.

Dark Days Challenge/Taco potatoes and broccoli

Last night we had taco meat over baked potatoes and steamed broccoli. The ground beef, potatoes, garlic, onions, beef stock and broccoli were all local, so although the corn flour and most of the spices aren't, we think this qualifies as a 90% local meal. I wish I'd taken a photo, but we ate late and everyone was starving.

TACO TOPPING FOR BAKED POTATOES

• 1 1/2 t corn flour
  
• 4 1/2 t chili powder
• 1/2 t onion powder
• 1/2 t seasoned salt
• 1/2 t paprika
• 1/4 t cumin
• 1/4 t cayenne
  
• 1/4 c grated onion
• 1 garlic clove, pressed
  
• 1 pound ground beef
  
• 1 cup beef stock
  

1. In a small bowl, combine the corn flour, chili powder and spices.
   
2. Crumble the ground chuck into a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and garlic. Cook, stirring, until browned.
   
3. Stir in contents of seasoning bowl and beef stock. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until most of the liquid has cooked away, about 20 minutes.

To serve, pour over split baked potatoes. If desired, top with sour cream or shredded cheddar.

Dark Days Challenge/Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and salad

I just realized it's the end of the first week and I've neglected to post this week's official 90% local meal. I also neglected to take a photo, but next time I make this particular meal I'll photograph it.

Thursday night, we had:

Meatloaf (local ground beef, ground pork, eggs, onions, garlic, parsley, yogurt, and bacon, along with non-local pantry items: olive oil, chili sauce, brown sugar, cider vinegar, dried thyme, Dijon, Worcestershire, hot pepper sauce, panko bread crumbs. I ought to be able to find a local source for the chili sauce, vinegar, thyme, Dijon, hot pepper sauce. Not sure about the sugar -- do they make brown sugar from beets? I could also use locally-produced bread and make my own crumbs, but I really like the panko crumbs in this particular recipe, so I'll keep using them. And Worcestershire -- no idea, there. I know it contains anchovies, though, so I'm thinking not.) The meatloaf was out of the freezer, and it was my last one, so I need to make up a new batch of five. I'll take pictures and post the recipe.

Mashed potatoes (local potatoes, butter and cream.)

Salad (local lettuce and microgreens)

Salad dressing (locally-bottled, don't know any more about it. I should try making my own. I make my own mayonnaise, how much harder can it be to add yogurt and herbs?)