Postby Yashida » Mon Oct 04, 2010 12:38 am
Mmmmm, I'm not much of a recepy cook except when it comes to cakes, cookies, tarts and the lot, then I most definitely need a recepy. Otherwise, I cook on 'instinct' so to say, meaning I don't need a recepy book to help me. Only when I make a special dish maybe.
I'm a sucker for chinese food though, and over time have develloped quite some skill preparing chinese dishes. So usually my daily cooking is a cross between Belgian and Chinese kitchen, though I can easily sepparate both.
Now, I'm sure most of you are familiar enough with Chinese food, so I was thinking I might share a more traditional old Flemish dish. There is of course also haut-de-cuisine in Belgian food, but I thought this might be more interesting and it's very simple to make.
It's called 'meatloaf with sour cherries'.
What you need is:
- a bowl of bottled/preserved? (you know, glass preserve bowl with cherries in their own juice) sour cherries (Prunus cerasus) or about 1kg of fresh sour cherries. (Of course if you really can't get sour cherries you can substitute with normal cherries)
- 1kg of meatloaf (with or without spices, pork, beef or half pork-half beef all according to personal tastes)
- 2 eggs
- 1 clove (Syzygium aromaticum, syn. Eugenia aromaticum or Eugenia caryophyllata: just giving the Latin name each time to make sure I got the right plant name)
- a pitch of cayenne pepper
- nutmeg
- mace
- pimento
- black pepper and salt according to taste
- 1 table spoon of oil
- 50 g of old bread crumbs (or more, at least I always use more for a 1kg meatloaf) or the shop variant also called breadcrumbs or breading
- sugar
First you mix the breadcrumbs and the eggs (if you do this the day before and let it stiffen overnight in the fridge you get a more firm meatloaf, but this isn't necessary). Then you use a big bowl to mix this thoroughly with the meat. According to taste you can add pepper, salt, mace, nutmeg and pimento. Mix everything thoroughly until you get a homogenous mass.
Shape the prepared meatloaf into the form of a bread with sufficiently moistened hands. The shape of the meatloaf has to be sufficiently moistened to prevent cracks.
Now you can let it stiffen up in the fridge for some hours if you want your meatloaf to be firmer (it's the same principle as letting the egg and breadcrumb mix stiffen in the fridge overnight, you can do both or either or just skip this step all according to prefference and or alloted time to cook this dish).
Then you put the meatloaf in a buttered oven-dish. Cover with aluminium foil or alternate covering to use in oven to prevent sputtering.
Preheat the oven at 180 °C and bake for about 1 hour (rule: 30 minutes for 1/2 kg meatloaf). About 15 minutes before the meat is done you can remove the aluminium foil for a nice gold/brown crusted colouring.
When it's done take it out of the oven and let it stiffen for a moment.
Then cut it in slices and serve with the cherry sause.
To make the sour cherry sause:
When fresh the sour cherries will first be blanched then briefly (4 minutes) stewed in a light 'sugar syrup' (it's either treacle or molasses in english bu frankly I have no idea which) with the clove. Preferably this is done a day beforehand otherwise you'll have sour sour-cherries in a sweet souce and you'll want both to taste sweet. So after you briefly stewed them you'll need to let them cool down overnight.
If you use bottled sour cherries you just need to heat them up; usually bottled/preserved sour cherries are sweet enough.
Whichever you use, when you heat them up you make a sause of it by binding the juice with potato starch.
You can do this while your meatloaf is baking.
Now you can serve the slices of meatloaf with the sauce.
You can serve it with mashed potatoes of bread or just the meat with the sause, again according to taste and whether it's meant to be a full meal or appetizer. You can also vary by making meatballs instead of meatloaf.
Enjoy!
.
And when any of us slip, it is not pretty. 
Literally!
Oh well shirmp salad for lunch.
