turkey demi-meatloaf

Ah, meatloaf. It isn't sexy or modern, but I do love it so. It's so laughably dowdy that I feel the urge to don a muumuu when I eat it. There's no family memory that informs my craving for this old standby from time-to-time, but rather a love for anything old-timey. My father has always joked that I was born in the wrong era, for I listen to the Rat Pack without irony, decorate my home with mid-century and other vintage furniture (long before it was 'it'), and will always reach for an Audrey-inspired frock instead of the latest 'on-trend' apparel. 

We all romanticize about bygone eras, whether we lived through them or not. There's something comforting about looking to the past - conveniently editing out the ugliness that invariably comes with it - and its sense of permanence and quality. I live in a city that has shown so little respect for history, endlessly tearing down many of the precious few old buildings we have left in favour of cheap, uninspired architecture. Progress is a word I love when on the topic of sociology, for we can always improve our interaction with one another as cultures, religions and human beings. But this unrelenting need for the new and so-called improved, almost always at the expense of quality and craftsmanship, is a runaway train of waste that makes me so sad sometimes. Which is where the meatloaf comes in. Simple, good food as therapy.

Why demi-meatloaf? Well, most meatloaf recipes call for between two and three pounds of meat, and I was trying to use up the one pound of ground turkey I had left over after making a batch of meatballs the day before.  I love the idea of a mini-meatloaf - and let's be honest, girls love pretty much anything mini - but I didn't think this hunk of meat fit the title. (I was, however, able to bake this in my mini oven, so that was swell.) When searching for a vessel that would suit the task, I lucked out when I spotted one of my old Pyrex glass storage containers in the shape of a loaf pan. And it has a lid for storing the leftovers! (I love any opportunity not to use plastic wrap.) 

When I'm setting about cooking something on the fly, I tend to look around the kitchen to see what I do have rather than what I don't. Unless you're roasting a chicken, cooking with poultry generally demands more help in the flavour department than when using beef, pork, etc. Luckily I had some fresh rosemary that didn't get used when I didn't make the rosemary-roasted potatoes for the barbecue I didn't have the previous weekend. Luckily having a well-stocked pantry, I dug up some dried porcini mushrooms (to impart a 'meaty' essence) and began soaking them as I hunted for more flavour. Fresh parsley, a shallot and garlic seemed to me a sufficient back-up band, plus an egg and fresh bread crumbs to help bind everything together. Oh, and salt and pepper, of course. 

I should point out that some of the dark ground turkey meat I buy tends to have a lot of moisture, so in this instance I didn't feel the need to add any liquid. Gauge it for yourself: if you find your meat a bit stiff, add a little bit of milk. This meatloaf isn't free-form so the mixture can be on the loose side. I think it's wise not to have too firm a mixture when working with poultry, otherwise you run the risk of it cooking up dense and dry. Also, I strongly recommend you use dark meat. I find the concept of cooking with ground white meat completely pointless. There's no flavour in there whatsoever, and it's almost always guaranteed to cook up into crumbly, sapless rubber. When I can't find ground dark meat, I'll purchase a bunch of boneless, skinless chicken thighs and, if I'm not in the mood to employ the ol' meat grinder, I'll pulse them in the food processor until they're broken down into bits about 1/8" large. By doing it this way is you'll end up with a nice, light and airy mass, since it hasn't been compacted under the weight of other packages of meat.

turkey demi-meatloaf

Makes approximately 4 servings

Note: When I was prepping the ingredients, I decided to just whiz the shallots, garlic, herbs and reconstituted mushrooms in a mini (there's that word again) cuisinart. Chopping can be a serious bore sometimes.

Ingredients for Meatloaf:

1 lb ground dark turkey or chicken

1 egg

1/2 cup dried porcini mushrooms, soaked until soft & drained

1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs

1 tsp minced fresh rosemary, 

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1 large or 2 small shallots, finely chopped

1 medium clove garlic, minced

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Ingredients for Glaze:

1/4 cup ketchup

2 tsp dijon mustard

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together all of the meatloaf ingredients in a medium bowl (be sure not to over-mix or the meatloaf will be tough). 

Coat a 4-cup dish with olive oil and scoop mixture into dish. Even out surface and place meatloaf in oven. 

Meanwhile, mix together the glaze ingredients. Bake for approximately 1 hour, basting twice with glaze. Allow to cool for about 5 minutes, then serve with mashed potatoes or, as I like to have it, cooled completely and stuffed into a bun or crusty bread that's been embellished with mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

Note: The cooking time will vary depending on the vessel you use (as it may be more shallow, deep, etc. than what I used). With that in mind, start checking the temperature with an instant-read thermometer after about 45 minutes. You're aiming for an internal temperature of 165 degrees. Full disclosure: I was checking the temperature religiously after about 30 minutes of cooking and then, in the final 15 minutes and with another 10 degrees to go, I dropped the ball and over-cooked it by about 15 degrees. That said, because of the moisture from the mushrooms and the meat itself, it was totally fine. So don't fret too much.

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thai fried rice

Like many cities, the Thai restaurant craze began in Toronto in the early '90s, however our very first Thai restaurant opened back in the late 70's. A woman by the name of Wandee Young arrived from Thailand and, after a short stint working in a Chinatown eatery and saving her hard-earned money, opened the first Young Thailand restaurant. She operated several restaurants under that name over the ensuing years, sadly closing her fanciest location after a sea of Thai restaurants had saturated the scene and left her lost in the glut. Happily, the story ends well. Over the past couple of years she has resurrected the Young Thailand name with two new restaurants in more modest (read: affordable) neighbourhoods, where she's pretty much the only game in town. We live in one of those neighbourhoods, and boy, are we grateful to have her here.

During her heyday, she wrote a cookbook fittingly named 'The Young Thailand Cookbook'. When it was first released, I was living in the suburbs with my parents where it wasn't easy to find a lot of the ingredients. Things have changed dramatically, and you can find almost anything at even the most generic grocery store. While I had already begun my obsession with food, I was still a relatively novice cook at the time. I would take on anything (the mad technique of puff pastry; the challenging timing of paella), but the dishes didn't necessarily turn out as they should. So my pad thai was flavourful, but the noodles were gummy. My green curry chicken was tasty, yet the chicken was overcooked. Nevermind, practice makes perfect.

My mom also purchased the book - between the two of us we have doubles of a lot of cookbooks - and she soon decided to take on the Thai Chicken Fried Rice. It is a pretty simple recipe, the only kink being that you have to cook your rice ahead of time and allow it to cool before proceeding with the rest of the recipe. Otherwise, the standard rule of Asian cooking applies: prep all of your ingredients before firing up the wok. The dish's components are added in rapid succession, leaving you no time to chop carrots when the garlic starts to burn after 15 seconds in a pool of searing hot oil.

Anyway. We all loved this dish. It became a staple in my mom's repertoire, and mine as well. With so few ingredients it's hard to believe something so flavourful could be created, but wow. Whenever I make it, I always have a hard time setting my fork (or chopsticks) down. I could keep going back for more...and more. So Wandee will always get my business on those nights when I just can't lift a wooden spoon, but the fried rice recipe is now one of my own.

thai chicken fried rice

Adapted from The Young Thailand Cookbook

Serves 2-4 (depending on your appetite)

Note: You can eliminate any or all of the vegetables or chicken to suit your taste. It will still be delicious! Also, a little more or a little less rice than what is called for is no big deal. Just adjust your sauce quantities (i.e. fish, soya, oyster) slightly.

2 1/2 cups cooked long grain white or jasmine rice

6 oz skinless, boneless chicken breast

6 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp chopped garlic

1/4 cup thinly sliced mushrooms (1/4")

1/4 cup finely cubed carrot (1/4")

1/2 cup finely chopped broccoli florets (1/4")

2 eggs

1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce

3 tbsp soya sauce

2 tbsp oyster sauce

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 tbsp green peas (frozen) 

Prepare 2 1/2 cups cooked rice (requires approximately 1 to 1 1/4 cups uncooked rice). Allow to cool.

Slice the chicken into 1/4-inch strips. Reserve.

Heat oil in a work or large frying pan over medium-high heat until it is just about to smoke. Add garlic and stir-fry for 10-20 seconds, until light golden in colour. Add chicken and stir-fry for 1 minute. Turn heat down to medium and stir-fry for 1-2 minutes more, until the chicken has warmed through and turned white. Scoop out onto a plate, leaving oil in wok, and set aside. 

If pan is dry, add a little more oil and heat to almost smoking. Add mushrooms, carrots and broccoli, and stir-fry for 2 minutes, until they have begun to warm through. Break eggs directly into the wok and fry them without breaking them up for 1-2 minutes, until they are partially set. (Be sure the yolk does not cook through.)

Push the eggs and vegetables to one side of the wok and add rice to the other side. Add fish sauce, soya sauce and oyster sauce on the rice and then, using a shoveling motion, combine the two sides of the wok, tossing-stirring for 2 minutes, mixing the rice with the eggs and vegetables, working from the bottom up so that all the rice has a chance to fry in the oil and everything is integrated.

Sprinkle black pepper on the rice and add green peas. Toss-stir for another minute, folding the peas into the rice and then remove from heat. Transfer to a serving dish and serve with hot sauce, if desired.

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whoopie pies

In case you haven't noticed by my 'olde English' spelling, I'm Canadian. While there aren't any appreciable differences between Canadians and Americans at first glance, the subtleties are what Canadians notice and often ruminate about...or should I say 'aboot'? It comes with the territory of living next to 'the elephant'. Judging by some of the hilarious dialogue on 'Flight of the Conchords', our predicament is much like that of the New Zealanders and their proximity to Australia.

But I digress. My mission today is to discuss my newly discovered love affair with the whoopie pie. Here in Canada we grew up with something called a Jos. Louis, a packaged treat that never really called out to me as a child. Chocolate not being a particular passion of mine, I was more of a Twinkie girl; and if chocolate was forced to be a part of the equation, I'd choose a Hostess cupcake anyday. 

A few months back I was watching an episode of 'Martha' - crazed, hooting audience aside, she still offers some great content - and a couple of ladies from Maine were on the show baking off their signature whoopie pies. Martha had tried them when she was on vacation in Maine, and declared they were the best whoopie pies she'd ever eaten...so of course I had to give them a whirl.

My husband, having a serious addiction to chocolate (he has to eat a piece in some form every day), was celebrating a birthday, so I thought this was the perfect sweet to honour him with. The recipe was straightforward enough and called for only two items unfamiliar to my kitchen: a muffin top pan and a jar of Fluff . While I'm not a fan of using 'fake' ingredients in my cooking, I have a dark side that craves gutter food in all its glory: poutine, wings, jalapeno poppers, the list goes on. Which is really why the whoopie pies were so compelling: transforming a variety store sugar fix into to a home-baked surprise. So Pygmalion!

Unfortunately as I began cooking, it became apparent that Eliza Doolittle was not giving up without a fight. The batter for the dough was very thin and required the structure of the muffin top pan to contain it. The pan had to be well-buttered and lined with circles of parchment paper to facilitate the release of the cakes once they were baked. After retrieving the baked cakes from the oven, they were allowed to sit for about 10 minutes before I began what proved to be the masochistic process of removing them from their shallow graves. There was no question these cakes would be tender and moist, but almost to a fault. At every nook and cranny of the pan they stuck, while I patiently, oh so patiently, tried to cajole them out with an offset spatula. It was a heart-breaking exercise, and it didn't stop there. The parchment circles, though coated in butter, behaved as though they were sheets of glue. It was carnage.

If it weren't for the look of anticipation on dear Joe's face, I might have flung my arms up in surrender; but one has to soldier on for those we love. A few of the cakes made it out relatively unscathed, so they were set aside as the 'tops'. I spread a buttery slick on a sheet of parchment paper and laid down my broken cake bottoms, gluing them back together Humpty Dumpty-style with the marshmallow filling. An ice cream scoopful of the filling was plopped on top of each bed of cake and topped with their better-looking siblings. When reveal time came, the birthday boy was none the wiser. It was so worth the effort: these are now his favourite special-event treats.

Recently the New York Times ran a recipe for whoopie pies from Zingerman's Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Considering the source (both newspaper and bake shop), I knew it was worth trying. Also intriguing was the fact that this cake batter was thick enough to be scooped onto a sheet of parchment. I questioned how such a flour-dense batter would fare against the impossibly tender cakes of the Cranberry Island Kitchens recipe, but I was up for some low-stress baking. Conversely, the filling in this recipe was entirely homemade - no jars of Fluff here. So, seeing as I was in a pinch for time (a pack of feral hockey fans were about to descend on the house to watch the 'big' game - whatever that means), I decided to borrow the easy components of each recipe to make one stress-free whoopie pie. The combination of the Zingerman's cakes and the Cranberry Island Kitchens filling was, while not as ethereal as the original recipe I'd made, still a delicious, zero-anxiety alternative. Good enough for a bunch of hockey fanatics...and me.

whoopie pies
Adapted from The New York Times & The Martha Show
Makes approximately 12 pies

I doubled the original recipe for the cakes and they turned out fine, so of course you can half it and the filling recipe to produce only 6 pies. Also, because there are two separate recipes at play here, you may find you'll end up with more cakes than filling. These cakes are still tasty on their own, but you can always spread a layer of chocolate-hazelnut spread on the extras to make things interesting. Very interesting.

Ingredients for Cakes:

1/2 lb (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
2 cups light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp sea salt
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cocoa
2 cups buttermilk

Ingredients for Filling:
Makes 3 3/4 cups.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1 jar (7 1/2 ounces) marshmallow Fluff
2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until light and creamy. In a separate bowl, whisk together the baking soda, salt, flour and cocoa. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in three parts, alternating with buttermilk, and combining well after each addition.

Using an ice cream scoop or a spoon, scoop out 24 1/4-cup mounds of batter and place about 6 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake until tops are puffed and cakes spring back when touched, 12 to 14 minutes. Remove from oven and cool completely before filling.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add Fluff and vanilla and continue mixing until well combined.

Using an ice cream scoop or spoon, place 1/4 cup buttercream on flat side of each of 12 cakes, spreading it to edges. Top filled half with another cake to sandwich the buttercream. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days, or wrap individually and freeze for up to 3 months.

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