52 Cookbooks Challenge #1: Nigella Kitchen

My first of new recipes for the New Year was from my culinary idol, Nigella Lawson (are you really surprised?).

On my honeymoon, Nigella’s Kitchen debuted on the shelves. It was great, I was in England for my honeymoon and my favorite cook had a new cookbook out and she was English – how perfect!! I picked up a copy at the airport (couldn’t wait). I was so excited to have a true English version of my idol’s cookbook. I read it front to back on the flight to Edinburgh and made plans for all the good food I was going to make.

Flash forward 2 weeks and I’m home, in my kitchen with my new Harrods Christmas mug full of Breakfast blend from Edinburgh and ready to try a recipe out of my treasured honeymoon gift to myself. I tried pumpkin biscuits. You would think it would have been easy, but to my horror (and with a groan) I looked at the recipe for the first time with cook's eyes. Holy crap… it’s in metric! What does gas mark mean for me? How many milliliters in a cup?

Out came the computer and I started my translation. I translated the measurements best I could to match my cups and ounces.  I made the recipe per my changes, thinking it was quite simple. And the biscuits were... well.... crap. I totally attribute this to my translation and maybe a bit to my own taste buds (I’m not as big of a fan of pumpkin as I thought).

After that, my beautiful book was shelved not to be opened again but to keep as a tribute to my honeymoon trip.

This past winter, I was in my local bookstore chain and they were having a sale on the American version of Nigella Kitchen – YAY!! I picked it up and now, without need of translation, I was ready to dive in again. First off the block is comfort food at its best – Ed’s Mother’s Meatloaf.

Ed’s Mother’s Meatloaf

½ recipe Adaptation of the recipe from Nigella’s Kitchen
Available at: http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/nigella-lawson/eds-mothers-meatloaf.html

1 raw egg
2 hard-boiled eggs (shelled)
1 onions (2 if you don’t have a finicky husband), diced
3 tablespoons butter and or olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 pound ground beef
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
10 slices of bacon

For a one pot recipe, use a cast iron skillet (looks kind of awesome too).

Preheat oven to 400°F.

In a skillet, melt butter or heat oil and start to cook the onion. Add a dash of salt to help the onions soften instead of fry. Once onions are soft (4-5 minutes), remove from heat and cool slightly.

In a large bowl, whisk raw egg slightly. Add raw ground beef, salt, Worcestershire sauce, breadcrumbs and cooled onions. Bite the bullet and get your hands into the bowl (trust me, it will just break a spatula) and mix until well combined.

Split meat mixture in half and make a mound in the now cool cast iron skillet (or in a baking pan with edges). With the side of your hand, make a well in the middle of the meat in the pan lengthwise. Place the 2 hard-boiled eggs end to end in the well. Take the remainder of the mixture and cover the eggs and try to seal the sides. The end product should not show any sign of the eggs.

Take the bacon and start to cover the meatloaf from one end, overlapping the pieces slightly to adjust for shrinkage. Tuck the ends of the bacon under the loaf, like you were tucking your little beef log in to bed with a bacon blanket. Weird, but that’s what it feels like.

Put swaddled meatloaf into the oven and cook for 50-60 minutes, or until the bacon is crisp and there is no more pink on the inside. Let rest 5-10 minutes to reincorporate juices and then serve.

Serves 3-4

Beef Loaf in a Bacon Blanket - cow in a pig blanket?

This is a no-red-sauce meatloaf so it tastes like a super moist, well done burger with the cute surprise of an egg on the inside.  If you serve right after cooking, and the meat you used wasn't too fatty, the juices can be poured over like gravy.  Perfect comfort food!

#52cookbooks

Over 100 Years of the Hamburger Sandwich

 

New Haven, CT, is the home to Yale University, Peabody Museum of Natural History, and more importantly, Louis' Lunch.

Since 1895, Louis' Lunch has been making the Hamburger Sandwich. This historic sandwich consists of a medallion of prime meat, cooked to medium rare perfection, sandwiched between two pieces of white bread, toasted in toasters also original to the kitchen. Though simple in construction, it was one of the best “fast food” burgers I had tasted. The flavor was fresh and reminiscent of burgers that came off the backyard BBQ, cooked with love by my father, the man who taught me what medium rare really means.

You, of course, can customize your burger. They are willing to cook it a little longer and add onions, cheese and/or tomatoes, but one thing they will not do for you…add ketchup! Louis’ Lunch has been a no ketchup zone for over 100 years and they are very proud of it!

The original hamburger sandwich – burger and cheese only (pictured)

The rest of the menu is just as simple and straight forward as the burgers. You can add a soda, water, or one of the local brew flavors from Foxan Soda. There are bags of potato chips to accompany your burger or a Styrofoam cup full of amazing housemade potato salad.

Potatoes, hard boiled eggs, a touch of mayonnaise, chives and the perfect amount of salt

Their menu lists desserts, but, honestly, after the burger and the potato salad, there wasn’t room for me for their tempting treats (a list of which includes homemade pie). This is rare, so next time…I promise!

Louis’ Lunch is open Tuesday through Saturday. Get there anytime between 11:00 am and 3:45 pm Tuesday and Wednesday, and feel free to be a bit lazier Thursday through Saturday since they are open noon – 2:00 am.

Louis’ Lunch
261-263 Crown Street
New Haven, CT 06511-6611
(203) 562-5507
www.louislunch.com

An American Classic - The Hamburger!

There is something very American about a hamburger. I might be an anglophile, but I will never give up the want or need for a thick, juice patty of ground beef...usually slathered with cheese, pickles, mustard and ketchup for me.

On a recent business trip to Ohio, I came across a Johnny Rockets in the Columbus airport. I ordered, sat and enjoyed. As I took one juice bite after the next, I took in my surroundings. For those that have not been to a Johnny Rockets before, they are a homage to "the Good Ol' Days" - the 1950's soda shops. There are Coca-Cola ads with kids enjoying a tall drink, pictures of candy apple red hot rods scattered all over the walls and a wonderful mix of Doo Wap and Jukebox music filling the air.


What do you think of when you think of a big juicy burger? Do you imagine a soda jerk bringing you a hamburger, milkshake and fries? How about the joy you felt when you were 5 and got a happy meal from McDonald's when you achieved a goal? What about summer barbeques with fresh corn, burgers on the grill and chips on the table?

The Hamburger is mixed to a lot of very American memories and emotions. But...how did it all start? Well, what could be more American that at a County Fair? According to Wikipedia, there are a couple of legends. One is that residents of Hamburg, New York, which was named after Hamburg, Germany, attribute the hamburger to Ohioans Frank and Charles Menches. According to legend, the Menches brothers were vendors at the 1885 Erie County Fair (then called the Buffalo Fair) when they ran out of sausage for sandwiches and used beef instead, naming the result after the location of the fair.

Another also includes a Fair. The Seymour Community Historical Society of Seymour, Wisconsin, credits Charlie Nagreen. Now known as "Hamburger Charlie", Nagreen was fifteen when he reportedly made sandwiches out of meatballs he was selling at the 1885 Outagamie County Fair (now the Seymour Fair), so that customers could eat while walking. The Historical Society explains that Nagreen named the hamburger after the Hamburg steak with which local German immigrants were familiar.

One more fun fact before we go...For us in NYC - in 1921, due to widely prevalent anti-German sentiment in the U.S. during World War I, an alternative name for hamburgers (remember Hamburg, Germany?) was salisbury steak. Following the war, hamburgers became unpopular until the White Castle restaurant chain marketed and sold large numbers of small 2.5-inch square hamburgers, known as slyders. They started to punch five holes in each patty, which help them cook evenly and eliminates the need to flip the burger. White Castle was the first to sell their hamburgers in grocery stores and vending machines.

However you enjoy your burger...I hope you take as much joy as I did with my BBQ Burger on a cool Tuesday afternoon at the airport in Columbus, OH!

Thank you Wikipedia for your info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger