Meatloaf with onion sauce

For the whole month of September I have eaten and drunk as if it where the holiday season, partly because I was trying to enjoy the last few weeks of summer, party because my birthday is on Spetmeber 29th, which means that I feel entitled to party for the whole month.

The result is that now I feel full even before I start eating and that my clothes are a little tight on me, especially my beloved jeans. This, of course, means that I have to lose a couple of pounds and that I have to watch what I eat for a couple of weeks.

What does all this have to do with meatloaf, you might ask? Well, everything, if the meatloaf in question is nutricious yet low fat. And tasty, of course, because I'm a firm believer that if somethig tastes horrible it won't help your diet.

TURKEY MEATLOAF WITH ONION SAUCE

Cooking spray

1 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup minced mushrooms

6 tablespoons dry breadcrumbs  

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

Freshly ground black pepper

1 pound ground turkey breast

1 large egg   

1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (such as Tabasco)

For sauce:

• 3 onions, chopped
• A glass of white wine
• Chicken broth

Preparation

To prepare loaf:
Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add onion to pan; sauté 5 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from heat; cool slightly.

Combine onion, breadcrumbs, and next 7 ingredients (through Tabasco) in a large bowl. Stir in 2 tablespoons ketchup.
Shape mixture into a loaf shape. Wrap in parchment paper and refrigerate for an hour.

Heat a large pan over medium high heat, coat with cooking spray. Sautee loaf on all sides, turning carefully. Add onions to pan and wine. Let onions cook for a few minutes. Continue cooking loaf for about 30 minutes, basting with broth if sauce gets dry.

Classic herbed roasted turkey

So yesterday I had my first "European" Thanksgiving in a long time and, let me tell you, it was a blast. I had never hosted a dinner party for sixteen people before. It was hard but it was fun and everyone was so helpful we didn't have any big problems. Well, except the fact that I forgot to serve my chestnut soup I had worked so hard to make... guess I'll be eating a lot of it in the next few days. 

Other than that we all gathered around the dinner table and we ate, and ate, and ate

. 

As I watched my guests chowing down turkey, mashed potatoes, roasted cauliflower, stuffing and whatever else they could get their hands on, I realized that this year I have many things to be thankful for. There's the old friends I can now see on a regular basis without having to cross an ocean. There's the new friends that welcomed me into their lives. There has been a few wonderful trips —Madrid, Barcelona and the Amalfi Coast come to mind— and the plan to take a few great ones in the near future. There's the fact that this year I didn't break my knee while cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I mean, I want to take that one as a good omen. There's snow coming this way and there's ski trips and snowmen and hot mulled wine and all the wonderful wintery things I've missed so much in the past nine years. 

So yes, I have a lot to be thankful for and only a few things that I seriously need to change in my life. But I'm content. And calm. Which, if you know me well, you'll know it doesn't happen very often. 

CLASSIC HERBED TURKEY 

• Adapted from Cooking Light
• 
  
• 1  (12-pound) fresh or frozen turkey, thawed
• 4  thyme sprigs
• 4  sage leaves
• 4  garlic cloves
• 1  medium onion, quartered
• 4 tablespoons  butter, softened
• 1 1/2  teaspoons  kosher salt
• 3/4  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
• 1  cup  chicken broth

Preheat oven to 500°.

To prepare the turkey, remove giblets and neck from turkey; reserve for gravy. Trim excess fat. Stuff body cavity with 4 thyme sprigs, sage leaves, garlic, and medium onion. Tie legs together with kitchen string.

Starting at neck cavity, loosen skin from breast and drumsticks by inserting fingers, gently pushing between skin and meat. Combine butter, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 3/4 teaspoon pepper. Rub butter mixture under loosened skin over breast and drumsticks. Lift wing tips up and over back; tuck under turkey. Pour 1 cup water in bottom of a roasting pan. Place roasting rack in pan. Arrange turkey, breast side up, on roasting rack. Bake at 500° for 30 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 350° (do not remove turkey from oven).

Bake turkey at 350° for 1 1/2 hours or until a thermometer inserted into meaty part of thigh registers 165°. (Shield turkey with foil if it browns too quickly.) Remove turkey from the oven; let stand 20 minutes. 

Toast cups

What to do with the stupid turkey? When you happen to buy a 12 pound turkey and you only have a few people to feed leftovers can become kind of overwhelming. Especially if you don't particularly like turkey. Which I don't. I mean, I'll eat it -especially if brined and moist as the one I prepared this year!)- but after a few sliced of breast meat and a couple of turkey sandwiches I quickly become tired of it. You could say that us Italians have a thing against turkey. I know my family does, and that's why we had never roasted one before five or six years ago. And that's also why we don't have many ways of enjoying the leftovers, mostly because, well, we technically don't enjoy turkey meat.

Enters Tommy, who is a real American and likes turkey. And also happens to have this recipe to use up the leftovers that is simply delicious. The first time he made it for me I was amazed. Apparently there was a good way to use the stupid leftover turkey. So from that day on I started looking forward to roasting chickens and turkeys because I knew what I was going to do with the leftovers: toast cups. When Tommy was little his mother used to make the "cups" by buttering bread slices and stuffing them in a muffin pan. That happens to be my favorite way of making them too, but Tommy nowadays likes them better with Pillsbury puff pastry. and since he's the one who gave me the recipe to begin with, I happily comply.

TOAST CUPS

One package Pillsbury puff pastries
1 large can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 onion, minced
1 can sweet peas
Leftover turkey
Salt and pepper, to taste

Chop the onion and saute it with a little butter in a large Dutch oven for a few minutes. Add the cream of chicken soup, peas and leftover turkey. Season with salt and pepper to your liking. Turn the heat to medium low and let the concoction warm up slowly.

In the mean time, bake the individual puff pastries according to the directions on the package (it takes about 20 minutes to cook them.)

Remove the top from each puff pastry and pour turkey mixture in them. Serve hot.

Bon Roll, turkey meatloaf extraordinaire

When I lived in Italy there was this amazing pre-packaged food, the Bon Roll. It started out as a pretty basic turkey meatloaf with a ham and cheese filling and then, year after year, they started making more exciting, different ones like speck and radicchio or tuna and capers. The original of course remained my favorite -simple, super easy to make and incredibly good to eat for lunch or dinner. You could find the Bon Roll at any grocery store, in the refrigerated section. All you had to do was take it our of its box, put it in a pyrex with a glass of white wine and a little olive oil and bake it in the oven for about an hour. The result was moist and amazing, especially if you took the time to collect the browned wine from the pyrex and use it as gravy.

To make a long story short, I miss my Bon Roll dearly. There is a long list of ingredients and dishes that I miss from my home country and it might sound a little crazy that a pre-packaged meatloaf would make it into the top 5 -but it does. So I looked it up on the Internet and found several forums discussing the ingredients and how to make one at home. Now, I'm not sure why someone who can go to the store and buy it would muse about how to replicate it home, but I'm happy that they are because thanks to their discussion I was able to make mine in my kitchen 5000 miles away from Italy. It turned out amazingly good and, even better, it tasted just like the real deal. I loved it so much that soon I'm going to try and make all the variations!
BON ROLL TURKEY MEATLOAF

1 1/4 pounds ground turkey breast
3 small potatoes, boiled, peeled and mashed
2 eggs
Bread crumbs (quantity depends on starchiness of the potatoes)
2 tablespoons minced parseley
4 ounces ham, minced
4 ounces grated white cheddar cheese or provolone
Salt and pepper
Cooking spray
A small glass of white wine or broth

In a large bowl mix the grouond turkey breast with two of the mashed potatoes, one egg, parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Add enough breadcrumbs so that the mixture is easy to handle and doesn't fall apart. Set aside.

In another bowl mix ham, cheese, one egg, one mashed potato and a little bread crumbs. Mix well and set aside.

Place the turkey mixture on a large piece of parchement paper and cover with plastic wrap. Using your hands or a rolling pin, roll out the mixture so it has a shape that resembles a rectangle about 1/2 inch thick. Remove and discard plastic wrap. Take ham mixture and place it in the middle of the rectangle, shaping it with your hands in a brick shape. Using the parchment paper wrap the turkey mixture around the ham mixture so that the ham filling is completly enclosed and not visible anymore. You should now have something resebling a meatloaf in fron of you.

Spray a Pyrex with cooking spray, pour a glass of white wine in it and gently roll the loaf into the pyrex. Discard parchment paper. Cook at 350F for about an hour or until golden brown.