Meat George Jetson Loaf

We love us some good meat loaf. And around here it is turkey meatloaf all the way. Now, I know what you are thinking - the beef/pork/veal grind is tasty tradition, but these are modern times and healthy alternatives are the wave of the future. And so, meet my turkey meatloaf. I have "adapted" this recipe from Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa). When I say adapted, of course that means I have changed it to fit my needs and tastes. First off, she calls for the use of ground turkey breast, which I did use the first time I made it. But, from then on I started to use the dark meat turkey grind - I found it has more flavor, less likely to dry out, and a fraction of the per-pound price of the breast. Secondly, she sautes onions and mixes them in. While nice, I often omit this step due to time constraints, but have included it in the recipe. Any way you slice it, it goes great with any kind of starch, but I mostly serve it with garlic mashed potatoes. Also, as with any meatloaf worth its salt, leftovers as sandwiches are deelish.

The Jetsons (or Los Supersonicos for our Spanish friends), a space-age cartoon, made in 1962, but set in the future world of 2062. Each episode you would be invited to meet George Jetson, Jane his shopoholic wife, teenage daughter Judy and his boy Elroy. Rounding out the cast was Elroy's dog Astro (pronounced Rast-Ro) and robot maid Rosie. George worked at Spacely Sprockets where he was always on the wrong side of his boss, Cosmo Spacely who was constantly at odds with is business rival, Cogswell Cogs. Who knew sprockets and cogs would be so relevant in the future? Forget micro processors, they are going to be a thing of the past. And, how lucky was Jane Jetson? She had a maid and cutting-edge technology literally at her fingertips. A simple press of a button put dinner on the table and did her hair and make-up. Imagine if we lived in an era of such innovations - the time we would have on our hands to use other technologically advanced gadgets. And this is all set to happen only 50 years from now. I can hardly wait.

The Recipe:

2 large yellow onions, chopped
2 tblsp olive oil
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves ( or 1/2 tsp dried)
1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce (I often use soy sauce)
3/4 cup chicken stock
1 1/2 tsp tomato paste
5 pounds ground turkey (you be the judge)
1 1/2 cups plain dry bread crumbs
3 eggs
1/4 cup ketchup

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees

In a medium saute pan, cook the onions, olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme over medium low heat fro 10-15 minutes. Add the Worcestershire sauce, chicken stock and tomato paste and mix well. Allow to cool to room temp. (If taking the short-cut as I do, mix the salt, pepper, thyme, Worcestershire, tomato paste and the stock together and proceed, no waiting).

Mix the turkey, bread crumbs, eggs and Worcestershire mix in a large bowl. Shape into a rectangular loaf on an ungreased, rimmed baking sheet (I use a jelly roll pan). Spread the ketchup on top. Bake for 1 1/2 hours or to an internal temp of 160.  Serves 8 to 10 (I often cut the recipe in half and it serves three with plenty for a sandwich the next day - it's the meatloaf that just keeps giving).

Bringing Home The Bacon Spaghetti Carbonara

I have now found myself one of those people I always said I would never be: a woman with a career, a child and a husband. "Having it All" in other words. As such, I have am in a conundrum,  still wanting to cook (a la June Cleaver) but needing it be simple and easy after a tiring day at the office and helping with math homework. Enter a great spaghetti carbonara recipe. Simple, delicious, and ingredients I generally have in my refrigerator/pantry every day: bacon (mmmmm), eggs, pasta, garlic and Parmigiano cheese. This recipe comes via Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet Magazine (may it rest in peace), from a cookbook she wrote in 1971 living in New York and unable to find a job she liked. Which, by the way, is about as good a reason as any to write about food and cooking. Anyway, it works, and tastes likes you put more effort into that than you actually did, thus allowing one to feel as if they have it all.

play the video

Need I say more?


The Recipe:

1 Supportive Husband
1 Flexible Child
1 pound Spaghetti
1/2 pound good  thickly sliced bacon
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano cheese
Fresh ground pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. When it is boiling, throw the spaghetti in. Most dried spaghetti takes 9 to 10 minutes to cook,and you can make the sauce in that time.
Cut the bacon crosswise into pieces about 1/2 inch wide. Put them in a skillet and cook for 2 minutes, until fat begins to render. Add the whole cloves of garlic and cook another 5 minutes, until the edges of the bacon just begin to get crisp. Do not overcook; if they get too crisp they won't meld with the pasta. Meanwhile, break the eggs into the bowl you will serve the pasta in, and beat them with a fork. Add some grindings of pepper.

Remove the garlic from the bacon pan. If it looks like too much to you, discard some, but you're going to toss the bacon with most of its fat into the pasta. When it is cooked, drain the pasta and immediately throw it into the beaten eggs. Mix thoroughly. The heat of the spaghetti will cook the eggs and turn them into a sauce. Add the bacon with its fat, toss again, add cheese and serve. Serves 3.

Nonie's Meat Sauce

Once in a while, if you are extremely lucky, a recipe comes along that transforms your life. Nonie's Meat Sauce is one of those recipes. About 12 years ago a friend showed me how to make it. She had learned from her friend, who was Nonie's granddaughter (and then she told two people, and so and so on...). Apparently, Nonie was a delightful old Italian grandmother who really knew how to cook. The ingredients are simple enough (steak, tomato sauce, an onion, butter and bouillon) but when combined they are heaven. Now, don't be put off by what you read next, but it takes four hours to make. I can't stress enough how it is sooooo worth it - and it is not four active hours, basically you need to mash the sauce with a potato masher every hour on the hour for the first three hours and then every fifteen minutes for the last hour. The smell that will waft through your kitchen during that time is to die for, and so is the taste when you are done. I often also make gnocchi at the same time, but it also goes well with angel hair pasta. Honestly, I would eat it off of a spoon out of the pot, it's just that good. It also freezes well (is there anything this sauce can't do?), so you might want to make a double batch. You'll thank me.

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Never having met Nonie, I can only imagine her as a sweet little old Italian woman who was always cooking and wanted everyone to eat, eat, eat. But when one ponders the grandmothers of TV shows past, the same image is not easily congered. For instance, take Granny on "The Beverly Hillbillies". I only remember her making opossum stew in the ce-ment pond. And, given the hard times of the Great Depression, Grand Ma Walton (really, you need the name of the show?) probably only ever made ketchup soup. Just as unappetizing, Grand MaMa on "The Addams Family" seemed singly capable of recipes using eye of newt as an ingredient. And finally, Endora on "Bewitched" only ever made trouble, mostly for Darren, but sometimes for everyone. I'll stick with my favorite grandmother, Nonie, the one I don't know, with the awesome sauce.


The Recipe:

1 pound sirloin tip or round steak, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 medium onion, chopped
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1 stick of  unsalted butter (1/2 cup)
3 15oz. cans tomato sauce (use good sauce, don't cheap out)
1/3 cup olive oil

In a large pot, saute the onions in the butter and oil until soft. Add the steak and brown. Stir in the tomato sauce and bouillon and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer. Simmer for four hours, mashing with a potato masher (or ricer) every hour for the first three hours and then every 15 minutes for the last hour.
Serves 6-8.

Note: When mashing at the first two hours there will still be chunks of the beef, but by the third hour hour they should be broken down and the onions cooked into the sauce. Mash each time for about two or three minutes. This is your lucky day.

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be In My Kitsch-en

As you may have noticed I have established a Monday/Thursday posting pattern for "In My Kitsch-en" - or maybe you haven't and just were lucky on those days to find me. Whichever, I am announcing a Tuesday only posting. I have taken a new job at the Detroit Institute of Arts and although we will still be eating, and I will definitely still be cooking, the time for writing about it will be limited. Even though it may not seem like it, this activity can be rather time consuming. So, that said, look for me on Tuesdays. Also, if anyone tries any of the recipes I have posted, please let me know what you think or what went right or wrong. I really want to know.  I have lots of good recipes coming, they will truly be worth the wait. So Tuesday is now synonymous with food and fun, more than just a tue-fer, TGIT.

"If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" was another one of those Channel 7 movies I adored. A great 60s romantic comedy starring Ian McShane and a pre-Bob Newhart Suzanne Pleshette as tour guides on a whirlwind European bus tour full of ugly Americans. Norman Fell, Peggy Cass, Michael Constadine, Marty Ingalls (aka Mr. Shirley Jones) and a host of other great comedic actors of the day round out the cast. McShane plays a cad hopelessly pursuing Pleshette while the tour bus scours the countryside visiting cities like Rome (Thursday) and Venice lickety split. But as a kid, seeing the sights a girl could see from Mid-West heights via this film was enthralling. I also love the scene where Murray Hamilton (think the guy in Jaws who says it safe to go into the water) tries to order a custom made pair of Italian shoes from a shoe maker who speaks no english. He wants tan, so he rubs a piece of brown leather with a piece of white leather to illustrate his point and after he leaves the shop, the shoe maker picks up the Sears catalog and orders him a pair of two-tone shoes. Yes, that was comedy to me at age 10. The lesson I learned was to never see Europe by bus. So of course on my first trip, we put over 2,000 miles on our rental car racing from one city to the next in two weeks time leaving me to say "Wenn es Dienstag ist, muss dieses München sein." (rough translation: if it's tuesday, this must be Munich)

Perilous Beef Sirloin Tips with Smoky Pepper Sauce

There are perils and pitfalls to trying a new recipe, and it can often spell disaster. I was prohibited during "Cooking with Alice" to try anything new, so I now have a backlog of recipes that I have torn from magazines (mostly while waiting at the orthodontist's office) that I am now plowing my way through. This one intrigued me because I will make anything that calls for roasted peppers. Oh, and beef. Beef and roasted peppers with barbecue sauce, yum! It turned out to be a winner and found itself added to a permanent page in my recipe book, while others are not so fortunate. I found only one omission in the instructions but have remedied that with a note to myself  for future use. The recipe itself also suggested serving the beef and peppers with couscous or mashed potatoes - I went with wide No-Yolk egg noodles (still watching the cholesterol post-Alice) and it was scrumptious, simple and delicious.

Oh course, when I think of disasters, I think of one thing: the Channel 7 4 o'clock movie theme weeks. Anyone growing up in Detroit during the 70s remembers the daily afternoon movie (no slight meant to Rita Bell or Bill Kennedy). They had Ape Week, Monster Week, but my personal favorite was always Disaster Week. The line up would always include The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure, Airport and it's sequels '75, '77 (not to be confused with Match Game '77) and the Concorde (this one I did not personally remember but my pop culture partner in crime Mark did). The basic plot was the same, only the location, be it a plane, skyscraper, cruise ship or the entire state of California changed. And, it seemed as if George Kennedy was in all of them, but that could just be my imagination. Anyway, there would be a mix of Hollywood stars (Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, Paul Newman) along with has-beens of the day (Shelly Winters, Ernest Borgnine) all struggling to survive some tragedy while surrounded by death and destruction. Ultimately, the plane lands, the ship is righted, the fire goes out and the ground stops shaking and we are reminded that there's got to be a morning after.

The Recipe:

1 1/2 lb beef sirloin tip steak
1/2 tsp paprika
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 12 to 16 oz jar roasted red and/or yellow peppers
1/2 cup barbecue sauce

Trim meat and cut into 1 inch cubes; sprinkle with paprika. Drain and cut up peppers, reserving a 1/2 cup of the liquid (if necessary, add water to equal 1/2 cup). In a 12 inch skillet, heat oil over medium high heat. Add meat and brown. Remove from skillet (and drain off juices) and keep warm. Add peppers and liquid to the pan. Add the bbq sauce and cook uncovered  5 to 10 minutes, stirring frequently until sauce is slightly thickened. Return meat to pan, heat through. Serves 4.