So, the other day when I was browsing that awesome little cookbook I never did select a lamb recipe to try. I’m easily distracted by shiny things and the cover of the latest issue of Fine Cooking has a little sheen to it, particularly enhanced by that bacon covered meatloaf. The article inside encourages you to create your own meatloaf with their guidelines so I thought, Hey!! I could do that and make it Armenian style!
I followed along and started out with the aromatics. My theory was to style the meatloaf with the same flavors as in one of our favorite lamb dishes – Armenian shish kebab. For shish kebab, the marinade includes chopped onions, bell pepper, garlic and red wine so that’s what went into the pan.
And I even followed along with my photos like the magazine as well as I could because hey, if this is becoming a Fine Cooking tribute blog, I might as well go all the way. (Or I may have some strange obsessive disorder. It could go either way.)
For the bread part I went with a little sourdough but not because it was Armenian in any way. It was just what I bought and it sounded good for the grilled cheese I was planning for soup night later this week.
And here’s the raw meat, lamb and ground beef, set off nicely by the chopped parsley stains on my cutting board. Appealing, no?
For my mix-in, I chose scallions because I had some and it sounded good. For herbs, it was parsley, but of course. There’s parsley in the shish kebab marinade too, and of course in tabouli and other good and tasty Armenian things. For spices I went with cumin, or kimyon in Armenian (which I learned from the cool old cookbook) and paprika, two spices I’ve seen in lots of Armenian recipes. And then finally to get some tomato in there, I used traditional old ketchup for my glaze.
Did you ever color your hair or even perm it (Yes, I grew up in the 80′s) at home? And did you blow right past that part about the test curl or test section, or putting the chemicals inside your elbow? Yeah, me too. But this time, I followed instructions. I actually took a wee bit of the meatloaf mix and made a little patty and fried it. And it didn’t give me a rash or any frizz, but I did think it could use a little kick so I tossed in a little chile powder too. Then I baked my masterpiece and eagerly awaited my meatloaf mix mastery results. Sadly, the piece de la resistance is my worst out of focus photo. Bastard artificial lighting and/or hunger pangs.
Blurry funky colored photo aside, this was some good meatloaf! And the important part is that my husband, who doesn’t always care for ground lamb, liked this. Yay!
And with Fine Cooking’s Create Your Own Meatloaf Recipe Maker, you can make your own cool meatloaf too. It’s fun! I dragged all my ingredients into the bowl and out popped my recipe, all calculated and formulated and ready to roll. Unfortunately, it didn’t stick its hands into the bowl full of raw meat and mix it up for me but maybe they can work on that for their next recipe maker, mmm-kay?
