Turkey Meatloaf with Onions and Herbs!

Sunday was my boyfriend’s birthday.  However, if you did check out my workout week 3 update, we had a very sick morning to start things off.  He started off feeling sick and skipping work while after tending to him, at noon, I didn’t feel so well either.  After that, things managed to taper off as the meds did their work and with some rest (for my boyfriend) and some busying and relaxing about (for me), I picked up my spirits and started cooking.  Although the original plans of making chicken pot pie was diminished, I used what we had at hand to make my first meatloaf ever! Keep in mind, I come from a Chinese family, eating meatloaf is not on the menu, rice is 😉

I made this turkey meatloaf with onions and herbs from the Looneyspoons Collection. I aim to cook through that book this year and I think its pretty doable.

Turkey Meatloaf

This is inspired of the recipe called Loafstyles of the Rich and Famous from Looneyspoons Collection by Janet and Greta Podelski. This is modified to how I did it since I made a bit of changes.

Ingredients

Makes 6 servings

3/4 cup chopped onions

1 1/2 lbs ground turkey

1/2 cup quick-cooking rolled oats

1/3 cup chicken broth

1/4 cup minced fresh shallots

1 egg

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp minced garlic

3/4 tsp dried Herbes de Provence

1/2 tsp each dried coriander, salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350F.

2) In a large bowl, mix together onions and all ingredients.

3) Spray a 9×5-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.  Pat turkey mixture into pan.  Bake for 1 hour, or until no longer pink in center.  Pour off any liquid from pan.  Invert onto a platter, slice and serve.

The original recipe is with apples.  To me, that seems a bit wacky, so I didn’t do it.  However, if you were to do that, you’d start it off with melting 2 tsp of butter in a non-stick skillet over medium heat .  Then you add apples and onions.  Cook and stir for about 5 minutes, until onion are tender and let it cool.

The other changes that I made are: replacing 1% milk with chicken broth; minced fresh parsley with shallots; dried marjoram with dried Herbes de Provence and finally dried sage with dried coriander.

The herbs make for a nice spice combination to the taste.  The turkey loaf is just moist enough and quite delicious.  The only thing I would change is to minced those onions a lot.  I was lazy and had a bit of time constraints so I did it as quick as I could, other than the fact that I was tearing up like made from chopping it.

Whats also really nice other than the taste and the texture if that its a healthier recipe and makes for a good and simple meal.  I think I’m starting to really like meatloaf and I’m going to explore a bit more into it.

What do you like in meatloaf? Would you think that the apples would’ve been a fun addition?

A Bite of China: Poached Chicken

Finally I have found the time to officially launch this project! Starting is the hardest time.  Since I don’t live in an Asian city, some times the ingredients are a bit harder to find.  However, its never too hard to get some chicken into our meal. I love chicken and so its the best way to start off this project.

This was part of my meal in celebration of Chinese New Year: Poached Chicken.  Either later tonight or tomorrow, I’ll be posting up my second part of my meal.

Forgive me though, the beginner chopping chicken into pieces…was really tough.  Anyone has any tricks..please enlighten me.

Here’s how it turned out:

If you want the recipe, I’ll give you an idea of what it is.  Chinese recipes have a certain obscurity to it…which is why I never really want to post them up or even follow them.  Because ask a housewife (say my mom) how she cooks, she’ll tell you its a general feeling, no quantity to it.

Ingredients:

1 whole Chicken

3 stems Green onions

4 slices Ginger

Sesame oil

1/2 spoon (table or tea, you decide..I used teaspoon) Salt

1 spoon soy sauce (yet again I assumed teaspoon)

How to make it:

1. In a big deep wok, fill it with water and put in the green onions and ginger.  Set it on high heat till it boils.

2. Put the chicken into the wok in the boiling water and let it cook for about 5 minutes.  After set it to low-medium heat and let it simmer for around 20 minutes.  It will be ready when you put a chopstick (or other utensil) into the chicken thigh and there is no blood.  When the chicken is ready, take it out out of the water and transfer to a plate.

3. Cover the chicken with sesame oil.  Let it cool and then cut it into small pieces.  Afterwards, mince the ginger and onions and put it into a separate small bowl.

4. Heat up a bit of oil and pour it over the minced ginger and onions and add salt and soy sauce.  Finally, add in a teaspoon of the chicken broth (from the wok) and add a bit of sesame oil.

If anything doesn’t make sense, just ask me.  I’m translating this from my Chinese cookbook.  Its a relatively straightforward recipe.  My old stove decided to go crazy and not work halfway through cooking it, so my time on the 20 mins is not exactly certain. It might have taken me a bit longer.  I also think I didn’t add enough onions and that would help with the taste absorbed in the chicken.

However, the verdict was good. You have to have it with the sauce for it to taste good because by itself, it is a very plain chicken with hints of onion and ginger and sesame oil.  The sauce brings out the essence of it.

Here it is! The first recipe from A Bite of China Project.  Yet again, if you haven’t checked out the page, you can find it on the bar on the top or I have linked back to it.  I know that for me to do this by myself could be challenging and if any of you are interested, just drop me an email with what you’d like to try and I’ll send over the recipe to you.  An official guest contributor here on my little blog! It will be fun. If you have any suggestions, please do tell me in the comments or whatnot.  I’m still working on how to make this project into a great experience for everyone as much as its a journey to learn more about Chinese cuisine.

Sunday Cooking Part 2: Strip T’s (or should I say Strip C’s?)

As a side for my Minestrone Soup (featured yesterday, link provided here as well), I made a dish my new cookbook (that I just bought on Saturday) called Strip T’s.  Wait, lets backtrack, my new cookbook is amazing….it has the wittiest names for the recipes.  I’m still reading through it and it just doesn’t stop cracking me up.  On top of that, it has healthy and delicious-looking recipes. Even the ones with out the pictures of the end results, the ingredients just make it all look fantastic. I seriously can’t wait to try out some more of the recipes.

Okay, back to my Part 2.  So what are these Strip T’s you all may ask? Its turkey strips, of course.  Did any of you guess? Maybe you want to take a guess at which cookbook I have.  I’ll be telling you that in just a bit. Just let me clarify, mine were Strip C’s.  I’m not an expert at making turkey and they aren’t available all the time at the grocery stores so I went with chicken instead.  The chicken strips are coated with coconut shred and sesame seeds.

So lets take a look at what it looked like:

It got a bit burnt on the sides but it was still tasted pretty good.  Note to self, I need to work on multitasking while cooking multiple dishes. Not too bad, right? So you interested in trying this out, here’s the recipe right below.  Its from my new cookbook, as mentioned before: The Looneyspoons Collection: Janet & Greta’s greatest recipe hits plus a whole lot more! by Janet and Greta Podleski.

Strip T’s

Ingredients:

Marinade

1 egg

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 1/2 lbs (680g) boneless skinless turkey breast, cut into strips (about 1×4 inches)

Coating

2/3 cup sweetened shredded coconut

2 tablespoon sesame seeds

1/2 cup dry unseasoned bread crumbs

1/4 teaspoon each salt, garlic powder and onion powder

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

Sauce

1/2 cup plum sauce

1/3 cup unsweetened frozen pineapple juice concentrate, thawed

1 1/2 teaspoon each yellow mustard and cornstarch

Directions:

1) In a large bowl, whisk together egg, hoisin sauce, and sesame oil.  Add turkey strips and (using your hands) toss to coat with marinade.  Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes (or longer if possible).

2) Meanwhile, place coconut and sesame seeds in a small dry skillet over medium heat.  Cook until golden brown, stirring frequently.  Be careful not to burn them! Transfer toasted coconut and sesame seeds to a small pie plate or shallow dish and let cool.  Add bread crumbs, salt, garlic powder, onion powder and cayenne pepper.  Mix well and set aside.

3) Prepare sauce by combining all sauce ingredients in a small pot. Cook over medium heat until sauce is bubbly and has thickened.  Keep warm.

4) Preheat oven to 450F.  Working one piece at a time, shake excess marinade from turkey strips and roll in crumb mixture.  Make sure strips are well coated with crumbs.  Place on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray.  Repeat with remaining strips and coconut mixture.  Spray tops of strips with a light coating of cooking spray.  Bake on middle oven rack for 6 minutes.  Remove from oven and gently turn pieces over.  Spray other side with a light coating of cooking spray return to oven and bake about 4 more minutes, until coating is lightly browned and turkey is cooked through.

5) Serve strips with warm dipping sauce. Enjoy!

What did I do different?  Well, there is a few things as always.  For one, as mentioned, these are Chicken strips so I used boneless skinless chicken breasts.  As for the coating, you will notice that mine doesn’t cover the meat completely and thats because I somehow couldn’t find any breadcrumbs at the grocery so I just took bread and broke it into little pieces.  It did do the job just not as fine as the ready made breadcrumbs.  I’ll have to work on that.  Also, instead of the seasoning they asked for (salt, garlic and onion powder, cayenne pepper), I went straight to use our own spices which already has salt and pepper and a few other ingredients in there.

Aside from that, I didn’t make a sauce and just had it like that.  I’m not a huge fan of plum sauce.  I have to admit Walmart didn’t carry pineapple juice concentrate so I had to skip it.  I wasn’t ready to test out how berry punch concentrate (or iced tea concentrate) mixed as the sauce would be and I’d doubt it’d taste too good mixed with the other sauce ingredients.  If  I had guests, I’d definitely make it though.  It does look like a good mix, especially since they added in the pineapple factor to it.

As for the marinade, it was pretty straightforward (similar to how I marinade my chicken) and I didn’t do any changes to it except for changing the meat.  I did cut too much meat so I ended up frying the rest. This is how that turned out:

Not too bad for my Sunday meal, right? I thought so too.  So before we end this off, the experience of my new cookbook is pretty awesome. If you happen to go past any bookstores, you should give it a read.  They have some little fun facts and cartoon drawings to match the funky names.  Here’s a little fun fact for coconut, it doesn’t only help your body burn fat but it also helps you feel full longer.

Such a motivator to cook when you know what you’re cooking is healthy also!