The Sacred Art of Eating

Actually, I would. These were really good!

• Mini Meatloaves

We didn’t make these as early in the year as we might have, as one of the flavourings used to bind the meat together is A1 Steak Sauce. This stuff is readily available in the US and cheap as (stuff you’d put on your) chips; in the UK as far as I can tell it retails at a little under the per litre price of printer ink. A quick look on Google will show you a lot of people looking for it to make Nigella’s Mini Meatloaves (who, me?) but also various ‘Mercans discussing what to use when shipwrecked in Old Blighty and looking for an alternative. HP sauce seems to win, so I duly nicked some sachets from a service station and thus, we were ready.

In the making, these were not so pretty. And let me tell you, I got very cold hands mushing together the mince, sausage meat and egg with the sauce and oats.  It didn’t take long though, and pretty soon these babies were ready for the oven.

The next day, having been up too late to make these into sandwiches, we had them in our tea. We had some baguettes of Dougal’s, and we took Nigella’s advice and had these with pickles, ketchup, mustard, mayo…generally we played around with the flavours. I liked these best with mayo and a fruity chutney while Dougal favoured the gherkin approach. The only downside was that cold meat pieces do not a November supper make, and we ended the meal frozen and seeking a cup of tea.

The following day we repeated the exercise in pitta breads for lunch at work; most respectable. The mushy meat feels a bit like the rubbish you get in packet sandwiches, except in this case it was butcher-bought and hand worked. Not fine or sophisticated eating but very satisfying and an excellent source of protein.

Today we fished a couple of cooked mini meatloaves out of the freezer a couple of hours before lunch. They’d defrosted a treat (we gave them a few mins at 50°C in the oven right at the end, just to be sure) and went delightfully with the spare pain de Campagne left over from the bread Dougal made for our Fondue. We have another six still in the freezer and I’m sure they’ll come in handy for making hearty work lunches when the fridge is looking a bit barren.

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