Not Just a Man's World

This was another weekend when I needed to cook something for lunch that could be made in advance and left in the oven to cook on the timer setting.  Fortunately, I was home in the afternoon and evening to cook our usual roast dinner which we had definitely missed last week. 

The weather is cooling off and we had a fraction of tomato sauce left over from the meatballs the previous weekend, so I decided to finally get around to trying the good-looking meatloaf recipe from Mark’s Daily Apple.  I’m a big fan of meatloaf and hadn’t had it for years (in fact, I’m not sure I’d had it since I was living at my parent’s over a decade ago).

The meatloaf tastes great but the texture needs a little bit of work.  Although I chopped the apple really small so that the apple flavour would soak right through, the pieces still got in the way of the knife when I cut the loaf, so that it fell apart a bit.  I also softened up the onion in advance in a pan but it still needs chopping as finely as possible. 

I did everything as instructed and it was incredibly moist so I struggled to get it to hold together properly when I sliced it.  Next time I try it I’m going to make the following adjustments:

• grate the apple
• add a second egg
• remove the meatloaf from the tin at the end of the 30 mins and continue to bake uncovered for 15 mins to dry it out a bit.

If that doesn’t work I’ll cut down the worcestershire sauce, but it really did add something to the flavour.

It tastes better than it looks

To accompany it, I made a cauliflower bake that I originally got from one of my mother’s cookbooks.  It’s a way to bake cauliflower without the cheese sauce.  Personally, I’m quite happy to eat cauliflower in its plain form, but I find that I get complaints from the other household member when I do that.

Cauliflower tomato bake

Ingredients:
1 onion (white or red), sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tspn butter (or 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp oil, or use just oil)
1 can tomatoes (or 8 medium tomatoes peeled and chopped)
2 tsp dried oregano
pinch of cinnamon
Small head of cauliflower
1 tbsp lemon juice (optional)
3 tbsp olive oil (optional)
Crumbly goats cheese or cheddar to grate over the top

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat and then gently fry the onion and garlic in the melted butter.
3. Once the onion is soft and starting to brown add the can of tomatoes and the cinnamon.  Cover the pan with a lid and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Cut the cauliflower into pieces (suitable to serve) and add to the pan.  Re-cover and continue to simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Transfer the cauliflower tomato mix to an oven dish.  If using goat’s cheese, drizzle the olive oil and lemon juice over the bake and then cover the cauliflower in crumbled goat’s cheese at this stage.  If using cheddar then it’s your choice if you want to add the olive oil and lemon juice – I didn’t bother.
6. Place in the oven and bake for 40 minutes.  If using cheddar or something similar that melts and browns more quickly than goat’s cheese, sprinkle liberally over the top 20 minutes into the baking time.

I remember that the first time I made this, I wasn’t convinced that the cauliflower would cook through so I par-cooked it first.  It ended up soggy.  Trust the recipe.  Cooking the cauliflower in the tomato almost seems to infuse the cauliflower to its core with tomato.

It looks far more appetising once it's on the plate

Related posts:

1. Paleo kitchen experiments – meatballs and roasted veg
2. Paleo kitchen experiments – roast pork and a tomato sauce
3. Paleo kitchen experiments: carrot and orange cake
4. Paleo kitchen experiments: perfect pot roast