RCP: Lamb, wine, herb and oat meatloaf

[Jenise]

Long ago a recipe appeared in either Bon Appetit or Gourmet for a meatloaf bound with oats and generously flavored with Provencal herbs and red wine. I made it many times to rave reviews, then forgot about it and lost the recipe. In recent years, I've taken a stab at recreating it but only managed to make something entirely edible but lacking the magic, the perfect proportions, of the original. Until last night. And this is mildly odd because this one contained an ingredient not in the original: a significant quantity of ground, fresh mushrooms simply because I happened to have a rather large amount of them on hand purchased before last week's trip to Hawaii and not used then as intended. They not only added additional depth of flavor, they enhanced the moist, crumbly texture because during cooking they shrink and create little micro-voids around the crumbs of meat. Now, I would not make it without the mushrooms.

Bob loved it so much he begged me to make it again very soon--like next week. And on a weekend so he can enjoy a good bottle of Rhone wine with it.

Here's the recipe. Will feed 2-4:

1 lb ground lamb
1/2 cup regular (not Quick) rolled oats
1/2 cup red wine
2 tsp Herbs d'Provence
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup diced onion
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 egg
Parmesan cheese (optional)

In a food processor with steel blade, make a coarse grind of the onions and mushrooms. Then add the lamb, herbs, salt, egg and wine and pulse to blend. This is the part you can do ahead any time during the day: do NOT add the oats until you're ready to form the loaf and bake. When ready, hand-mix the oats into the meat mixture, form a loaf (more for looks than anything else, I pat a handful of shredded parmesan on top) and bake for 50 minutes at 350 F. I use a quarter sheet pan for small, 2-person loaves like this, and throw in a second quarter sheet of pieces of cauliflower and fennel bulb tossed with EVOO to roast concurrently.

Made just enough for us each to have two fat pieces with enough leftover for a couple sammies.

Jenise,
I don't blame Bob! It sounds delicious. Do you grind the lamb or just get it all done?
-Shaji

Thanks Jenise. Sounds delicious.

Do you think this would work with a meaty mushroom substituting for the lamb? Shiitake, trumpet royale, porcino, for example, all of which are usually available here.

I'm also wondering if a bit of V8 juice might pep this dish up a bit, ala your take on Batalli's dads great meatloaf recipe.

Regrds, Bob

[Jenise]

Jenise,
I don't blame Bob! It sounds delicious. Do you grind the lamb or just get it all done?
-Shaji

I get good organic ground lamb here from a farm in Oregon, and that's what I used in this dish. IOW, the lamb was already ground when added to the food processor. It just became a wee bit finer, though not much, from the additional mixing.

[Jenise]

Thanks Jenise. Sounds delicious.

Do you think this would work with a meaty mushroom substituting for the lamb? Shiitake, trumpet royale, porcino, for example, all of which are usually available here.

I'm also wondering if a bit of V8 juice might pep this dish up a bit, ala your take on Batalli's dads great meatloaf recipe.

Regrds, Bob

Mushroom meatloafs are popular in vegetarian cooking, though I've never done one. A big alarm goes off in my head about the shrinkage factor--not sure how to offset that offhand. At a minimum you'd need more oats or another filler plus more egg. It would probably be easier to locate a proven mushroom meatloaf recipe and work red wine and herbs d'provence into that than to figure out how to replace a pound of ground lamb in this one. Interesting challenge, though.

Thanks, Jenise. I haven't found a mushroom loaf recipe I liked -- somehow this one looked like a starting point. I'm thinking a thick tofu might be a better choice. Best, Bob

Thanks, Jenise. I've copied the rcp and placed it on ther to-do list.

Thanks, Jenise. I've copied the rcp and placed it on ther to-do list.

Jon, did you mean to say "the" or "her?"

Thanks, Jenise. I've copied the rcp and placed it on ther to-do list.

Jon, did you mean to say "the" or "her?"

Thanks, Carl - oh "the" to-do list. If Liz ever thought that I had a to-do list for her, I'd be eating in the dog house and she'd change the locks on the wine cellar . I'll put Jenise's meatloaf together and treat Liz like the royalty she is.

This looks great, esp. as I just found a pound of ground lamb in the freezer and Kirk loves meatloaf of any kind. It's on tomorrow's menu! Thanks.

[Jenise]

Cool! Hope Kirk likes it as much as Bob did.

Reporting back: I made the lamb meatloaf this evening, to serve 3 meat eaters and a vegetarian guest who ate the accompanying long-baked sweet potatoes(not yams) with homemade truffle butter ( a variation on Jenise's 2 hour baked potato), a dish of green beans and yellow peppers braised with garlic and a traditional french salad of butter lettuce with shallot/mustard dressing. What I particularly loved about this recipe is that it still tastes distinctively like lamb--and I think the herbes de provence bolster that flavor impression. The oats add the juicy and savory binding note, along with the mushrooms. Thanks Jenise--another winner in your long list of fine recipes!

Nice recipe. I might try this over the next couple of weeks. We're eating quite a bit of lamb mince these days.

Regarding meat(less) loaves, a few years ago the Francophile made a savoury loaf based on coarsely-ground walnuts as part of our family Christmas dinner. One of the family is a vegetarian. My memory may have exaggerated this but I seem to remember it was quite complicated and fiddly. It never made it to the table. It got dropped on the floor as it was lifted out of the oven. A small portion of it remained stuck in the pan, and we tried it later on when nobody was looking. It was bland, and the walnuts tasted bitter.

This is of course of no relevance to anything else in this thread. Must be late at night - I'm rambling.

[Jenise]

It was bland, and the walnuts tasted bitter.

This is of course of no relevance to anything else in this thread. Must be late at night - I'm rambling.

Rambling's okay--better be, I do it all the time! But yeah re the walnuts--the skins are full of tannins and there's a fine line between the earthy complexity they can add and bitterness or astringency when there's too much.


Ines--so happy to read about your success with the lamb loaf.

Great success here tonight, Jenise. Thank you.

Baked and broiled radishes, turnips and broccoli dry on parchment with the meat loaf.

I was surprised that you didn't soften the onions before baking -- they turned out just fine without doing so.

Thank you very much. Bob

[Jenise]

Great success here tonight, Jenise. Thank you.

Baked and broiled radishes, turnips and broccoli dry on parchment with the meat loaf.

I was surprised that you didn't soften the onions before baking -- they turned out just fine without doing so.

Thank you very much. Bob

You know what, as a child I hated meatloaf. And it and my mother's "barbecued hamburger balls" were both full of rather large pieces of diced onion that stayed on the hard side--which I detested. Once I learned to like onions I still found that texture disruptive and inelegant so nearly always saute before blending, but in this case the fact that I used so little and they're reduced to nothing, essentially, in the food processor makes that an unneccessary step. Glad you enjoyed that.

We made it last night with a couple of mods for Bev's food allergies. She can't handle fresh mushrooms so I put in two teaspoons of ground dry mushrooms for the flavor. Also replaced the Parmesan with Romano. I also grated the onion and mixed the whole thing by hand. We roasted Baby Yukons with it and also had green beans almondine with the dinner.

We enjoyed it, but plan to try to make it more "North African" in the future. Thinking of replacing the oats with chopped garbanzoes, and changing the spice mixture accordingly.

When I saw this thread, I had to at least take a look.

I have never been one to let my meat loaf - result of too much of that sort of thing at a young age in private school, perhaps.

OTOH, I do trust your culinary sense, so was intrigued. Might even try it - I'd probably toss in either some fresh thyme, or go another route and add coriander and cumin. Do you think it would work as patties, or is it too loose and needs long slow cooking?

The fennel accompaniment would be classic.

Maybe if I think of it as lamb terrine, I can get over the meat loaf aversion....

[Jenise]

Yes, it's too wet for patties. It needs the evaporation and leakage that occurs in the longer cooking of a baked loaf (one large long patty, if you will), during which time the oats cook. What those processes leave behind is wonderful. As for the thyme, sure, but there's a lot in there in the herbs d'Provence--it's quite highly seasoned. Coriander and cumin isn't a problem either, but thematically what I made was a Provencal dish, where the addition of the other two takes it Middle Eastern.

The lamb terrine comment made me laugh.

Jenise,

I used to detest meatloaf as a child (it was ground beef, egg, bread, with a ketchup coating), but this looks like something I need to explore. Many thanks.

-Paul W.

Jenise, why not the quick kind of oats?

[Jenise]

Jenise, why not the quick kind of oats?

They just dissolve, where regular oats give structure and texture.

[Jenise]

Jenise,

I used to detest meatloaf as a child (it was ground beef, egg, bread, with a ketchup coating)

Same here. But now I adore it!

Btw, made this again last night (Bob's request got delayed) and this time cut it with about 9/10's of a pound of ground chicken meat. Wanted to see if the lamb flavor would carry over sufficiently to make it worthwhile to cut the cholesterol values in the red meat, so I doubled all the other values plus a third helping of oats just to see if I liked it stiffer. The answers are no and no. It was perfect the other way.

Made it tonight. I spread a bit of tomato paste on top before patting on the cheese. Lovely loaf. Very crumbly and tender. Good lamby flavor. I don't agree with you, Jenise, that the seasoning is strong- I could add more HdP and be happy.

I did roast vegs in the oven at the same time: fennel bulb, cauliflower, new potatoes. All were hit with s+p and with basil just a few minutes before the end.

One tweak: I was not seeing any browning, and I was not seeing the cheese melt, so I turned the oven up to 400 and let things go for 10 minutes longer. All was well but this makes me wonder whether my oven is running cool?

Anyway, thank you for this yummy recipe!