The Journey

Recipe # 5 – Turkey Meat Loaf

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From The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, page 138-139

I have to admit, I was not as productive this week when it came to cooking. I made dinner for the household last night and it took me quite some time to figure out what I wanted to make.

Did I want a one-pot meal type of thing? Or did I want to combine a couple recipes as an easy way to knock out more than in one day?

Well, after some deliberating and flipping through numerous pages of cookbooks, I decided I would combine three recipes to make a full meal. I also decided that I would probably be easiest for me if I kept the recipes to the same book.

That was the real challenge, though!

The first hurdle was figuring out what the main course would be. Eventually, I stumbled upon the Turkey Meat Loaf recipe out of Ina’s first cookbook. Next came figuring out the sides. Seeing as I wanted to keep the recipes in the same book, I found a recipe for fingerling potatoes which I thought would complement the meat loaf well. Tried as I might to find a vegetable recipe that interested me to pair with the meat loaf and potatoes, I realized that the The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook would not be doing it. Eventually, I found a recipe in Make it Ahead for peas and pancetta. (Post about making the fingerling potatoes and peas dish coming Sunday!)

The turkey meat loaf recipe, as written, serves a small army of 8 to 10 people (though I think that would allow for large portions), so I decided to cut the recipe in half since I only needed to feed three and I knew I would still have leftovers.

I needed a few items at the grocery store for this one, so I went and picked up the ground turkey, grown thyme, the Worcestershire sauce, and ingredients for the other recipes. When I returned home, I started to create the meat loaf, even though dinner was hours away, I figured it wouldn’t harm anything to let the meatloaf sit in the fridge for a few hours while the flavors mingled with each other.

I cooked the onions and spices as directed, letting things go for a little longer than recommended in the recipe. It wasn’t until I added the chicken stock and Worcestershire sauce that things really started to heat up — or I guess in my case, smell up!

While the onion mixture was cooling, I mixed the ground meat, eggs, breadcrumbs, and then added the onion mixture. I formed it into a loaf shape on a cookie sheet, spread ketchup on top and placed in the fridge with a piece of foil.

When dinner time arrived, I set the oven to the 325 degrees, as the recipe states. Now, since I halved the recipe, I assumed it would take about 50 minutes to cook fully. Well, that wasn’t the case. It look over an hour and the full recipe says the 5-pound meat loaf would only take 90 minutes! I think my oven temperature may be off, or Ina uses a really high-scale oven….probably both.

Once the meat loaf was done and plated, I tried some. I was impressed with how moist it was. There wasn’t a salty flavor that is usually present in the meat loafs (loaves?) I make following the Lipton soup recipe. It paired nicely with the sides I had chosen…again separate post coming at you tomorrow about that!

I think this recipe will be made frequently in my life. It’s pretty easy and really flavorful. I wonder if the flavors would be more pronounced if I had made the larger loaf? Maybe one day I’ll find out!

(Sorry, readers, no picture of this. The house was crazy around dinner time and I was also dealing with a pot of boiling potatoes and cooking a vegetable.)

Review of “The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook”

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This is part of a twelve-part series where I review Ina Garten’s cookbooks. Check back each week for the next installment in the series! The reviews will drop every Thursday afternoon at 1:30 PM.

We all love the Barefoot Contessa, also known as Ina Garten. The East Hampton, NY chef and lifestyle celebrity has been entertaining audiences since the early 2000s. But many fans of her Food Network show may not realize that she got her start as the owner of a specialty food store on Long Island. While the store has since closed its doors, the name, Barefoot Contessa, lives on through Ina Garten and her cooking show and cookbooks.

Ina Garten and Barefoot Contessa burst onto the scene in 1999 with the publication of her first cookbook entitled The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.

With a foreword by Martha Stewart, the cookbook quickly led Barefoot Contessa to become a household name. Within a couple of years, Garten’s cooking show began airing on the Food Network and here we are almost twelve cookbook later!

I would argue that this cookbook is different than the other ones in tone. It’s almost as though she was trying to impress her readers and live up to “The Hamptons” stereotype. The narratives are filled with pretentious sentences that I don’t think are reflected in her others books. It’s almost as if her intended audience with this book was exclusively for summer home owners on ritzy coasts.

Many of the recipes promote the “summer is perfect on the Hamptons” trope by mainly benefitting people who have grills or access to fresh seafood and local farmer’s markets. What is strange to me is I think if my first foray into Ina Garten had been this cookbook, I don’t think I would be as big of a fan. Granted, I have only cooked one recipe from this book so far (see here), but all the recipes just come off as too fancy and aren’t really relatable to me.

That said, now that I am older and have had more experience with “early Ina” I feel more confident with the recipes in this book. That said, overall many of the recipes are for more seasoned palates and cooks. Another difference between the recipes in this book and some of her other is that many of the recipes are designed to be used for entertainment, so the scale of the recipes is a lot larger (in fact, her first three cookbooks feature recipes that could feed a couple handfuls of people). Many recipes in this book feed 8 as opposed to the 4 to 6 that is common in the later books.

Some highlights from this book:

  1. Sun-dried Tomato Dip
  2. Gazpacho
  3. Grilled Salmon Salad
  4. Lobster Potpie
  5. Turkey Meatloaf
  6. Kitchen Clambake
  7. Potato-Fennel Gratin
  8. Outrageous Brownies
  9. Croissant Bread Pudding
  10. Maple-Oatmeal Scones

I can’t wait to try some more of these, however I almost feel obligated to wait until summer because the food just lends itself to that season.

Recipe #4 – Chocolate Pudding Cream Tart

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Located in How Easy is That?

For my next recipe, I decided to make another dessert.

As you may recall, I purchased a tart pan from Williams-Sonoma last week and I decided that it was time to break it in! By the way, this recipe was made on Saturday morning, so I didn’t wait very long to give it it’s first use!

Ina has many tarts sprinkled throughout her cookbooks. Some of them are savory, but most are sweet, desserts. However, I wanted chocolate! So I found the Chocolate Pudding Cream Tart inside the How Easy Is That? cookbook. I gathered my ingredients and everything was going to plan, until one step…..

The recipe requires that you combine the scalded milk with the egg mixture in your stand mixture. Which went swimmingly: I poured the milk in slowly and had the mixer on stir so it wouldn’t scramble the eggs, which it didn’t. However, after doing that, Ina says you need to cook the mixture over the stove until it thickens. Her recipe says cook it for 5 to 10 minutes.

Well…I cooked it. But after 8 minutes on the stove with constant stirring, it had thickened a bit so I thought it was ready. I removed it from the heat and continued on with the recipe by adding the chocolate and butter and whisking until it turned into a nice chocolate-y pool of goodness!

(Or so I thought)

I then poured the mixture into the prepared tart pan with its cooked graham cracker shell, put the plastic wrap on it, and shoved it in the fridge to cool/harden. After about an hour, I checked on it and it was still pretty liquidy, but Ina says it will take around six hours to completing become pudding consistently so I didn’t worry too much.

However, when it reached Hour 5 and not much had changed I did begin to worry!

I didn’t want chocolate milk and I didn’t want to lose the whole thing, so I placed the tart pan in the freezer for the final hour.

It did freeze, but when I cut into it about 90 minutes later, I realized my problem. The custard didn’t cook long enough and thus thicken properly. I was so disappointed that this one didn’t work out. I was really hoping that my first experience making a tart would be a success.

Also, it was the first recipe that I was failed by Ina, I feel like. Prior to starting this blog, I made a few of her recipes here and there and everything always came out amazingly. But not this time. While I know this isn’t technically Ina’s fault, I am still disappointed. I think I am more disappointed over the fact that I feel like I have failed Ina.

However, I wanted this recipe to be good and turn out okay, so I’ve decided I’m going to make it again at some point. In fact, I already bought the chocolate. I just need to get the whole milk, which is a necessity when making this since anything but whole milk won’t cook and set properly.

So there you have it! My first “fail.”

But I plan to march onward and try again and continue to make more recipes. After all, this experience is so that I could learn something, after all!

My “fail” or a chocolate cream pudding pie.

Hey! I Changed Up the Site!

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So I know this blog has only been around for a little over a week, but I wasn’t LOVING the old layout. I think this new theme really speaks to what I see this blog as — a collection of my thoughts and a record for this project. I also chose fonts that I really like and feel are easy to read.

I hope you like it too. If you follow me through WordPress, check out the main site and let me know what you think of it.

Is the Expensive Vanilla REALLY Worth It??

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The other day I was poking my way around Ina’s website and I realized that she uses vanilla that costs around $33 for 4 fluid ounces. It’s from Madagascar and I’m sure it’s excellent.

But….

Is it REALLY worth that much money? How does it compare to the McCormick one that I buy and use?

I know she wants us to use the BEST ingredients, but I can’t bring myself to spend more than a tank of gas on vanilla extract. To me, it doesn’t really seem worth it. After all, you use so very little in each recipe. In fact, I remember one day I made chocolate chip cookies (not Ina’s, Tollhouse actually) and I forgot to add the vanilla to that recipe and I couldn’t even tell the different.

So really, it doesn’t seem necessary to spend that much money on something that usually gets overpowered by other flavors.

However, there may be a time when I have some extra cash that I’d be willing to buy it. After all, four ounces will last for quite a bit of time if you’re just using a teaspoon or two here and there.

Luckily it’s also sold at the Williams-Sonoma I went to last week, so I can get it easier.

But for now, I’ll stick to the McCormick brand and pretend that I can justify spending all that money on dark brown vodka.

Recipe #3 – French Chicken Pot Pie

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French Chicken Pot Pie from Make It Ahead

On Friday I decided to make another recipe from one of Ina’s cookbooks. The meal I made it for would be dinner so I paged my way through the “Dinner” sections of each of her eleven cookbooks until something caught my eye. I eventually found the French Chicken Pot Pie.

I went to the grocery store, found the leeks and mushrooms and opted for the a roll of the Pillsbury biscuit dough over the boxes of puff pastry as she suggested (I wanted to save a few bucks!), and I went home.

This was the first time that I can recall in which I cooked with leeks. And it was interesting. Every time I watch a chef on TV cook with leeks they say something like “You need to wash leeks really well because they are so sandy and dirty.” Remembering this, I was prepared for a mess of sand and dirt, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. These leeks were relatively clean and required only minimal additional cleaning.

The hardest part about this recipe was all the prep work. First you have to cook the chicken in the oven, then wait for it to cool to shred it by hand to get the pieces of chicken that will be “pie friendly.” Then you need to cut carrots, mushrooms, and the leeks into bite-sized pieces (half-inch dice). All of these cutting took some time and was probably the most time-consuming aspect of the recipe.

Finally, my mise en place was done and I was ready to cook. I followed the recipe diligently and when it came time to add the tarragon (after more knife work), the kitchen almost immediately smelled wonderful and I felt like I had just walked into a fancy-smanzy restaurant.

Ina’s original recipe calls to make individual portions of the pie in two-cup bowls that are oven-safe. While cute, it isn’t very practical. So I poured the mixture into a 13-by-9 baking dish and rolled the biscuit dough over it. I still brushed it with an egg wash and some salt and pepper, and it looked amazing!

While it baked, the house filled with wonderful smells of chicken, leeks, carrots, tarragon — and yes, Pillsbury biscuits.

Finally, the time came to eat the pie. I let it sit for a few minutes after removing it from the oven and it was worth it!

Upon having my first bite I immediately thought, “All the prep work was worth it!”

We had leftovers and I think the pie even tasted better the following day. Overall, it wasn’t all that much work (if you get over the chopping) and totally worth the effort!!

Sadly, the only photo I have of it is while the contents of the mixture was simmering on my stove, but the picture wouldn’t do it justice anyway. I highly recommend you try to this one for dinner soon.

Trip to Williams-Sonoma

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If you have been reading this blog since the beginning, you’ll know that I am in the process of making spreadsheets featuring all of Ina’s recipes. As I continue to go through each of the cookbooks, I am noticing some themes.

The first is that there is a lot more lamb recipes than I originally thought. But that topic will be discussed in a future post.

Another commonality I’ve noticed is that Ina loves to make tarts! There seems to be a handful of recipes that end up in a tart pan per cookbook. Most of these are desserts, but some are appetizers (Ina refers to them as “starters”). So, it quickly became clear to me that I needed yet another piece of cookware (bakeware?….).

I needed a tart pan!

And since it will be used quite often it seems, I decided I should just bite the bullet and purchase a good-quality one. So, I made the trip to Williams-Sonoma on Friday morning. It had been at least a year since I’ve walked into one and I’ve never been to the one I went to today before.

I found the staff very helpful and polite and with the global pandemic the store and employees were taking the necessary precautions set forth by my state’s governor. So, I was impressed.

Anyway…I digress.

I soon found the tart pan (11-inch with a false bottom) but then ended up purchasing two other things. One is a paddle for my stand mixer that had the scraper built into it.

I’ve been going back and forth on getting this item for a while and when I made the peanut butter and jelly bars earlier in the week, it suddenly became a necessity to have. Hopefully it’ll prove useful and helpful….or at least allow my batters to be better mixed.

I also purchased a candy thermometer which will probably have very minimal usage in my life, even as I cook my way through the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. But I still wanted one because I’ve always wanted on and now I have one.

So after spending more than $80, I left Williams-Sonoma ready to tackle what seems like a full 10% of Ina’s recipes. When one will actually be made? Hopefully sometime this weekend.

I’ve noticed that I really like making her dessert recipes for some reason. I’m not sure if it’s because they are sweet and “bad for you” or if it’s just because they are a bit easier than most of her recipes. Perhaps I should institute a rule for myself…maybe every fourth recipe will be a dessert one?

Lots of think about….