Turkey Chipotle Meatloaf With Mushroom Gravy and Mashed Potatoes

Although significantly modified, this recipe is inspired by "Jane's Chipotle Meatloaf" and "Mushroom Gravy" from the Reata cookbook.

Turkey Chipotle Meatloaf

1.2 lbs. 85/15 ground turkey
1/2 small onion, diced
2 green onions, sliced
small bunch parsley, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 canned chipotle pepper, minced
1/3 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1 egg
splash of Worcestershire sauce
a couple pinches of Kosher salt
a few grinds of black pepper
2 slices of bacon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

I suggest using disposable gloves for hand-mixing recipes with ground meat.  Combine all ingredients except bacon until well mixed.  The mixture will be soft and sticky.

Choose a dish that the meatloaf mixture will fit in comfortably; this will be a mold for the meatloaf.  Line the dish with plastic wrap, allowing plenty of extra plastic wrap to extend beyond the dish.  Spray the plastic wrap inside the dish with your Misto sprayer or other oil spray.  Spoon the meatloaf into the dish.  Refrigerate for about an hour to allow the meatloaf to become a bit firm.

While the meatloaf is refrigerating, parcook bacon slices over low heat until much of the fat has rendered but bacon is still pliable.

Place a baking rack over a sheet pan or roasting pan (if you line the roasting pan with aluminum foil, clean-up will be a breeze.  Fashion a piece of aluminum foil the approximate size of the meatloaf and place on the center of the baking rack.  Unmold meatloaf onto the foil piece.  The baking rack allows the grease to drain away and the aluminum foil keeps the crumbly-textured turkey from falling through the rack. 
 
 

 
Place the rendered bacon slices crosswise over the meatloaf.  Bake for 60 to 90 minutes, until the exterior of the meatloaf is golden brown and crispy, then allow to cool for about 10 minutes before slicing.


Mushroom Gravy

Note:  I didn't have chicken broth or veal stock on-hand, so I substituted chicken and beef bouillon.  Homemade stock would be better (and obviously less salty). 

2 cups chicken broth
2 cups veal stock
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1/2 to 3/4 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/4 yellow onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon fresh garlic, minced
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided use
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Combine the chicken broth and veal stock (or substitute 4 cups of water and a chicken bouillon cube and a beef bouillon cube) and tomato paste in a large saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat to medium and simmer to reduce the liquid by half.

In a large saute pan, combine the mushrooms, onions, and garlic.  Add 2 tablespoons of the butter and cook over high heat.  When the mushrooms have browned, remove from the heat and reserve.

In a large saucepan, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter.  Whisk in the flour, a little at a time, to make a roux, and cook for about 10 minutes, or until the mixture turns light brown.  Remove the roux from the heat and let cool.  Return the reserved, reduced stock to a boil.  Add the cooked roux to the boiling stock, stirring to avoid lumps.  Reduce the heat and let simmer until the gravy thickens.  Add the sauteed mushrooms and season with salt and pepper.

Place meatloaf slices over your favorite mashed potatoes and spoon mushroom gravy on top.

Stuffed Mushrooms

These are hands-down the best stuffed mushrooms ever, and once you make them for family and friends they'll be requesting them for every event!  It's really easy to do most of the prep the day before, in fact you'll achieve the best results if you do.


Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds medium-size fresh mushrooms (all approximately the same size)
6 slices bacon
1/2 cup minced bell pepper
1/2 cup minced onion
6 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3/4 cup bread crumbs (homemade or store-bought bread crumbs or Panko crumbs)
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley


The Day Before Serving Day:

Put the bacon in the freezer to firm up.  It's easier to dice that way.  Remove the cream cheese from the fridge to soften.

Clean the mushrooms and let them dry well on paper towels.  Trim off the very ends of the stems (throw the trimmings in your veggie freezer bag for veggie broth later) and separate the stems carefully from the caps.  Line a gallon-size ziplock bag with a paper towel.  Gently lay the mushroom caps on the paper towel in the ziplock in a single layer.  Use more than one ziplock bag if necessary.  Seal the bag and put the mushrooms in the fridge.

Finely dice the mushroom stems.

Remove the bacon from the freezer.  Use a very sharp knife to dice the bacon.

Cook the diced bacon, minced bell pepper, and minced onion in a skillet over medium heat until the bacon is partly cooked but not crisp and the bell pepper and onion are crisp-tender.  Pour into a strainer and drain off grease and liquid.  Transfer bacon mixture to a storage bowl (with a lid), add diced mushroom stems, softened cream cheese, Worcestershire sauce, and salt and pepper to taste.  Mix well while still warm.  It's easiest to mix with a fork.  Put the lid on the storage bowl and refrigerate the filling.


Serving Day:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Remove mushrooms and filling from fridge.  Arrange mushroom caps in a single layer on an oven-safe platter (not your final serving platter).  Fill mushroom caps with the filling.  The easiest way to fill them neatly and evenly is to use a cookie scoop.

Put the platter of filled mushrooms in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, checking them every 10 minutes.  You'll be able to see and smell when it's time to remove the mushrooms from the oven.  Their texture will look different, they'll release some moisture, and they'll start to smell like, well, mushrooms.

Remove from oven and set aside to cool.

Increase oven temperature to 375 degrees.

Melt the butter.  Stir the chopped parsley into the bread crumbs.  Add the melted butter and mix well using two forks.

When the mushrooms are cool enough to handle, gently press a small palmful of the bread crumbs to the top of each mushroom, covering the filling with a mound of crumbs.  Place the mushrooms on an oven-safe serving platter.  Return to the oven and bake just until bread crumb topping is golden brown and crispy, about 5 to 10 minutes.  Keep a close eye on them; the difference between golden brown and shrieking smoke alarm is about 2 seconds!

Note:  If you want to prepare the mushrooms at home and serve them somewhere else, after putting the bread crumbs on the mushrooms, wrap the platter tightly with plastic wrap.  At the serving location, remove plastic wrap and heat mushrooms at 350 degrees until the mushrooms are hot and the crumbs are golden brown and crispy, about 20 to 30 minutes.  Again, keep a close eye on them.

And One More Note:  We always intentionally increase the measurements of the filling ingredients so that we have extra filling left over.  The extra filling is decadently good rolled up in an omelet.

Roulade Meatloaf

Start with ground beef mixed with some Montreal steak seasoning and dehydrated soup vegetables.  Press the ground beef out flat in a sheet pan, like pastry.  Coat with a layer of fromage fort or any spreadable cheese.  Add chopped mushrooms (or leftover sauteed mushrooms), sundried tomatoes, chopped garlic, chopped spinach, chopped basil, really any flavorful ingredients you can think of.  Roll up into a loaf.  Place on a baking rack over a sheet pan.  Bake at 400 degrees for 15-30 minutes to brown and crisp the exterior, then reduce to 350 degrees until done (use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature from time to time for doneness).

Here's the meatloaf before baking.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a pic of the finished meatloaf.

Mushroom, Leek, and Goat Cheese Phyllo Triangles

I'm experimenting with lots of little yummies lately.  I've always been partial to appetizers, tiny flavorful cuties.  Along the same lines, I like the "small bites" concept and hope to experiment a bit with that, and I also like the "deconstructed" concept, reducing familiar foods to their individual components and showcasing the ingredients.

Sometimes I get inspired by the idea of a food combination that I think will be really tasty and I'll Google search the ingredients I'm interested in until I find some recipes that seem promising, then combine components of the recipes, hoping to create the masterpiece that I envision.  Of course, sometimes my idea falls flat; however, sometimes my inspiration produces exactly what I hoped to achieve and it's scrumptious.

I wanted to create an unctious, crispy appetizer featuring assorted mushrooms, leeks, and goat cheese wrapped in crispy phyllo dough to serve at a recent birthday celebration.  I combined ideas from a couple of recipes and here's what I came up with.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it and I hope you will too ...

Mushroom, Leek, and Goat Cheese Phyllo Triangles

2 pounds assorted mushrooms (I used creminini, shiitake, and oyster)
Oive oil to coat pan
2 leeks
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh thyme
Healthy splash of sherry
8 ounces goat cheese
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Phyllo dough (number of sheets needed will vary according to volume of filling, but phyllo is typically packed in two bags per box and you'll probably not quite use up one of the bags)
1 stick butter

Clean up mushrooms.  I know some people say to just brush them, but I prefer to gently rinse them.  It's up to you.  With a paring knife trim away the very ends of the mushroom stems.  The exception is the shiitakes.  Their stems are virtually inedible, so completely detach the stems from the shiitake caps.  (Remember to put your mushroom trimmings and all your other veggie trimmings into a ziplock bag and pop it into the freezer so that you can simmer up some veggie broth later.  It's liquid gold, I tell you.)  Roughly chop all the mushrooms.

Prepare the leeks.  Look at your leeks and find the point where the leaves start "branching out."  Cut just below that branch-off spot and toss the upper, darker-colored leafy leek parts into your veggie freezer bag.  Trim away the root ends from the leeks.  Cut the leeks into quarters lengthwise.  Put them in a very large bowl of cold water and separate them into individual leaves.  Rinse very well, draining the water and refilling the bowl as necessary.  Leeks can be very sandy and you need to be sure to clean out all the grit.  Clean very, very well.

After draining the leaks, slice them very thin.  Coat a large nonstick saute pan with olive oil.  Heat to medium.  Add leeks to pan, sprinkle with a couple healthy pinches of kosher salt (to help draw the moisture out of the leeks), and sweat until softened but not browned.  Remove leeks to a sieve or collander placed over a mixing bowl.  Place a bowl over the leeks in the sieve or collander and weight it down with a heavy can from your pantry to press the extra moisture out of the leeks.

While leeks are draining, again coat your saute pan with olive oil.  Add chopped mushrooms to pan and sprinkle with a couple healthy pinches of kosher salt to help draw the moisture out of the mushrooms.  Saute until the mushrooms are cooked through.  Add a couple healthy splashes of sherry  and several grinds of black pepper and continue cooking until all the sherry is absorbed.  Remove from heat and add the fresh thyme.

Cool the cooked mushrooms a little, then transfer to a food processor and pulse to a coarse puree.  Scrape the puree into a medium mixing bowl, add leeks, and add goat cheese.  Mix well.  Taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.   Melt the stick of butter in the microwave or in a small pan over very low heat.  Don't let the butter get hot.  Prepare a couple of baking sheets or cookie sheets by wrapping them with aluminum foil for easy cleanup later.

Lay one sheet of the phyllo on a clean work surface.  (I use my kitchen counter.  I clean it well with antibacterial wipes, then clean away any soap residue with a damp paper towel, then dry with a dry paper towel.)  Keep the rest of the phyllo covered with damp paper towels.  Using a silicone brush or a pastry brush, brush the phyllo sheet with melted butter.  Cut it lengthwise into 3 long, even strips.  Place 1 level tablespoon of the filling in a corner of one of the strips, about 1/2 inch from the top.  Fold the corner down to form a triangle.  Continue folding the triangle onto itself, across and down, until you have a neat phyllo triangle.

Two tips:  Using a "cookie scoop" makes measuring a tablespoon of filling easier.  If you've ever folded an American flag Boy Scout style, that's the technique you want to use to fold the phyllo into triangles.  It's also the same technique you used in junior high when you made little paper triangle footballs that you thumped over the student in front of you in class to "score" a touchdown.

Place the triangles on the baking sheet or cookie sheet.  Brush the top of the triangles with some of the melted butter and bake for about 20 minutes, or until browned and crisp.  Remove from oven and let cool slightly before serving.

This recipe is pretty simple, but produces an elegant little pastry.  I hope you'll give it a try.