Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen:
The Strange Case of the
Pan Fried Meatloaf

"People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?... The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry." MFK Fisher from "The Gastronomical Me"













When the hunger strikes, as Fisher plays it above, and the deadline for the produced meal is fast approaching -- or to be a bit behind schedule -- there are some hopeful safeguards against failure.  These safeguards come in many forms and by degrees, but there are some real standards: the best one is that you have done some planning from the day before or that morning.  A daily trip to the grocery store should bring back to your refrigerator all of the necessary items for even the simplest recipe.  If the meal is complex, let's hope the planning has been as complex and that the proper ingredients are

clean, dry, refrigerated pre-prepared if necessary, and that the oven has been preheat.  Then, for better or worse, there are the only vaguely imagined recipes that will, you already know by the late afternoon, maybe or may not work perfectly, but it will be attempted because the alternative will be bread and braunschweiger, which only approximately 1 percent of the population of your family can even look at...from a distance.  My strange case of the pan fried meatloaf was a combination of vague

intentions, reduced time, but eventual luck.  I had foresight to defrost the package of four ground turkey patties.  These could be used as simply as to fry and serve, maybe bread, maybe applesauce, but at least there would be the patty.  In the pantry I then found an ancient packet of meatloaf seasoning -- yes, this would liven it up a little. With a simple dash of ketchup over the top of the tucked loaf, and there would a version of the one of the more venerated meals of all time: the meatloaf, or scrapple as it might have known in previous times, which had always consisted of some form of meat with a binding agent and hopefully, where available, seasoning.  The Argentinians called it Pan de carne and filled it with ham, cheese and carrots; the Austrians called it Faschierter Braten, not filled, but wrapped in ham before baking; the Cubans made pulpeta and stuffed theirs with hard boiled eggs; the Czechs made sekana, stuffed by gherkins and wienerwurst. The idea dawns on you that meatloaf had been ancient version of the "5:00 Hustle" and one could easily envision large farm families of 5, 10, 15, looking around the stone-walled kitchen for their own version of gourmet items of offal, onion bulbs, and brown eggs, perhaps a lean strip of unused pork, squashing it all together and tossing it over the flame. The result would have been anything but alluring visually, but fatty vegetableized loaf would have packed a calorie load that might have lasted until the same time

next day.  Conditions here, safe to say, not as dire as all that, but the need for the hustle and a calorie load still with us.  Other products in my kitchen that I could raise to the level of meatloaf were shallots, orange grape-size tomatoes, and the egg.  I gooped all of the components together and let sit in the refrigerator to form. Our appointment went a little late; the cross town to school, then back home was trying to drive through ferry of parked cars and there tends to be two fire engines squealing past side streets per trip in the city.  Meatloaf takes at least 30 minutes to bake, sometimes more depending on the thickness of the loaf. What to do, what to do?  Off to the ceremony in 45 minutes. I took a cake spatula and duly cut the loaf into two inch slices and tossed them onto the frying pan in coconut oil (important fat content for our purposes), and let them sizzle, all four sides, for at least 8 minutes per side.  The outside became beautifully marbled, the shallots began waft and the tomatoes to soften.  Most importantly though -- and this is what separated the loaf from the standard burger, other than shape -- was the meatloaf seasoning, full of dried onions and other red meat compliments.  On the plate the large cubes of meatloaf looked just a little bit more appetizing than the standard-fare meatloaf, browned on all sides, juices rising, and ketchup along the side. This strange case finished with the surprising revelation that this was one of the best pieces of meat that we had ever had. It was turkey, which can tend to be a little less flavorful than a good bunch of red meat, but the meatloaf seasoning did well to balance this out.  The shallots and tomatoes inside the meat, bound by an egg, created a level of texture usually not had in a standard burger.  Most important...finished in 15 minutes and back on the road again, through the ferry load of cars on the street, past the six firetrucks no doubt rushing back to the station for a bite of meat loaf.