CLASSIC AMERICAN MEAT LOAF (WITH A TWIST)

Feeds 8

Some days, there’s really no better meal than meat loaf. Deeply satisfying and meaty, full of flavor, and a great leftover, this is a classic American dish anyone can make. (Okay, vegetarians aren’t crazy about this dish.) Of course, Americans didn’t invent meat loaf. There were recipes for it in Roman cookbooks and in French cookbooks from the seventeenth century. The idea of mixing meat with spices, eggs, and some form of bread is a human idea of thrift and needing to get dinner on the table. But meat loaf is here to stay in the United States. For all his formal French culinary training and playing with food, Danny still prefers meat loaf to almost any other meal. This one, with milk-soaked gluten-free breadcrumbs and the unexpected savory ingredient of fish sauce (it doesn’t make the meat loaf taste like fish, it just makes it delicious), is the one we cook in our kitchen.

• Fat for greasing the pan
• 1½ cups gluten-free breadcrumbs
• ½ cup whole milk
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• ½ cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 pound ground beef
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce (make sure it’s gluten-free)
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• ⅓ cup ketchup

Prepare to bake. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan. Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk as you make the rest of the meat loaf.

Cook the aromatics. Set a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the onions and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and translucent, about 7 minutes. Add the parsley and basil and cook, stirring, until the scent is released, about 1 minute. Take off the heat and let cool.

Make the meat loaf. Put the pork and beef into a large bowl, gently breaking the meat into smaller parts. Add the milk-soaked breadcrumbs, the onion mixture, eggs, fish sauce, mustard, and salt. Mix everything together gently. If you mix the meat loaf too hard, and too thoroughly, it will be tough. Mix only until all the ingredients are mixed together and then stop. Turn over the meat loaf mixture to make sure there aren’t ingredients hiding at the bottom and if there are, mix them in. Put the mixture into the loaf pan. Brush the top of the meat loaf with the ketchup.

Bake the meat loaf. Bake until the meat loaf has reached an internal temperature of 155°F, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Cool for 15 minutes before serving.

Feel like playing?

If you can’t do the fish sauce, try Worcestershire sauce instead. The best meat loaf we make uses veal along with the pork and the beef, but we only make it when we can find humanely raised veal. Need I mention that this makes a mighty fine cold meat loaf sandwich the next day?