Ration Recipe: Upside-Down Meat Loaves
It was time to try another recipe! I put this recipe on my June menu (I'm trying to be good about menu planning...), but I decided to try it today. I didn't have all the exact ingredients, but I made it work, which I think is the point about cooking while on rations.
I took this recipe for Upside-Down Meat Loaves from Meta Given's The Modern Family Cook Book published in 1942. I really love this cookbook, but I'll save my waxing poetical for a special post about it.
This is actually just your standard meatloaf recipe, except you bake it in a muffin tin and there are apricots involved. Mixing fruit with meat isn't uncommon, but this was an interesting pairing, because in my experience, apricots can be kind of tart.
The recipe has you soak 10 dried apricots, but I didn't have any, so I just reconstituted some freeze-dried apricots I had. I think some fresh, dried apricots would have worked better, because you use them whole and they tend to be sweeter/sweetened. Just like Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, you put the apricot on the bottom and the meatloaf mixture on top. Then you bake it, invert the pan, and there you have it!
I really should have greased the muffin cups, because they didn't come out very easily, but oh well!
The meatloaf itself was nice, the apricots were a weird, tart counterpoint which I thought the fat in the meat would mellow, but it didn't. In the end, it just tasted odd. Nothing a little ketchup and mustard couldn't solve! haha!
I'm going to have to try it again using the single dried apricot on the top of each mini-meatloaf. Also, I'd like to try the meatloaf the recipe mentions ("Meatloaf No. 1") which uses a meat mixture of pork, beef, and veal. Interesting! I used the recipe for "Meatloaf No. 2" which is much more standard - ground beef, egg, bread crumbs, milk, salt, & pepper.
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| Upside-Down Meat Loaf! |
