Bison, Quinoa, Plum Sauce, and First Flan

Bison Meatloaf

Awhile back Sally's Mum brought us two 20 oz packages of ground bison. The first one went into a Bison Pot Pie that I reported to you six weeks or so back. This package will make Bison Meatloaf, my own recipe.

Bison Meatloaf with fresh green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy

20 oz Ground Bison

1 large Shallot, diced

1/4= Sweet Onion, diced

1 can Ro*Teltm, Chili Fixins

8 0z Mushrooms chopped/sliced

1 cup uncooked Steel Cut Oatmeal

2 strips uncooked Bacon, cut to fit

S&P TT

Optional – Sweet Chili Sauce

Pre-heat oven to 350F

Combine the ingredients in a mixing bowl, and transfer to a loaf pan and shape the meatloaf. As a kid, I thought that that deep rectangular pan was called a “loaf pan” because that's what my Mom made meatloaf in. Imagine my surprise when I saw someone bake a loaf of bread in the meatloaf pan!!

Like my Mom, I still press a groove into the top of the meatloaf and pour some sweet chili sauce into the groove. Mom's chili sauce was home made, and I've lost the recipe. These days I use Frank's Red Hot brand Sweet Chili Sauce.

Bake the meatloaf 45-60 minutes; do not overcook, or you'll have a rectangular hockey puck!

The beauty of a bison meatloaf is that it is 97% fat free, and you won't find your finished loaf floating in a pool of grease. The disadvantage of a bison meatloaf is that it may not contain enough fat to cook properly. I compromised by topping the loaf with bacon which, as it cooks, will work its way into the ground meat and add just a hint of flavor as well as some fat to keep things from being too dry.

Quinoa with Spinach & Goat Cheese

Is this a salad? Or a side dish? You decide! Either way this is pretty tasty stuff!

3/4cup Quinoa

1-1/2 cup Water

4 cups Baby Spinach

4 cloves Garlic, minced

4 Tbsp Goat Cheese

1 Tbsp EVOO

1/2tsp Cracked Black Pepper

Boil the water, add the pepper and quinoa. Cover, reduce heat to low and cook 16 minutes. Fluff with a fork, re-cover and let it rest for 10 minutes.

In a large pan, saute the garlic with the oil – don't let it burn! Add the spinach to the garlic and saute a minute or three until wilted. Toss everything together in a large mixing bowl, divide between plates, and top with the goat cheese.

I served this with “Greek” Chicken – breasts spiced with Cavendar'stm and Ultimate Garlic Insanitytm, a salt-free spice blend from Auntie Arwen's Spices www. auntiearwenspices.com.

Plum Sauce Test

I had a fabulous lamb dish called Plum Lamb at the Persian restaurant Bha Bha in Naples last weekend, when we went to see The Merchant of Venice, and I want to try re-creating the dish for Easter. This was my first attempt to re-create the sauce, which is the critical ingredient for the dish – anyone can slow roast lamb!

16 Dried Plums (with stones) soaked overnight in water

1/2 tsp Cumin

Water

1/2 tsp Turmeric

5 Black Cardamon pods

1 Beefsteak tomato, chopped

½ white Onion, diced

Balsamic Vinegar

Worchestershire Sauce

Dried plums are the hard to find ingredient. These are not your average “American” prunes, but a “sour plum” which has been dried/salted. I found them, not at the local Mediterranean market, but at the Chinese market next door.

Simmer everything in a couple cups of the soaking liquid for 30 minutes, remove pits from plums and remove the cardamon pods. Puree everything else, and return it to the pot. Adjust the sweet/tart ratio with balsamic vinegar and Worchestershire sauce. I discovered that too much balsamic will leave a harsh vinegar-y taste which you don't want. If you need to thicken the sauce, add a dusting of Wondratm as desired.

Plum Meatballs and Yam Coins with Rice

The test turned out really successful, except for a slight excess of vinegar. Silky smooth, rich and just plain unctuous! More Worchestershire next Sunday!

Flan

I've eaten my share of Flan over the years, but never made it. Now I wonder whyWe were gifted with all these wonderful eggs, and I needed to use a good number of them. Flan is/was the perfect solution.

This looks like a long complicated recipe, but it isn't. Trust me it's worth the effort to read ahead!

The quintessential Latin dessert, this alternative to cheesecake is not only creamy and oh so tasty, but it's pretty darn simple to make too. I scouted a bunch of recipes and came to my own recipe and techniques that make this a snap!

Caramel Topping

Flan invariably has a caramel upsidedown topping that needs to be made, applied to the baking vessel (mold), and allowed to cool before the eggy custard is poured into the pan prior to baking. It's a critical facet of the dessert, and if you make it the older way and don't pay attention – remarkably easy to burn and ruin.

The old way was a pan, some sugar, some water and boil until the sugar melts and caramelizes without burning. The easy way is a microwave safe container:

Put 1 cup of sugar and 1/3 cup of water in the container – a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup is the perfect size. Stir things up a bit, and start microwaving for 5 minutes. When you pass the 4 minute mark keep a real close eye on the color of the liquid and stop immediately when the “right” color is reached. Depending on your microwave, you may have to go longer – in 30 second increments, to get the right color. Mine took about 7 minutes and 30 seconds. Watch closely and stop the second you get that dark amber color!

When you've got the magic color, pour the caramel into your mold pan and swirl it around to coat the bottom. The caramel has to harden before you can proceed further – plan on at least half an hour in the fridge for that to happen.

Looking at a bunch of recipes it's really hard to tell what size pan you need. I used a 1.5 quart Pyrex “pie” dish, and 5 silicon ramekins (I had to make a second batch of caramel for the ramekins). One site had the perfect solution – use a bundt pan. It's deep enough for the most massive flan, and will yield a much more decorative final product. Make sure you get that caramel up on the bundt pan's stem as well! That's what I'm using next time! Don't try to use springform pans for this – they just aren't made to be leakproof!

The Custard

We've been blessed with a bunch of eggs from one of Sally's work friends, but they are smaller than the average Large commercial egg – more like a medium. The Puerto Rican version of flan is much denser than flan from other Latin countries. Where others use 6 eggs, the folks from PR used 8 or even 10 eggs, and I did likewise. Here's my basic recipe for the custard:

1 cup Sugar
8 large Eggs
1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 13-oz cans evaporated milk
1 Tbsp Vanilla extract

1 Tbsp Lemon extract

Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare a bain-marie (large, deep pan to hold a water bath around the mold dish). The hot water will go only half way up the side of the mold dish. Don't put the water in yet. 

Put the custard ingredients in a blender and process until well blended, but don't over mix. Pour the custard into the caramelized mold, cover with foil, and sit in the baño de María (Spanish for  bain-marie or water bath). Then pour hot water into the baño and carefully place in the oven for 1 to 1-1/2 hours until and a toothpick comes out clean.

When it came time to serve, I ran a knife around the edge, inverted the Flan onto a plate, as per directions, and removed the mold. Perfection!

The extra mini's that I made were slightly overcooked (I cooked the pan of those for 45 minutes during the same hour as the main flan). I ended up with a hardened disk of caramel on top of each mini, and not much runny sauce, so be warned to lessen the cooking time if you plan on making a batch of mini-Flan.