Birthday Special 2021 and 2020 in Review

Another year means another birthday cake! For this year's cake, I made Molly Yeh's sprinkle cake, which is meant to be a homemade version of the classic "funfetti" boxed cake. For the decoration, I continued with the sprinkle theme for a simple design. Overall, the cake came out well, but cake baking continues to be stressful for me in a way regular cooking has never been. I have resolved to make more cakes throughout the year to get some more practice in. Happy birthday Ariel, and may that be an ongoing gift to you.

For dinner, I made pan-roasted lamb chops with a quick pan sauce. We had roasted butternut squash and rice on the side. Although it was a delicious meal, we look forward being able to celebrate with others next year. In last year's birthday post, I mentioned my hope that it would be the first of many big dinners around our table. Of course, 2020 had other plans and that hasn't happened yet. 

I'll take the rest of this post to look back at 2020 and take stock of what was surely one of the strangest years of my lifetime.

Shrimp Noodle Bowls

About a year on from the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Hubei, our lives continue to be dominated by the pandemic. Ariel and I have maintained our own safety protocols, which include contactless pickup of groceries about every two weeks. It's important as ever to plan for meals which lack the freshest of produce. The noodle bowls in today's post were a recent invention of mine, intended as an easy lunch that uses up odds and ends with a long shelf life. When Ariel asked me to make them again, I knew it was time for a blog post!

The noodles I used here are thin rice noodles called Xinzhu mifen (新竹米粉), which originate in the Taiwanese city of Hsinchu. I have only used these in one other recipe (minced pigeon), where they are just a fried topping and not the main event. Being so thin, they don't need to be parboiled and only need to soak for a few minutes to be ready to eat. All the vegetables I used have a long shelf life, and the shrimp can be defrosted just before cooking. This is the kind of dish with infinite variations depending on what is on hand. Scallions are a nice addition if available, but don't hold up quite as well as carrots and regular onions. The runny egg on top was Ariel's idea. While I have labeled it "optional," it's a great addition which pulls the whole thing together. This recipe makes enough for two bowls.

Meatloaf

Community and church cookbooks are remarkable historical artifacts to those interested in the evolution of food and the preservation of our culinary heritage. As far as No Free Lunch is concerned, such books were instrumental in recreating party salad and klub. My grandmother, Irene Storey, was a pillar of her Twin Cities church and contributed numerous recipes to their cookbook. One of these was meatloaf. While it's not a dish I particularly remember her making, we had meatloaf somewhat regularly when I was a kid, and it was also in regular rotation at the business school cafeteria at Carnegie Mellon. It's safe to say it's a comfort food for many people all over the United States.

As a true American classic, there is tremendous variation in meatloaf recipes. For my version, I wanted to stay true to the structure of the fairly basic church version while incorporating ideas from more modern recipes. I consulted my usual group of online sources, including Kenji, Alton Brown, Adam Ragusea, and Elise Bauer. Typical meatloaf recipes do have a lot in common: about 2 pounds of meat, some kind of vegetables, and texture modifiers including eggs, breadcrumbs, and milk. Ketchup-based toppings are also a frequent addition. The unique features of this recipe, retained from the church cookbook, are the Worcestershire sauce and an additional egg not present in most I've seen. The main change I made is adding more vegetables and cooking them before folding into the meat. The classic meat blend consists of beef, pork, and veal, similar to a traditional meatball. As veal is hard to find these days, I did a 50/50 blend of beef and pork, which is also what I use for hotdish. There's a lot of room for experimentation with different meat blends. 

The cooking method also varies quite a bit from recipe to recipe. Adam Ragusea hand-forms the loaf. Elise Bauer bakes it in a loaf pan. Alton Brown uses the loaf pan to form the meatloaf, but flips it out for cooking. Kenji cooks it in the loaf pan for a while, then flips it out to finish. As the church cookbook is silent on this issue, I went with Alton's method. This allows us to get a nicely formed loaf while also maximizing surface area on which to spread the ketchup topping. I used a 9x5 inch silicone loaf pan (I think we got it at Aldi), and the meatloaf came out easily. A slightly smaller pan would also work fine, yielding a taller loaf. 

Since I had 4 pounds of meat, I made two meatloaves. I froze most of it after slicing, in preparation for busier times once classes start. The recipe given here is for one loaf, but the pictures show the doubled recipe. I made one with bacon on top and one without. The bacon adds some smokiness, but is definitely not necessary and makes the loaf a little tricky to cut. The end result of both was a tender, juicy meatloaf full of flavor. The only thing I would do differently is to put on more of the ketchup topping. There's also plenty of room for experimentation with different seasonings beyond this classic version. Mashed potatoes make a perfect accompaniment, which can be easily done on the stove while the meatloaf is in the oven.