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Saturday night dinner - meat loaf w cranberry sauce topping and eggnog panna cotte
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Saturday night dinner - meat loaf w cranberry sauce topping and eggnog panna cotte Friday night's dinner was at one of those all you can eat Chinese buffets. Not yet Chinese food, not yet American food, a poor try on both, but they did have all the soft ice cream you can eat! I love that soft ice cream. If they didn't serve it, I'd find another Chinese buffet to go to that has it! I have very simple tastes! Really. My once a year or every several years trip to the Chinese buffet. My 90 year old mother loves it, my 4 year old grandkids, this was their first time there and they loved it especially the shrimp that they've never had before. One was served with the head on it and it had to be peeled of course. They didn't mind. Then my other favorite are diners. I love diner food and always look for the complete dinners for a special price, soup, salad, entree, veg, potato, and dessert. Tonight I made meat loaf. Though it was my girlfriend's turn to cook, weekends, she said she had a hankering for my meatloaf and asked me to cook. I made it with ground chicken and frozen vegetables which have been precooked in a pan adding olive oil, balsamic vinegar, worcestershire sauce, onion, garlic, spices, freshly grated nutmeg. I then mix in a bowl with the ground chicken adding chicken broth, eggs, bread crumbs. I baked for 1 1/2 hours at 350. In the last 15 minutes of cooking, I topped it with a homemade cranberry sauce that I added a little sour apple schnapps and of course sweetened with some sugar. I had a little tart, sour, and sweet going on top of the meatloaf. For dessert I made an eggnog panna cotte. I bought a very highly quality all natural eggnog and added some sugar to it, vanilla, nutmeg, and dissolved some plain gelatin in it and then slowly heated it on the stove until just bubbling. I poured it into dessert cups, let cook, and then refrigerated for several hours. It was very tasty. I took one cup and mixed some coconut flakes in it. Another cup I mixed some toasted almond slices in it and sprinkled some on top. Neither added any taste to the dish however, the toasted sliced almonds on top did it make it look nice. For appearance to the top, you could add some shaved chocolate, or even sprinkle some cocoa powder on top. Panna Cotte is a jello type dish, not a pudding type dish, thus using the gelatin. The gelatin gives the dish a light jello type effect. It must be dissolved in the milk when the milk is cold otherwise you'll end up with the gelatin in one place in the pot as a glob. After putting the packet of gelatin in, you then have to stir, and I prefer to regularly stir as the eggnog heats up, though you don't have to continuously stir it, you will have to be close to the pot. If you want a pudding type dish, you will need to add some cornstarch and more eggs. The heating, stirring, cooling, and wait time is the same. For a pudding or a panna cotte, you choose your own flavor, and it's all natural. I find it's not much longer to make a top notch, all natural pudding, than it is to make a pudding from a box. You can make a chocolate pudding, a vanilla pudding, a banana pudding, pineapple, peach, blueberry, strawberry, whatever you desire. Whatever fruit you desire. then you choose whether you want to make a panna cotte or a pudding. For wetter fruits such as pineapple and peaches, you will either have to increase the amount of the thickening ingredient, gelatin or cornstarch, or reduce the liquid of the fruit in a pan. This will increase the intensity of the flavor. And if it doesn't setup right, too little, too much, it doesn't matter, it will still be edible, all natural, flavorful, and you will have learned something for next time. |
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