Recipe of the week: Stuffed Veggie Meat Loaf (aka Turkey Meat Mush)

So this weekend I had the opportunity of doing some cooking with friends. I got together with my friends Alisa and Katie to make a feast for Saturday night. I love having friends who can cook and who are open to trying new things. Hooray!

Saturday, I brought a recipe for Stuffed Veggie Meat Loaf from the Natural Health website to Alisa's place for an autumn night feast. I'd never made a meat loaf before and I was drawn to the combination of meat and vegetables all in one dish! We decided that we needed a side dish to go with this, so we made a salad with cranberries, sunflower seeds, and crumbled blue cheese. (Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the results, so you'll just have to imagine the finished products).

Sounds like a lovely dinner, yes? Well, things happened during cooking prep and the recipe was sort of thrown out the window. Please consider the original meat loaf recipe:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onions
1 medium carrot, small dice
1 celery stalk, small dice
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning (a packaged blend of dried oregano, basil, and other herbs)
½ cup spinach, finely chopped
1 1/3 pounds lean ground turkey (not extra-lean)
½ cup low-fat or fat-free chicken stock
½ cup shredded Parmesan1
tablespoon ketchup (We didn't use)
1 egg, beaten
15 low-sodium crackers, crushed
½ cup chopped leeks
½ cup chopped red bell peppers
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
1 teaspoon sherry vinegar (We used Red Wine Vinegar)
1 teaspoon organic evaporated cane juice sugar (We didn't use)

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add onions, carrots, and celery, and cook until soft, 5 to 7 minutes. Add ½ teaspoon salt, garlic, Italian seasoning, and spinach; stir to combine and sauté 5 more minutes, then turn off heat.

In large bowl, mix turkey, chicken stock, cheese, ketchup, egg, and vegetable mixture. Stir in crackers, then shape into rectangular loaf on oiled baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes.

While the loaf is in the oven, heat 1 tablespoon oil in a saucepan and add leeks and peppers, sauté 5 minutes, then add tomatoes, ½ teaspoon salt, sherry vinegar, and sugar. Cover and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Blend in a food processor until smooth.

Remove loaf from oven and top with sauce. Place back in oven and cook about 10 minutes more. Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before serving.


Now, here's we went rogue! Instead of putting 1/2 cup of chicken stock in the meat mixture we (I) put in a whole 14 ounce can. Also, we (I) mixed the undrained crushed tomatoes into the meat mixture as well. Needless to say, the mixture was very runny and was not going to form into a loaf shape. We improvised though and drained some of the excess liquid, added some flour and poured the mixture into a 9 x 12 glass baking dish. We left it in for about 45 minutes.

It wasn't quite loaf consistency, but woo was it tasty! The vegetables and herbs mixed so well together. Also, since I used the tomatoes in the loaf, we had to come up with an alternative for the sauce. So we cut up a little bit of fresh tomato with red wine vinegar, the leek and red pepper. It wasn't exactly sauce-like but did make a good topping to the meat mush. All the while, we were sipping on some Malbec (may have contributed slightly to not following the recipe exactly).

After dinner we played some scrabble and then had dessert - whipped cream and berries. Yum!

It was such a fun night. Even though we messed up the original recipe, we got creative and had a fun time together. But the food turned out great anyway and only added to our fun night!