Meat and Three Veg

From Ngaire’s journal, 16th May 1951
Mr Bradley and his assistant came and installed a point in the pantry for the refrigerator which up to the present has been plugged into the cooker. I went to Choir Practice this evening.”

This is a bit odd, because in 1955 (four years later to the day which surely can’t be a coincidence), Ngaire wrote that it was ‘lovely to have the refrigerator’.  I assumed she was celebrating the arrival of refrigeration, but it must have been that the novelty still hadn’t worn off .

Whitegoods aside, the thing I really enjoyed about this entry was that instead of ‘the electrician’ or Reg, Jack, Tom or Bill, it was Mr Bradley and his assistant. I hope they wore grey dust coats with their names embroidered on the pocket.
By the way (and please correct me if I’m wrong), I think powerpoints on cookers was an NZ thing.

I’ve been using my cooker to turn out Ngaire’s spectacularly good  (and very thrifty) Roll-up Meat Loaf. It made meat-and-three-veg night quite exciting, and it’ll be meatloaf and tomato sauce sandwiches for the next couple of days.

Roll-up meat loaf

1 ½ lbs (700 gms)  minced beef, ½ lb (350 gms) minced pork, 1 onion and 2 stalks celery  and a small handful fresh herbs (parsley, sage, thyme) all chopped finely.
¼ tsp dry mustard, salt and pepper.
4 slices bread made into breadcrumbs, ½ cup milk, 2 eggs lightly beaten, 1 tbs Worcester Sauce.
3 or 4 large rashers of bacon

Soak the breadcrumbs in milk and mix well.  Add beaten egg and Worcester Sauce.  Combine meat, vegetables and herbs then mix through the bread mixture (I gave my 13 year old a pair of gloves and he was very happy to do this).

Turn the mixture out onto a large sheet of baking paper and shape into a rectangle (should be about 1.5  cm thick).  Spread with the stuffing and roll like a sponge roll.  Top with the bacon rashes and bake at 350°F (180°C) for 45 minutes.

For the stuffing

6 – 8 slices of stale bread (I like using a grainy or rye loaf), 1 small onion roughly chopped, 1 ½ tbsp finely chopped fresh herbs, ground pepper, about ¼ cup melted butter. I also added dried cranberries to mine because I had some in the pantry.

Put everything except the butter in the food processor and whizz until breadcrumbs are fine.  Add enough melted butter to combine the mixture (needs to hold together but not be soggy).