Shepherd's Meatloaf with Hominy, Ground Lamb and Mashed Potatoes

This is a rustic meatloaf, for what could be more country than hominy. And if lamb makes you nervous, if you think it too gamy, you could substitute ground beef, and I believe it would be just as good. What makes this meatloaf different is the pureed white hominy and buttered mashed potatoes added to the meat to keep it moist. No soaked crackers or bread crumbs here. Half the mashed potatoes go into the loaf, half are a savory frosting, if you will, on top of the meatloaf.

I used ground lamb because I now live in the Country of Economy, and was able to pick up 3 one pound packages of ground lamb for $3.50 apiece, sold as Kroger's Manager's Specials. On my way home from night shifts worked at the clinic I stop at both Krogers I pass ,looking for bargains.
And I usually find them.


Here is my recipe:


1 lb ground lamb or ground beef

1 medium yellow onion, diced and sauteed till golden and flavored with salt, a little pepper, and a few shakes of cumin.

3 cloves of garlic, diced or pressed

2 eggs

2 cups of buttery, creamy mashed potatoes. 1 cup for the loaf, 1 cup to spread on top.

1 1/2 cups hominy, white or yellow, pureed in the food processor.

Salt to sweat the onions, and to taste.

A little pepper



Combine the onions, the garlic, the mashed potatoes, and the hominy. Taste and adjust seasoning. Then add the ground meat and the eggs and mix well. Put the mixture in a bread loaf pan. Then spread the 1 cup of mashed potatoes over the top, as pictured. Cover the pan with foil, and bake at 350 for 50 minutes. Then remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes, until it bubbles. You may want to place the loaf pan on a cookie sheet in case a little bubbles out. No need to dirty up the oven.

This is my own original recipe.

"The Best Vegetable that Never Gets Eaten."

That is what Mark Bittman says about the parsnip in his "How to Cook Everything". I have not eaten parsnips since I left New England, and that was thirty years ago. I believe they were roasted, but who fed them to me or under what circumstances will remain one of memory's mysteries.

I bought three of them yesterday, thinking they might be useful in the Experimental Kitchen. Parsnip Pie? Parsnip Soup? What did all my cookbooks recommend? What did Elizabeth David say?

Very little, other than that they were useful in small amounts in a pot au feu. Some cookbooks were oblivious, as though parsnips were invisible or non-existent. Some remarked that parsnips were popular during the Renaissance, but had been superseded in modern times by the mighty potato. Mark Bittman said that any recipe with carrots could substitute parsnips.

And so I added parsnips to my favorite carrot recipe, and cooked them right in the same pan with the carrots. I peeled them and cut them up( See the photo), and put them in a large saute pan. I added 15 ounces of chicken broth, 3/4 stick of butter, some Herbs de Provence, some salt and pepper. I turned up the heat, let the broth boil for a minute or two, the turned it to medium low. I put a lid on the pan. But slightly askew, for the plan was to steam the liquid out and reduce it as the vegetables softened and sweetened. An hour sufficed for that, and what was left was a noble side dish not seen on just anyone's table. An accompaniment to the Shepherd's meatloaf I cooked yesterday-

Hominy Cakes

After making a Shepherd's meatloaf yesterday- a meatloaf of ground lamb, hominy, and mashed potatoes- I had enough pureed white hominy left to make hominy cakes, which as you can see in the photo, resemble latkes. They are tasty, and good dressed with maple syrup or with simple catsup.
One need only mix 1 1/2 cups of pureed white hominy with one diced and sauteed white onion, 1 1/2 cups of Panko crumbs, one egg, and some sea and celery salt and garlic powder or diced garlic to taste . Then fry it in oil in a non-stick pan, browning it on both sides as one would a latke.

I pureed the hominy in my food processor. You can find white hominy in most grocery stores, but only in 15 oz cans. For bigger cans, and for economy ,I buy the La Preferida brand from K&S World Market over on Charlotte Pike. It is in the Hispanic foods section, for our Latin neighbors- now one out of ten Nashvillians- love hominy as much as Southerners do.


The recipe for the wonderful Shepherd's Meatloaf- a twist on Shepherd's Pie, will go up on this site in the next day or two. It is my recipe.

Horse Country

The dogs and I walked around the Steeplechase course at Percy Warner Park today. It is always a fine thing to do on a sunny winter Saturday, for one sees other dog walkers, horses and their riders heading out onto the bridle trails, young people with camcorders making home movies, rabbits, deer herds, flocks of bluebirds, Red-Tailed Hawks, and the General Public just happy to be wandering about in blissful aimlessness. And one can always count on someone playing around and ringing the racing bell, seen in one of my photos.

A few years back some of the Entitled tried to ban the public from the course. They did not succeed, for whether one lives in a 3 million dollar mansion on Jackson Boulevard or a tiny hovel off Charlotte surrounded by chain link confining two pit bulls in the backyard, property taxes are property taxes, and they pay for the park.


Today, as I usually do when I visit the course, I found evidence of one of those small but necessary murders that keep living things alive. Tufts of hair, probably rabbit hair, scattered on the ground near the stone bleachers. I do not doubt a red-tailed hawk did it. Another time, at the Sports Plex across Old Hickory Boulevard, I saw blood and feathers on the top metal bar of a soccer goal net. A kestrel was there. He hunts both sides of the road leaving bluebird and killdeer feathers to blow away on the wind.

There were brooks running through the field edges today. Water in winter, but never in summer, for then only the rivers run in Middle Tennessee.

And lastly, a sign honoring the founder of the Pony Club,hand crafted by someone who could not spell.

Whoops-Correcting an Error

The pork loin recipe I posted yesterday called for a 1 pound pork loin. This was in error. I used a 2.77 lb loin and I have corrected it in the post.

"The best pork loin I have ever eaten".

So said one of the women I worked with when I brought this to my very last potluck.I had brought my best shrimp dishes as well as a one pound pork tenderloin flavored with citrus, mustard, and pineapple bourbon glaze. I cooked it again yesterday with a pork loin from Kroger- a "Manager's Special" marked down to seven dollars.

The Pineapple Bourbon Glaze came out of a bottle. It was one of a line of sauces and glazes from a Texas company called Fischer and Wieser. I buy their sauces at Publix. I do not know how widely they distribute in stores, but if a UPS truck can find your driveway, you can order them on-line at Jelly.com. I cannot cook without these sauces. Their Sweet and Savory Onion Glaze does wonderful things to sauteed shrimp, and all their sauces have an affinity for pork. They are not dirt cheap. A bottle costs around $8.00. But some tastes are priceless.

Having said this I will add that I do not think a clever or enterprising cook, or any one with a lick of sense, would have any trouble making their own pineapple bourbon glaze. Simply combine some crushed pineapple, some brown sugar, a little bourbon, and some lime juice in a blender. I trust you are smart enough to come up with a substitute. Make about half a cup- a quarter cup to mix with the marinade, the other quarter to baste with.

You need a 2-3 pound pork loin, cut in quarters.

1 cup of Bitter orange marinade. Iberia makes a good one, for sale in the Hispanic food aisle.

2 tablespoons of Creole or Dijon Mustard

Sea salt

1/2 to 3/4 cup Pineapple Bourbon Glaze


Put the loin quarters in a large zip lock bag. Mix the Orange marinade, half the pineapple glaze, and the mustard. Blend well, the add to the zip lock bag. Shake well and coat the meat, the put in the refrigerator overnight.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the pork loin from the marinade,then place the quarters in a roasting pan. Salt them, then baste with the pineapple glaze ,into which you will have stirred another heaping tablespoon of mustard. Reserve some glaze for two more bastings.


Cover the meat with foil and roast for 45 minutes. Then uncover and baste with glaze. Bake another 15 minutes, then remove the foil. Let roast another 20 minutes after basting again with the rest of the glaze. Keep a close eye on the roast to make sure you do not overcook and let it dry out. Cooking times may vary, and you must be a vigilant cook who knows how to pay attention. Good food does not cook itself.

This will be tender and succulent. I made this to accompany it-

Sliced potatoes coated with olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt, and baked in a dish with pieces of pancetta, some crumbled rosemary and half a dozen diced up garlic cloves.

Whimsical Retro and a Maple Creme

Open any of the old timey Southern Junior League cookbooks to the salad section, and you will get a primer on molded salads composed in a dozen permutations and all from a plain gelatin packet. I experimented a few posts back with a pomegranate juice mold, and to my delight it was a success. So I decided to try again, this time with cream and maple syrup. Another success, with the sweet taste of maple and the texture of a creamy tapioca. This will be on the menu for lunch at Miss Betsy's Imaginary Tearoom. I would serve it in on a bed of orange rounds garnished with mint leaves, and I would pour a dollop more of maple syrup on top.


I would have thought that nostalgia and tradition would have made these retro salads sacrosanct, but I was disabused of this idea when I discussed my experiments with gelatin with a friend who was raised in Milledgeville, in the heart of Georgia.

"Yuck" she said. Her mother made a pistachio mold for the Sunday after meeting lunch, and my friend, thinking of it, recalled adolescent days, tedious church services, and who knows what other deep and private associations that can ruin the appetite. I understand this. I cannot eat oatmeal . I smell it, and I see it burnt on the bottom of a large pot sitting in the sink of a drafty New Hampshire kitchen heated by a wood stove. Oatmeal every day. Served by my mother, with the pot cleaned by 12 year old me. Nor can I eat a combination of ground beef, tomato sauce, and green beans cooked in a crock pot, for it was another daily meal from two years of my youth when my family was temporarily poor and my only two dresses were handmade. Not every food memory is pleasant or benign-


If you want to make a maple creme use the standard Knox gelatin proportions:


4 envelopes of unflavored gelatin

1 cup cold half and half held in a separate bowl.

3 cups half and half, heated to boiling

1/2 cup maple syrup, more or less, depending on how sweet you want your creme to be. Taste and decide.


Heat the 3 cups of half and half to just boiling, then sprinkle gelatin over the cold 1/2 maple syrup mixture and let stand 1 minute. Then add hot half and half and stir until gelatin dissolves (5 minutes). Pour into one big mold or several small ones and chill in the refrigerator for several hours until set. Un- mold cremes by running a little hot water over the bottom of the mold.