Meatloaf Embotido

I make it a point to serve rice for breakfast. Having a full breakfast meal makes us more energetic and alert in the morning.

I should prepare viands for breakfast different from our lunch and dinner food. I also consider the preparation time when I’m cooking our early morning food. I don’t want to feed my family processed and canned foods always because these are not good for our health.

Ground meat is the main ingredient in many traditional dishes from almost every culture. I always choose lean ground meat for cooking. I know that there are recipes which benefited from slightly higher fat contents, but still I want lean mince.

We can cook embotido, meat loaf, relleno, galantina, longganiza, and others from mince. I have many embotido and meat loaf recipes but I didn’t have the complete ingredients for embotido and also for the meat loaf when I cooked this food so I just combined what was available in my fridge and pantry to come out with this dish. I called this dish meatloaf embotido (lol) which tastes like longganiza (according to my son).

Ingredients:

½ kilo ground lean pork

1 bulb garlic, crushed

1 large egg

100 gm grated cheese

½ tbsp. sweet pickle relish

¼ cup bread crumbs

salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

Combine all ingredients. Grease 1 standard-sided loaf pan. Bake at 220°C for 50 minutes. Serve with catsup or gravy.

my EMPANADA adventure

Empanada is one of my favourite foods. I usually go to Joni’s cake house when I was younger to buy empanada. I also tried Red Ribbon’s empanada, Empanada Royale and Jamaican pies. I love the crispiness of the Jamaican pies. And before I forget, Ilocos empanada is on my list, too.

I read Connie and tita Celia’s entry in their blogs on how to cook empanada. They unselfishly shared their recipe and expertise. I’m really inspired by their entries to try cooking empanadas. Last Monday, I succeeded in cooking this. I combined the knowledge I learned from Connie and tita Celia.

Actually, at first I was hesitant to make the dough/crust. I asked some foodies where I can buy ready-rolled puff pastry. Many told me that I can find it at Santi’s Deli. I called up Santi’s Deli and I was shocked to learn that it’s very expensive. So, I told myself, “hey Lani, you can make the pie crust from scratch, come on try it.”

I admitted that I almost surrender making the crust. It was so hard for me. I don’t have a large working space in my kitchen to roll the pin and flatten the dough. The mess I created in my kitchen was really unbelievable (lol). But when I tasted the cooked empanada, I was very satisfied. I got the right crispiness of the crust and the filling was very tasty (I used ground pork and ground chicken). And the nice thing was even if I put it in the fridge for storing, the crust didn't lose its crispiness (yipeee). My hubby and my son loved it so much.

Ok, do you want to know if I will make/cook empanada again? My answer is Y-E-S. As long as my family loves what I cook, I will always do it for them.