A Vintage French Wine and Meatloaf
In this year of pandemic self-isolation, those of us who love cooking and enjoy a bottle of fine wine with a meal have become ever more epicurious. Family recipes are being prepared again, especially during the holidays, along with new dishes from sources like The New York Times weekly food columns by Sam Sifton. Closer to home, wonderful recipes are being shared on The Common Ingredient—a food website/blog started in March to help raise donations through three local non-profits helping those in our community affected by food insecurity.
One of the delicious comfort food submissions on the Common Ingredient website is my mother Alice’s classic meatloaf recipe. Since Kit's favorite meal on the planet is meatloaf, I’ve had fun over the 40 plus years that we’ve been together enhancing the original. It’s very moist due to the addition of cottage cheese and gets its subtle bite from the addition of horseradish. Not only is it great served with garlic mashed potatoes, green peas, and apple sauce, it’s terrific in a sandwich the next day!
Alice’s classic meatloaf | Ingredients:
1 ¼ pounds lean ground beef or sirloin
1 egg
Half of a small onion (chopped)
Half of a green or sweet red bell pepper (I prefer red bell peppers)
2 slices of whole wheat or multigrain bread (or equivalent breadcrumbs)
1/4-1/2 cup ketchup (suit your own taste) or barbecue sauce
2 tablespoons cottage cheese
1 tablespoon horseradish (more if you like more bite)
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
Recently, longtime friends Nick and Diane Peckham emailed that they would like to bring us a dish they were planning to prepare. I made garlic mashed potatoes and an insalata caprese (slices of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil drizzled with olive oil) and decided it was time to uncork a very special bottle of wine—a 1997 bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape—that has been in our pantry for as long as the four of us have been friends. Like us, it matured at Breakfast Creek, moved briefly with us to New Mexico, and boomeranged back to Missouri where it has been aging for the past fifteen years.
All this time, the bottle rested, waiting for just the right occasion to warrant its uncorking. That almost happened during this year’s One Read month when the community read a “Gentleman in Moscow” by author Amor Towles. On September 3, Kit and I hosted a Zoom session on Towles marvelous book from the Daniel Boone Regional library’s studio. To spark the conversation, I introduced a little ‘theater’ built around my 1997 bottle of La Bernardine Châteauneuf-du-Pape—a renowned French appellation grown in the Rhone Valley—that weaves its way through the story. In the book, the Soviets remove the labels from all the red wines in the Metropol Hotel’s famed wine cellar after declaring that all of the wines should be equal. Count Rostov—an aristocrat quarantined for life in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel following the Russian Revolution—is horrified. But given entry to the wine cellar, the count who knows his wines is able to identify the Châteauneuf-du-Pape by feeling the embossed papal insignia on the traditionally heavy glass bottle--a pair of crossed keys over the 14th century papal insignia of Pope Clement V who relocated the papacy to a castle in the town of Avignon, France.
When I told a friend in Los Angeles that Kit and I were planning to open the bottle and toast this book that we so love, she told me to prepare to be disappointed. Because the bottle had been moved to so many locations without being stored at a controlled temperature, she was certain it would taste like vinegar. Still, I remained hopeful that paired with just the right entrée and shared with just the right couple, it would be magnificent.
Enter the Peckhams with what ended up being a perfect coming together of friends, food, and wine. To our delight, Nick and Diane had found my mother Alice’s meatloaf recipe on the Common Ingredient website and prepared it for the four of us. While I was in the kitchen plating the meatloaf and garlic mashed potatoes that I’d prepared, Kit poured glasses of the earthy red wine that he’d uncorked to breathe earlier. All I can say is, “Boy howdy! C’est magnifique!”
From socially distant opposite ends of our nine-foot harvest table, we marveled at the fact that like Kit and me, the grand bottle of wine had survived being moved from Missouri to the Southwest and back just fine. We also talked about this challenging pandemic year that has kept us physically apart from friends and family.
As the meal and bottle of wine came to an end, the conversation turned to our decision to move back to California. At the novel’s conclusion, Count Rostov knows the time has come to leave the life and friends who’d become family during his decades-long confinement at the Metropol Hotel and return to the region where he’d grown up. For Kit and me, leaving Missouri will be difficult, but we both feel in our hearts that the new chapter we are setting in motion is the right move.