April
19
Tags
Filipino Meatloaf on Sourdough Rolls
Thanks, Mom — your homecooked meals gave me the idea for this yummy sandwich!
This is a riff on my mother Vicki’s delicious embutido — a Filipino ground pork meatloaf with hard-boiled eggs and green olives layered inside it.
Some Pinoys use raisins, but I really hate raisins in meat, and luckily, Mom never added them. My sister and I used to eat the embutido with a little Heinz ketchup, and for this sandwich, I upgraded to another Filipino staple, banana catsup. It’s a ketchup normally made with bananas instead of tomatoes, but I went for the lazy version, boiling a banana in its skin, peeling it, and puréeing it with a jar of Sir Kensington spiced ketchup ($5.99 at Whole Foods).
That way, it wasn’t super banana-y, and it still had Filipino flair.
EMBUTIDO
3 hardboiled eggs
2 lbs. ground pork
1/4 c. sweet relish
1/2 c. fresh bread crumbs — I used a Filipino dinner roll called Pan de Sal — soaked in 1/4 c. low sodium organic chicken broth
2 beaten eggs
1 t. salt
1 t. freshly ground pepper
2 T. unsalted butter, melted
Organic green olives stuffed with red peppers — try to get a brand that’s not too salty, like Mediterranean Organic
1 banana
1 jar of Sir Kensington spiced ketchup
Butterhead lettuce
Cost: About $24.50 to serve 5 people before adding in the price of sourdough rolls, if you’re buying them. If you make the bread, use the recipe from my Duck Fat-Roasted Cauliflower Steak sourdough rolls, minus the lavender. That adds another $3.25 or so.
Preheat oven to 350˚.
I hard-boiled the eggs first, using the super simple, super excellent L.A. Times method, which guarantees a creamy-textured white and an orange-yellow yolk, not a mealy, green-tinged one. Here’s how you do it:
I put the eggs in a single layer in a sauce pot and poured enough water in to cover the eggs. After bring it to a boil, I cooked the eggs for just 1 minute.
I immediately removed the pot from the heat and left the eggs in the hot pot water for 15 minutes. Then I scooped the eggs out with a slotted spoon and placed them in a bowl of ice water for super easy peeling. Genius! (I forgot to take a photo of the eggs, but trust me, they looked fabulous.)
For the embutido, I tore the Pan de Sal into chunks and threw it into the food processor.
I soaked it in the chicken broth, and then mixed that with all the other ingredients except the olives and the melted butter in a bowl until everything was fully incorporated.
Instead of baking the embutido directly on aluminum foil, I put a Silpat sheet in between the foil and the meat. You don’t really need butter on Silpat, because it’s nonstick on its own, but I wanted a nice buttery flavor on the outside of the loaf.
After scooping 1/2 the meat mixture onto the buttered surface, I layered the 3 eggs and 8 olives in the middle, nestling them gently into place. Then I spooned the remaining meat mixture on top, shaping it into a cohesive loaf. Then I rolled the Silpat over the top and closed the foil around everything on all sides, and put it in a baking pan and baked it for 90 minutes.
I actually made the loaf the night before, and then fried slices of it in butter right before serving it on a leaf or two of butterhead lettuce on the sourdough rolls, and then spooning a bunch of banana catsup on top.
New mom Jeanie (with her newborn son, Jeremiah) was my Filipino Meatloaf Sandwich Surprisee.
“This is so good!” said Jeanie. “The bread is good and the meatloaf has a lot of flavor. The hard-boiled eggs are interesting with it. Ooh, I just got a nice bite with the olive in it. And the banana ketchup is spicy. But I can’t taste the banana in it.”
“That’s a good thing,” I said. “I tested a batch at home where I used more banana and it kinda overwhelmed the sandwich.”
“I’ll definitely have another one,” said Jeanie, who asked for two leaves of butterhead and extra banana catsup. “I like it better with extra lettuce and more of the catsup.”
I left more meatloaf and one sourdough roll for Jeanie and her husband Ryan.
“We finished the meatloaf yesterday, and it was still good,” Jeanie posted on the Sandwich Surprise Facebook page. “Ryan especially loved the bite with the olive. And we really enjoyed the meatloaf and the ketchup combo together. THANK YOU for the delicious gift!”
I’m curious what Mom — and you — will say about the banana catsup. I know it sounds ewww, but it’s truly tasty. Let me know what you think.
Also, I posted critiques of my Mofongo on Pork Rind Rolls sandwich on my Facebook page, so check those out!
Want a Sandwich Surprise of your own? Just follow my Twitter account, like my Facebook page and/or subscribe to my blog here, and then comment, post or tweet to me. If I’m in your area (as you can see, I do road trip it sometimes) or if you’re taking a trip to New York City, you could be surprised with a sammy soon!
sandwich surprise! 