A Wild Mushroom Meatloaf Recipe for the National Meatloaf Appreciation Day

The good people over at Serious Eats: A Food Blog & Community have declared coming Friday the National Meatloaf Appreciation Day. I take the 'national' here to mean 'US American', but assume that foodblogging is a borderless activity and they accept my humble Estonian submission, too. Here's a meatloaf I made few months ago. I wanted to blog about it in Spring, I did, as it was a really tasty meatloaf. However, I used some spring mushrooms that according to all Estonian, Finnish & Swedish mushroom experts classify as 'delicious eating mushrooms' (and I've got no reason to doubt the expertise of region's mushroom guidebooks), but by Northern American mushroom guides should be avoided at any cost*. I didn't want my Northern American readers to worry about me, so I didn't post about the meatloaf back then :) However, as you can use any other spring, summer or autumn mushrooms here (morels would be especially suitable because of their visual appeal), I figure the recipe is ready for revealing on this blog :)

UPDATE 19.10.2007: Click here to read the roundup over at Serious Eats!

Spring Mushroom Meatloaf
(Hakklihavorm kevadseentega)



250 grams fresh spring mushrooms (morels are perfect)
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 Tbsp fine breadcrumbs
100 ml single cream
500 grams minced meat (a mixture of pork & beef)
1 egg
2 tsp Herbes de Provence herb mixture
1.5 tsp salt
0.5 tsp black pepper
a bunch of fresh parsley or wild garlic**, chopped

** If you're using wild garlic, then you can reduce the amount of garlic in the recipe

Clean the mushrooms and leave whole, if they're not too large.
Heat the oil on a frying pan, add mushrooms and saute on a low heat for about 5 minutes, until some of the liquid evaporates.
Add the onion and garlic, saute for another 7-10 minutes. Put aside to cool.
Mix cream with breadcrumbs, leave to puff up for 5 minutes. Then add egg, seasoning and minced meat. Mix until combined.
Spoon half of the meat mixture into a greased small loaf tin/terrine form. Top with mushroom & onion mixture, then cover with the rest of the meat mixture.
Bake in the middle of 200 C oven for about 45 minutes, covering the meatloaf with a piece of foil half-way through the baking.
Serve hot with steamed vegetables. Cold meatloaf is excellent when thinly sliced on top of sandwich.

* The mushroom in question is Ptychoverpa bohemica alias wrinkled thimble-cap, known as kurrel in Estonian, poimukellomörsky in Finnish, Vindlad klockmurkla in Swedish, Böhmische Glocken-Morchel/Runzel-Verpel in German, сморчковая шапочка in Russian. You can see a picture here (it's a morel on the left, thimble-cap on the right).