Hey guys, welcome back to Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen. Today I’m going to be making a Mediterranean meatloaf. This is another recipe in my series of recipes for Mediterranean-American dishes. Now remember, you can get this recipe and all of my other recipes at www.dedemed.com, and remember when you’re there, you can sign up for my social network so we can chat daily.

Okay, so we’re going to start off with the ingredients and tell you what you need and I put it all together. Okay, here we have two tablespoons of freshly chopped basil. I have a fourth cup of freshly chopped flat-leaved parsley. The spices we’re going to need are a half teaspoon of paprika, half teaspoon cumin, one teaspoon garlic powder, a teaspoon and half of salt and a teaspoon and a half of coriander. I have one cup of shredded carrot, one cup of frozen peas, third cup of breadcrumbs, any number of breadcrumbs will do. I have one cup of freshly diced onions. I have a half cup of parmesan cheese. I have some sun-dried tomatoes, an egg and a pound and a half of brown chicken. We’re going to put it all together.

We’re going to start off by mixing all of the ingredients first before adding the chicken. Start off with out vegetables, we have the onions. I like using floating peas rather than peas in a can just because they’re fresher and they don’t have any preservatives. I love fresh carrots and herbs, fresh herbs add a great, great amount of flavor to dishes. So I prefer using those whenever I possibly can rather than dried herbs, here is our basil. Basil has wonderful aromatic smells. We have our parmesan cheese, our bread crumbs and our sun-dried tomatoes. Now I get my sun-dried tomatoes--I'm going to add about two tablespoons of this. I get my sun-dried tomato already chopped up and ready to go.

You can get--if it’s not available, you can always buy the whole sun-dried tomatoes and then just chop them up. Then we add our spices and be sure to get it all in. And then mix it up before we add our egg and out ground chicken. Now if you can’t have chicken, you can use ground beef, you can use ground turkey. You can use any protein that you’d like in this. Add lot of vegetables and kids love me well because you can their vegetables in without them even knowing if you have, you know, difficulty with your kids and them eating vegetables, this is the way to do it. So just like that, make sure it’s--everything is evenly mixed.

I want to add some fresh ground red pepper, just about a quarter to a half teaspoon depending on how much red pepper you actually like. Get a little mix, add the egg, a piece of that evens the mixture. I know you’re going to want to mix the chicken in but it’s best to use your hand so that it’s evenly mixed, you don’t have any chunks of chicken that aren’t flavored or any chunks of vegetables and the egg helps to bind the mixture. Now if you can’t have egg and you’re allergic to egg, you can omit it. It will bind pretty well on it’s own. But adding the egg does help keep it bound up.

So I’m going to add the chicken. If you don’t have ground chicken, at your grocery store, you can always just get two lean chicken breasts. And in the blender or food processor, just blend them up and it serves the same purpose. So here we go they get our hands dirty and mix it up really well. This is a great dish. It’s a great alternative to the regular old meat loaf because I know a lot of people are like, “Oh, I don’t like meatloaf, it’s you know, it doesn’t have the flavors.” This is a great, great flavorful dish. Okay, this one is mixed pretty and I’m going to show if I put it all together now.

Now that we have all of our ingredients mixed up, I’m going to show you how to actually cook the meat loaf. Now there’s a couple of different ways. Some people like to cook meatloaf in a loaf pan because it is called meatloaf. Or you can actually form it into a loaf if you had a glass pan or a baking sheet. Anyway will work, it serves the same purpose. You just want to make sure it’s formed into an actual loaf. So I’m going to first spray it with some non-stick spray and then I’m going to form it into a loaf. You want to preheat your oven to 400 degrees so it will be all ready when you put the meatloaf in. With just like that right about three to four inches wide to about an inch and a half to two inches thick.

Just like that to make it really nice and pretty. Now some people like to top their meatloaf with tomato sauce. Some people like to top their meatloaf with ketchup. I prefer ketchup just because ketchup is a little sweeter and I’d like that sweetness and the acidity from the ketchup when you add it to the meatloaf. So just like that and then when I cover it with some aluminum foil and then we’re going to bake it for 20 minutes at 400 degrees and then we’re going to remove the foil and bake it for another 20 minutes until it gets a nice—on it and then after the 40 minutes, we’re going top it with some ketchup and let it cook for just a couple of minutes in the oven and then I’ll—

So it’s been forty minutes and I took the meatloaf out and what I'm going to do is top it with some ketchup and then when I put it into the broiler for about two minutes. Just cover the top, again, if you don’t like ketchup, you can use like a tomato sauce and if you don’t like tomato sauce or ketchup, you don’t have to even use anything. Some people love to use a gravy with meatloaf. That’s always good as well. You can even just serve that on the side. So there we go, we’ve topped our meatloaf just like that. You see how pretty it is. When I put it back in the oven I need to—for another two minutes under the broiler for about two minutes.

Now, you want to let your meatloaf sit for five to ten minutes before cutting it. And always use this rule whenever you’re cooking any type of meat or protein. Whenever you take it out of the oven, or whenever you’re done cooking it, let it sit for five to 10 minutes before you cut it. What happens if you cut it immediately is all the juices run out and then the meat tends to get dry. So if you’d let it sit, the juices stay within the meat instead of running ought to put the juice to your meat produce. So we’re going to let this sit for five to ten minutes and then I'm going to cut it and show you the wonderful colors inside this meat loaf.