MEATLOAF TO UNITE A DIVIDED NATION
In politically fraught times, a new recipe book sets out to serve up collective comfort by focusing on the quintessential American dish
United States House of Representatives speaker Paul Ryan, who loves bow hunting so much that he worries the scent from his security detail may scare off the deer, was more than happy to hand over his recipe for venison meatloaf. “He was much more interested in talking to me about meatloaf than he was the earned tax credit,” said Jennifer Steinhauer, who covers Congress for The New York Times.
Senator Chuck Schumer was equally enthusiastic about his own recipe, a wide-ranging cooking project that centres on a meatloaf of beef, veal and pork surrounded by pieces of barbecued chicken.
“It’s so Chuck,” said Frank Bruni, a Times opinion columnist and former restaurant critic. He calls the recipe the Omnibus Loaf.
On the chilly evening before President Donald Trump was inaugurated, Bruni and Steinhauer sat down in a loud bourbon bar to discuss meatloaf, a topic far from the political drama playing out on the big screen over their heads.
Then again, maybe not all that far. “It’s a quintessential American dish that can bind a nation,” Bruni proclaimed.
Together they have embraced the loaf in a book called A Meatloaf in Every Oven: Two Chatty Cooks, One Iconic Dish and Dozens of Recipes — From Mom’s to Mario Batali’s. It is cast as a love letter, perhaps as much to their friendship as to a food whose very name screams mundane.
Propelled by their own Proustian meatloaf memories and leveraging their connections to politicians, chefs and other journalists, Bruni and Steinhauer have attempted the seemingly impossible: a comprehensive and compelling collection of 49 recipes for meatloaf.
Friends since they met at The Times in the mid-1990s, the two talk in the shorthand of an old married couple. In the amount of time it takes to finish a cocktail, they will have discussed Hill politics, office politics and sex, and made two references to Nora Ephron, to whom the book is dedicated.
The idea came from Bruni, 52; meatloaf is the only dish he has complete confidence cooking. He had long nursed a fantasy that one day he would add a meatloaf cookbook to his literary oeuvre, which includes books about President George W Bush, college admission anxiety and his own struggle with weight.
Steinhauer, 48, who occasionally writes about food, just came off a good run with the snack cookbook Treat Yourself. She was casting around for the next one. Bruni offered his meatloaf idea. She talked him into doing it together.
“At some point we thought, ‘Isn’t this a moment for meatloaf?’ ” Steinhauer said. “‘Can we make meatloaf ecumenical?’ ”
The book’s first recipe is essentially the Chevy of meatloaves, built from ground beef seasoned with onions and topped with tomato sauce. It’s from Bruni’s mother, Leslie Bruni.
The authors call it a populist meatloaf, but soon the recipes that follow take a pluralist turn. Dry Spanish chorizo and manchego cheese marry inside a loaf of ground pork. Chopped ahi tuna is covered with a clove-scented sauce of mushrooms, tomatoes and red wine. There are loaves infused with the flavours of Japan and China. Lamb, their favourite meat to make into a loaf, is punctuated with mint, pine nuts, couscous and harissa.
There is a Frito pie meatloaf, a hamburger and French fries meatloaf, and a chicken meatloaf that tastes like a Buffalo wing dipped in blue cheese dressing.
Meatloaf, they write, is the “Talented Mr Ripley” of food because it can impersonate anything.
“When you start researching meatloaf varieties, you realise how many people have done meatloaves that essentially mimic other dishes,” Bruni said. “If you eat our taco meatloaf and you close your eyes, you really think you are eating a hard-shelled beef taco.”
The authors make passionate arguments for frying onions before mixing them into meatloaf batter. They deeply consider the crucial role of binders, those unsung starchy players like rice, bread and potatoes that hold each loaf together.
They hand down rules. Hand-chopping vegetables produces a better texture than using a food processor. Meat should be almost at room temperature before supporting ingredients are mixed in. And always use your hands instead of a spoon.
They learned, too, that meatloaf likes spice, and a lot of it. The lesson came when Anne Kornblut, a former Washington Post editor who is now a Facebook executive, sent her recipe for a Moroccan-influenced lamb loaf that called for such an unruly parade of garlic and spices that the authors feared it would be a disaster.
“I thought, ‘I am going to have to fix it, which is boring, and I’m going to have to tell her, which is painful,’” Steinhauer said. As it turned out, the recipe was brilliant.
They called a simple beef recipe from Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican known for cooperating with her Democratic colleagues, the Bipartisan Loaf. The office of the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, sent a recipe for a Cal-Ital meatloaf that mixes veal and bison with ciabatta bread, rosemary and cilantro. They said she makes it with her granddaughter.
“Anyone who has worked with Pelosi can imagine what it was like to try to get a recipe from her,” Steinhauer said.
The book’s narrative binding agent is a series of chatty exchanges based on the writers’ neardaily communication through email, texts and phone calls. They’ve tagged on 10 side-dish recipes, including the macaroni and cheese that the chef Garret Fleming serves at Barrel, the Hill hangout where the two discussed their book. With five cheeses, heavy cream and crisp, buttery panko crumbs, it stopped all conversation when it arrived at the table.
Then, as happens a lot these days, talk turned to Mr Trump. He loves meatloaf. His mother made it for him as a child, and a version of her recipe has been on the menus at his hotels and resorts. He and his wife Melania even made meatloaf sandwiches on Martha Stewart’s show.
When they were writing the book, neither Bruni nor Steinhauer knew that Mr Trump would become president or that the nation would be spinning with disruption. But their timing proved to be perfect.
“I don’t think meatloaf can save the world,” Bruni said. “But I certainly think in the coming tomorrows there will be a healthier appetite for comfort.”