Is meat loaf man-loaf? Ask Billy Joel.

Meatloaf reminds me of Billy Joel. On one of the rare occasions that I managed to see Oprah, his young wife, Katie, was interviewed about her marriage of course (it was one of those celebrity absurdities of the last decade) and her new cookery book ‘The Comfort Table’. She demonstrated how to make her family recipe meatloaf saying "I like to call meat loaf 'man loaf' because it's every man's favorite dish. (Excuse me, I am feeling nauseous) My husband loves when I make meat loaf, (I actually think he loved when she made many other things too) and it makes the best leftovers. We love it the next day on white bread with mayonnaise.(was she trying to bump him off early?)" It takes more than meatloaf to keep a marriage together honey. Especially one where there is a 32 year age difference. What were they thinking? They are divorced!

My oven glass has eventually been delivered so I won’t be ovenless for much longer. Can’t wait to get the baking stuff out again this weekend. But last night I was still ovenless. So I asked a friend if he minded if I went and cooked at his place and he could keep the leftovers. It was surprisingly easy to twist his arm!

But the meatloaf recipe I followed from the Ideas issue lacked what my dear friend Irene would call the “WOW’ factor. Granted, I could not find the pickled peppers that the recipe called for; maybe they would have made the difference. I did not know they really existed. I thought they were only things that Peter Piper picked a peck of and then lost. So I substituted with red pepper. There was still something missing. I am spoilt now with fresh herbs, so to me the 2tsp of dried sweet basil was insufficient and a poor substitute for the real thing. Katie Joel’s recipe has many more ingredients in it, and I think they are the secret to turning non-wow meatloaf into man-loaf. These are garlic, bay leaves, fresh parsley and thyme, Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, salt and pepper.

But the wow-less meatloaf was not a complete disaster. I served it on basmati rice with oodles of instant gravy, and conscience clearing nuked gem squash with brassicas and carrots in the hollow. No pictures unfortunately. I felt it would have been too geeky to ask my host if I could photograph the plates.