©2008 Harry Kenney

Simple recipe? Yes. Simple ingredients? Yes. Great taste? Hey! That goes without saying. What does need talking about is, simple as these are, what is a sauce? A glaze? A mop? What exactly is Jack Daniel’s? And while we’re at it, where exactly on the steer does a strip steak come from?

According to About.com “Mops are sauces you might (better) know as sop, bastes or mops.” I would have to add “glazes” to that list. (For instance the Asian glaze I use on salmon is like this; whereas the glaze I put on meatloaf stays there the first time, that is, one application and leave it.) First, let’s take a left turn. A marinade is a sauce made of either all wet ingredients or wet ingredients and some dry (spices and herbs), but it’s still basically a wet sauce. And into this marinade, your proteins, your meat, poultry or seafood is placed prior to cooking to add flavor. So all these other things — glazes, mops, bastes — are what you put on immediately before and/or during your cooking — as with this recipe.

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©2008 Harry Kenney

I love salmon. I try to have it at least once every month. What can you say about something that is healthy and fresh and yet something about it’s texture, it’s thickness reminds one of a steak in so many ways. Yes, silly as it sounds, in many ways I think of it as a “steak of the seas”.

Often I prepare it in the most simple and pure of ways: salt, pepper, little oil to help it cook, and maybe a twist of fresh lemon. Period. Sometimes, like now, I like to vary it with a sweet and tangy glaze. No matter what ingredients I add though, there’s only one way to cook salmon, in my opinion: Grilled.

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There are so many combinations of meatloaf in the world. Use 100 percent beef. No, use beef and pork. No, has to be the tri-meat combination of beef, pork and veal. No, it’s lamb as the third, not veal. You can use milk-soaked bread, big crouton things purchased or made yourself. You can use breadcrumbs. Nope, use the oats in oatmeal. With and without eggs. Mayonnaise as an extra binder; no way, hold the mayo. Gotta have some gravy. Gravy has to be brown. No, it’s gotta be tomato. No gravy anywhere; that ruins it. … And the list goes on and on.

And then, like myself, many cooks have more than one meatloaf. Why? Same as above. There’s so many ways to do it and there’s no one right way. In fact, it’s pretty tough to mess up. Hope all you newbie cooks are listening up. Meatloaf is many things: The perfect comfort food being one. And an excellent dish to start on if you’ve never or rarely cooked before.

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