Barding: Prosciutto-wrapped mini turkey meatloaf

A miniature turkey meatloaf is wrapped in slices of prosciutto, which help hold in moisture while adding flavor. Photo courtesy Legends From Europe. 

Using lean ground meat for meatloaf? There are many techniques to keep it from being dry.

“Barding” is a less-common approach that can help bake moist meatloaf with mostly lean meat.

This chefly process involves a fatty meat, such as bacon, being wrapped around another food to retain moisture and add flavor. One adaptation of the technique is the woven bacon wrap sometimes used to prevent dryness in roast turkey -- or grilled turkey breast.

In the case of the featured meatloaf, slices of prosciutto di Parma from Italy (also known as Parma ham) are wrapped around miniature turkey loaves.

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Happy Diwali! I'm out of paneer!

Yesterday, I braved parking lot peril and Oak Tree Road traffic jams because I forgot that this is the last weekend before the five-day Diwali celebration begins on Nov. 2. I didn't turn back from the crowds who were collecting essentials for this most important Hindu festival; I was out of paneer, which I always keep in my freezer for quick meals.

Patel Brothers, a chain whose newer, larger Iselin store is a chic location whose banner reads "Celebrating our food...our culture," is my preferred store for South Asian ingredients. It seemed brighter than usual with assorted lights and lanterns, and colorful decorations for Deepavali strung from high places. I felt happy to be in the energy of so many people shopping for celebration. But I just needed cheese, and I got in and out as quickly as possible so someone else could park and get into the store.

Paneer cheese is a culinary carrier. It doesn't melt, and so it brings toothsome, rich, unsalted substance to any sauce or combination of spices to which it is introduced. Contributing more texture than flavor, it is simply mild-mannered pressed cheese curds, and many cooks make it at home.

Paneer cheese has been one of my favorite foods since one fall day in the early 1990s when my Louisiana cousin, freshly acculturated by a move to New York City, walked me all around the East Village looking for a certain Indian restaurant.

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Cranberry-date chutney with red onions for paneer cheese roti tacos

Our cranberry-date chutney, made for spicy paneer tacosWhen you love paneer cheese, spices, dates and cranberries, a recipe for a paneer-filled taco with cranberry-date chutney will make you roll up your sleeves to do the work -- even down to making your own roti for the first time ever. Roti plays the tortilla's roll in this cross-cultural meal.

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Halloween recipe: Creature from the Black Lagoon sheet pan pie

Sheet pan pies are an amazing wonder, like a pot pie turned upside and baked without a dish.

Like so many, I am always falling for cute food images, and the pumpkin-shaped sheet pan pie at WisconsinCheese.com -- the Jack-o'-Lantern Beef Pot Pie -- was a recipe to love. It put a new spin on pot pie with a cheesy chili-beef filling. We featured it in our fall issue after testing it twice and making a few adjustments. We wanted to show the fun result of our last test here. 

In the first test, the pie's crust split at the seams, unfortunately, right around the pumpkin's jaw line.

The filling was very wet. So in the next test, we decided to better control the liquid, and we folded the crust up instead of under, as the original recipe had advised. It was an effort to contain any leaking juices. It worked.

After cutting out what I anticipated would be a spooky pumpkin face, we stretched the top crust over the heap of beef, black beans and tomatoes.

Instead of a toothy Jack-o'-Lantern, the pie baked up to looked more like the face of the Gill Man, better known as the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  Read on for the recipe that tells how we made him.

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"Chasing Smoke" by Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich

Amman, Jordan © Patricia NivenFor the travel starved, “Chasing  Smoke” is a cookbook with benefits.

Recipes from the Levantine region are nestled within a travelogue that introduces them in the context of place. From Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Greece, food explorers Sarit Parker and Itamar Srulovich collect stories, ingredients, and ideas. Their focus here, in their fourth book, is on produce, seafood, meats and breads cooked over fire.

The espoused chefs, who own the London grill-house Honey & Smoke, travel with photographer Patricia Niven, who intimately captures settings from angles that help the reader feel to also have experienced the outdoor markets, eateries, landscapes and fiery grills they include.

Travel is a memorable mix of adventure and misadventure with happy discoveries along the way, and a chef couple’s anecdotes remind us how food-finds and exposure to people and places around the globe can expand one’s approach to eating and cooking. (They confess to following older customers around outdoor markets,  believing more experienced shoppers are likely to lead to the best of what’s offered.)

The Levant is the Mediterranean Middle East, and a regional home to shish kebabs, flat breads, spice blends such as baharat, and za’atar, the sesame paste known as tahini, and Aleppo (Syria) and Urfa (Turkey) chilis.

The cooking parts of this book begin with tips on technique, moisture-protecting wet brines and dry aromatic seasoning rubs for meat, poultry and fish. A third of the recipes involve grilled vegetables. Whole potatoes, artichokes, sweet potatoes, beets and more are cooked in embers. Kohlrabi, a cabbage relative, is cooked about 30 minutes among ashes, rotated until its skin is charred and a knife is easily inserted at its center. Celeric halves go in parchment and then in foil for a 30-minute roast. For the sweet potatoes, they make a tahini with raw almonds in place of the sesame seeds traditionally used.

Peach and endive halves are rubbed with olive oil and grilled for salad. Whole green onions, cabbage wedges, apple slices, and cuts of zucchini and other squash are oil or butter-rubbed for the searing grates.

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