Klops

I'm not sure why I bought this book, I'm about a quarter Jewish but 0% American. I've always been intrigued by Jewish food, it's not specific to a particular country so there are so many regional variations as well as religious restriction - like cooking with one hand behind your back, sort of. And what is more appetising sounding than Klops? If memory serves me right, klop is Russian for bed bug, yummy!
I'm going to make the accompanying beetroot and pasta dishes too, so I might as well tell you that I'm using butter instead of margarine - milchig-schmilchig, and guess how Jewish I am when i reveal that I used pork instead of veal (try finding it in a British supermarket!) and I had to go to three different shops to find caraway, I bet you won't even be able to taste it. Also I still have no parsley, but who cares?
This book is a little wierd, I guess, I'm not sure who the target market is. It reads very upper middle class New York, and I found the tone a little condescending. The top billing goes to a guy called Raymond Sokolov, but the recipes are by Susan R Friedland, so like, huh? She's doing all the cooking and he's just lurking around, yeah? I think this must be a book for people thinking of converting or something, because Jewish people would already know most of the recipes and the rest of the stuff in this book, and I would struggle to buy the idea that a lay person would be attracted to a book that almost sets out to belittle them. Most of the dishes here are in the same calorific, carbohydrate laden vein and the tone is just so fricking superior! But if Sex and the City is to be believed, New York is just teeming with women desperate to convert in order to marry their Jewish boyfriends, and so why not mess with their heads while you're at it.
Setting my insecurities about what the book thinks of me aside, I commence.
I'm pretty excited about making meatloaf, enough to buy a brand new loaf tin! It seems such a staple of American family mealtimes and so easy to assemble. I also think that I've finaly figured out how my oven works, it even has a timer - wow, does your oven have one? Really? And what colour is it?
Well anyway I have plenty of time to settle this while I wait for the klop to bake and the cabbage to drain. By the way, I'm using an ENTIRE head of cabbage and just one of those little bags of pasta in the photograph above, those are the measurements given in the recipe, but I still find that a little unusual. The timings of it are perfect though, I start chopping the cabbage after the loaf is in the oven, wash the dishes while it's draining, the cook the pasta while I fry the cabbage, assemble the pasta dish and quickly fry off the beetroot while it finishes cooking. Et voila!

OK, I'm not accusing anyone of cheating, but I'm a little inclined to think that the image in the book has been doctored somewhat! So ok, I used ground beef instead of ground chuck which is less fatty and less flavoursome, but today was a Bank Holiday, the butcher was closed and I wasn't really in the mood to source expensive and obscure cuts of meat. However, regardless of that, I see no way in which Ray's meatloaf had a delicate pink hue and mine is a solid block of prison shower-room gray. Also, I had meant to take a photo of the product after it came out of the oven and before I sliced it, but it looked just so awful, burnt and unpalatable that I lost my nerve, and will leave that to your imagination.

Result: Despite my uncharitable comments about the appearance of the klop, it tasted really nice and was pretty moist and meaty.Not sure what sensation the egg was supposed to produce, lets just leave that mystery unsolved. The cabbage shrunk down to meet the pasta in quantity, but was still pretty prominent and no, you couldn't taste the caraway!(You could taste the butter though, you greasy pig!) I used pre-cooked beetroot and all I ended up doing to it was bringing out it's sweetness, not sure it needed that, but I guess it was ok. Overall it's quite... ok. It wasn't the brightest idea on my part to make this while we are still enjoying the summer heat, if there is ever an appropriate occasion to klop out, this isn't it. Don't believe the recipe below, this ain't unusual OR delicate.


Update: I'm going to have to change the title of this blog to 'Last time I cooked, I was sooooo sick!' Raymond, I don't know what I ever did to you, but whatever it was, we are even!
I have no idea whaether it's the cabbage producing these unfavourable gastro-intestinal manifestations, or maybe bad things just happen to bad people, but none of the 4 other people I fed this thing to have any symptoms. Whatever the culprit (and this is pretty much the only meal I've had all day, so... 2+2...) I'm inclined to take this as a sign that this book should go back to the charity shop whence it came tout de suite!