I had been anticipating working through the BOP national prison menu as a systematic endeavor. A kind of Julie and Julia experience that happened night after night in a clockwork fashion. But really, why traumatize myself and everybody else by adhering so strictly to a menu “policy”? Yes, my household normally does set out an advance plan of what’s for dinner, posted on a shared calendar, but that’s really more for shopping convenience and to forestall the kind of last-minute bad decisions that sometimes come with the late afternoon/early evening question, “What are we eating tonight?”. So, this week, I delved into The Prison Laundry project on a couple whims, out of synch with the BOP national menu, and my presentation of those meals on this blog will even be out of the order in which I prepared them.
Let’s start with Salisbury steak (the other meatloaf). Why is it the other meatloaf? Well, that’s because my first few years behind bars, one every fifth Tuesday, the jailhouse kitchen would whip up some meatloaf. It was actually one of the more popular meals in the BOP, although inmates consistently referred to the dish as “catheads” because the meat didn’t come in the form of a loaf or a slice of a loaf. Instead, the portions of beef were scooped out by an ice cream scoop and baked; that was a form of portion control and equity. You would get kind of a meatball that was about the size of a cat’s head. Therefore, “cat heads.” My final year in prison, Washington removed meatloaf from the menu are replaced it with Salisbury steak. Rather than having to mix up meatloaf and portion it out, they could use a pre-formed patties, bake them, and smother them in some kind of reconstituted powdered powdered gravy mix. For this particular Tuesday repast, here is how the Federal Bureau of Prisons describes the menu: “Salisbury Steak or Black Beans; Mashed Potatoes; Whole Kernel Corn; WW Bread; Margarine Pat; Beverage.” Think what you want, but know that there was a rumor going around amongst both staff and inmates that there was a decline in the quality of prison meals because Michelle Obama declared that people have to eat healthy. Not sure that Michelle O. would have signed off on this particular menu, but she wasn’t First Lady when the the great Salisbury steak shift happened. Maybe this is more of Melania thing; there’s something a little Donald about the palate at work here. The Smithsonian Institute tells me that the dish was actually concocted by Civil War physician named James Henry Salisbury. He thought it was kind of a health food dish for malnourished soldiers. It seems about right that the federal government might be clinging to 160-year-old standards.
But I digress. The other day we had nothing on our calendar for dinner, so I looked around the house to see what we had on hand. Lo! All the fixin’s for Salisbury steak were in the refrigerator or pantry. The Divine Muse of the BOP menu took me the rest of the way from there. Here’s what I had on hand:
- A stale piece of (formerly?) tasty pumpernickel bread. Well, it was still tasty though not sandwich ready.
- A pound of hamburger
- garlic powder
- dried thyme
- Worcestershire sauce
- a jar of prepared horseradish
- an egg
- onions
- beef stock
- potatoes
- butter
- flour
- salt
- pepper
The most hideous part of prison Salisbury is the gravy. So, that’s where I really wanted to things in a different direction. The second most hideous thing is the bland beef. The most absurd thing about prison Salisbury is the potatoes. I once had a great string of six consecutive servings of “mashed” potato in which, when I dug into it, there were potatoes that had been mashed sitting on top of potatoes that had just been boiled, the mashed serving as a kind of frosting to the cake of the boiled. Well, all easily correctable.
For the bland beef, I took regular, bland ground beef and added it to a chunk of stale pumpernickel that I ground into crumbs in the food processor. To that I threw in salt, pepper, garlic powder and thyme (all to taste), along with a good couple tablespoons of the horseradish, a tablespoon of the Worcestershire sauce and a raw egg. I gently mixed all this stuff together with my bare hand and formed it into patties put them into a hot skillet. I cooked them for 3-4 minutes on each side until they were not quite done all the way through and set them aside, admiring the nice sear I got on them.
Then I cut maybe 3-4 cups of onions. I wanted a lot of onions because I was taking the gravy in the direction of a French onion soup. In the same skillet (it was a big, high-sided one) in which I sear the meat, I splurged and threw in about a quarter cup of brandy to deglaze the pan (that it, to get all the cooked beef bits unstuck from the bottom); don’t worry, all the alcohol in that brandy evaporated in 15 seconds, as hot as that pan was. Then I tossed in the onios with 4 tablespoons of butter and let them cook, stirring frequently, until the onions started to get nice and brown and caramelized. I added some thyme and cooked for about another minute. Then I tossed in a quarter cup of flour and stirred that up with the onions, cooking for another minute or so. Then came the beef stock. Poured that in and stirred it until it started to thicken. I turned the heat down to low and placed the meat patties in the lightly simmering onion gravy, and them the have a hot bath while I finished making the potatoes. To elevate the whole experience away from prison, during the last couple minutes of the hot beef bath I topped each patty with some really great Stilton cheese that I was able to get from a terrific local cheese store, a store, ironically enough, co-owned by a former prison guard who is happy to tell you all about the horrors of prison food. I placed a lid on the skilled for 2 minutes to let the cheese melt. That was that. Steak and gravy.
As for the potatoes, well, they are just mashed potatoes. Cut them up. Put then in cold, salted water. Bring them to a boil and let them go for 20 minutes. Drain them. Put them back into the pan with some butter and pepper. Add some beef stock gradually to get the consistency you like and ACTUALLY MASH THEM. You know, take one of those potato masher tools and move it up and down on the cooked potatoes and stir them around a little while adding stock. Then take the potatoes out of the pot, put them on a plate, put a patty on top or alongside them, and cover them both with as much gravy as you like. That is dinner from The Prison Laundry.
It tasted pretty good, if I do say so myself. Even if I think that Salisbury steak is not among my favorite dishes. It beats a TV dinner and it certainly beats the BOP’s version of TV dinners. Plus, there is always something more comforting about eating comfort food at home than there is about gobbling it down during a 15-minute eating window in a prison dining facility. Or, in the age of COVID when dining facilities are closed, snarfing it down off a styrofoam tray while sitting in your bunk. Anyway you slice that Prison Laundry patty, things have to be looking up.
Love this