Favorite Meat Loaf Gyros

Late July. The birthday party planning is underway — this year at the community kitchen space, the venue that has become the home of the cooking classes and will now host the birthday of the woman who teaches there. The party is for adults this time — Miya's party was last week at Brian's (the alternating birthday parties, the custody calendar applied to celebrations). My party: Lin, Rachel, Marie, the cooking class friends, the yoga friends, Barbara and Gerald driving up from Ashland, thirty people in a kitchen, cooking and eating and celebrating the fact that Jennifer Yuki Nakamura is turning forty and is alive and is cooking and is here.

I made gyoza for the party — one hundred and twenty of them, the largest batch I've ever made, six hours of folding, the folding as meditation, the meditation as preparation for the decade that begins tomorrow. The folding is the thinking. The thinking is: I spent my twenties anxious, my thirties drowning. I will spend my forties — what? Building. The forties will be the building decade. The building is already underway. The building is the classes and the books and the blog and the daughter who reads Japanese and the father who still gardens and the mother who still talks too much and the practice that has not missed a morning in eleven years. The building is the practice. The practice is the building. The forties are the decade when the practice becomes the structure becomes the life.

I made miso soup at three AM on birthday eve — not because I couldn't sleep but because the three AM soup is the tradition, the oldest tradition, the soup that began everything, and on the eve of forty I wanted to stand in the kitchen in the dark and make the soup and taste the taste and say: this is where it started. This is where it continues. This is the bowl. This is the woman. This is the practice. This is the life. Happy birthday, Jen. You made it to forty. You made it to forty and the soup is good. The soup has always been good.

Six hours of gyoza folding will teach you that wrapping something familiar inside something new is its own kind of practice — and when the party was over and the kitchen was quiet again, I found myself wanting to stay inside that feeling a little longer. The gyros came out of that impulse: the same meditative act of assembling, layering, tucking, but with a different filling, a different shape, a different decade asking to be fed. If the forties are the building decade, this is a recipe I’m building into the rotation.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 1 hr | Total Time: 1 hr 20 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs ground beef (or a mix of ground beef and ground lamb)
1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs
1/3 cup finely diced yellow onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
6 pita breads or flatbreads, warmed
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/2 cucumber, grated and squeezed dry
1 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 small garlic clove, minced (for tzatziki)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup shredded romaine lettuce

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.
Mix the meatloaf. In a large bowl, combine ground beef, breadcrumbs, diced onion, minced garlic, egg, oregano, cumin, salt, and pepper. Mix gently with your hands until just combined — do not overwork the meat.
Shape and bake. Press the mixture firmly and evenly into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 55–60 minutes, until the internal temperature reads 160°F and the top is lightly browned. Let rest 10 minutes before slicing.
Make the tzatziki. While the meatloaf bakes, stir together Greek yogurt, grated cucumber, dill, minced garlic, and lemon juice. Season with salt to taste. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Slice the meatloaf. Cut the rested meatloaf into 1/2-inch slices, then cut each slice into strips for easy pita loading.
Assemble the gyros. Spread a generous spoonful of tzatziki across each warmed pita. Layer on meatloaf strips, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and shredded romaine. Fold and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Favorite Meat Loaf Gyros — Folding Something New into the Building Decade