Meatloaf recipe? You took the words right out of my mouth

If life gives you lemons, as the old saying goes, make lemonade or, as the case may be here, a nice lemony dressing. Along the same theme, if Geoff walks into your workplace, for me a lab, and gives you a bloody brown paper bag of four recently excised lamb tongues, you make meatloaf out of them.

Maybe not everyone's first reaction, sure, but this gesture, for me, one of brotherly affection, could be misconstrued as a dire warning if, say, Geoff's name was Goffredo, and my life was part of a gangster movie.

Luckily it's not, so all is good.

The lamb tongues are a wonderful gift from, well, the lambs I guess, but delivered by Geoff. They can be very hard to find unless you know someone involved in the slaughter process. When I've tried to get a butcher to source them, the issue ends up being the abattoir not being set up to extract them or they are sold off in bulk. So if you want 20 kilograms of tongues, you can get supply but, as the pastor said to the …you get it. They also require some work to make them edible. Being a fairly active muscle, tongues are tough as all get out so they need long brining and poaching to make them anything approaching tender.

They are so good and worthwhile when this is achievable as the texture and flavour tongues give a dish is superb, that's right, su-perb! You probably won't be able to find these so there are a few alternatives that will do the same job but not carry quite the story a quartet of lamb tongues will give the dinner party.

Not quite sure how I got from these tongues to a meatloaf or indeed an Italian mobster theme but I'm there so I'll will run with it.

The humble meatloaf, which can be this dire mass of meat, has a much more interesting name and profile in mobster central, southern Italy. 'Polpettone ripieno al forno', see sounds way more exotic. They are free-form rolled sausage of minced meat filled with all sorts of things like boiled eggs, salume, nuts. It's more a case of what you don't put in there so it's a bit like filling out your tax quarterly business activity statement. You're going through the box of receipts, knowing that this is what brought down Al Capone, and wondering, not the first time, why you hadn't made notes. Like what is this faded receipt for something called a "Zoingo Boingo'' doing here? It's certainly not ringing any bells at 11.59pm on the BAS due date evening.

The use of reformed minced meat has a strong history throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East, which, excuse the pun, is mince-meat mecca. Kofta, klops and kebabs are just a few. Any meat, tough or tender, can be ground up, flavoured and then reformed to be something better than it was.

This is based roughly on a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for polpettone​ but baked as opposed to boiled and based on lamb. Any meat will do. I headed to this particular animal on account of having these tongues to deal with and there's no better way of getting your kids to eat this kind of gear than to disguise it and tell them after the fact.

Lamb polpettone with lemon and tahini dressing

700g lamb shoulder mince
100g pistachio nuts, unsalted
60g pickled cucumber, diced
6 eggs
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup parsley, chopped finely
2 tbsp capers, drained and chopped
1 tbsp sumac
1 tbsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground black peppercorns
120g fresh breadcrumbs
olive oil
salt
3 cooked lambs' tongues, sliced very thin – don't panic, see note

In a large bowl, with gloved hands, mix together the mince, nuts and cucumber along with two of the eggs. Work this so that the pistachio nuts are evenly mixed and the mince is still quite loose. Add to this the garlic, half the parsley along with the caper and spice.

Season and again mix it in well. Now add the breadcrumbs slowly, you may not need all of them, work the breadcrumbs in until you have fairly stiff forcemeat that will sort of hold its form.

Roll this out to an oblong about 2 centimetres thick on a piece of parchment paper which is on a tea towel. Next you'll make a couple of thin omelettes from the eggs. Mix two eggs with half of the leftover parsley in a small bowl. Heat a non-stock flat pan until quite hot, brush with oil and pour the egg mixture in, swish around so it forms a thin pancake like an omelette, cook until the top just sets and invert on to a plate. Repeat with the other eggs and parsley.

Lay these on the mince and place the lamb tongues, or alternatives, on to this in a layer. Carefully roll this over itself so the mince wraps the eggs and tongue. Form this into an even loaf, tucking the ends in and place on an oiled baking tray (not with the tea towel, mind).

Bake at 200C for one hour or until the meat on the outside is crispy and the internal temperature is up to 80C. Cool this completely, wrap and chill overnight.

Slice thickly and serve with the sauce along with a nice green salad.

Lemon and tahini dressing

1 cup tahini
2 lemons
1 clove garlic, minced
handful chopped parsley
water
sumac, salt and pepper

Best thing here is to use a hand-held blender. So in a suitable vessel add the tahini, grate the lemon zest and juice it. Add both to tahini along with the garlic and parsley. Use as much or as little as you like, clearly it'll get greener the more you add. Start blending and add enough water to achieve a nice dressing-like texture. Thick cream should be on your mind. Season with salt and pepper. Serve dusted with sumac.

Note: Don't have lamb tongues? Don't worry, use a few slices of good mortadella or you could buy pickled and cooked beef tongue which is more readily available.

Bryan Martin is the winemaker at Clonakilla and Ravensworth.