Luscious Joes

This morning I dropped by Jim's house to get organized for tonight's dinner. I pulled out Worcestershire sauce, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, canned tomato sauce, a tube of tomato paste, and a can of pinto beans onto the counter. I also grabbed some whole wheat buns from the freezer and put them in the fridge to defrost. During lunch, I ran to TJ's and Safeway for unsulfured molasses, jalapeno, and mustard powder.

When I got home, I immediately turned on the oven to 375 degrees and prepped a couple of sweet potatoes to be roasted. Then I turned my attention to chopping up the vegetables for the Sloppy Joes. I diced up a red bell pepper, a couple of onions, and some garlic. Jim came downstairs in the middle of my chopping and he seemed somewhat appalled at all of the veggies going into the dish. He said they were fancy Sloppy Joes and nothing like what he grew up with. I asked him what he meant and he referenced something about it coming out of a can. I had no idea Sloppy Joes came in a can and commented on it, and he was in turn shocked at my ignorance. I felt a little testy at his reaction--I don't eat meat and I didn't grow up eating canned crap, so how would I know? Anyway, you learn something new every day.

So the 96% lean ground beef got browned for five minutes with the onions, and then the rest of the veggies were tossed in for another five minutes. I put Jim on monitoring the pan while I assembled the rest of the ingredients. I had to rinse and drain the pinto beans, and I stirred all of the flavoring agents into the tomato sauce before adding the beans and flavored sauce into the skillet. I reduced the heat to low and simmered the ingredients together until the flavors melded (or so I assumed).

I served the Joe mixture on the toasted whole wheat buns, and they turned out just like the picture. Jim said he liked it, which is good, because it was 8 servings. I used Ellie Krieger's recipe, which meant that it was a very healthy version of Sloppy Joes. Ellie is a Food Network chef whose book I borrowed from the library. I was very pleased with the book and have since bought it. The recipes aren't overly difficult and she's a registered dietician who creates healthy meals without all of them being lowfat and low-cal. What I don't particularly care for is her show, "Healthy Appetite With Ellie Krieger." Her use of adjectives slightly annoys and wears on me--I don't know exactly what the problem is, but the recipes themselves seem great. And for whatever reason, even though hearing the words grate my nerves, I love her descriptions of the food when I read about them. Okay, I kind of know why: my own writing style tends towards the use (or overuse) of lots of adjectives. But anyway, I was very happy that I was able to cook a healthy meal for Jim that was also tasty (and luscious, as Ellie would say).

Oh yeah, I cooked more than the Sloppy Joes. I made a mess out of Bobby Flay's twice baked sweet potatoes. My first problem was that they weren't totally baked when I scraped them out of their skins. So they didn't mash very well, and then on top of it, my masher sucks. I was supposed to use a ricer, but I don't have one. The bits were mixed with butter, pureed chipotle in adobo, half and half (instead of heavy cream), maple syrup, and creme fraiche and then returned into the skins. I tried to make up for the fact that the potatoes weren't super squishy by throwing the mixture into a baking dish and cooking it a little longer. It still wasn't mushing up very well, so I finally gave up up and stuffed the mixture back into the skins and baked them off. Although the texture wasn't what it should have been the overall flavor was really nice. Next time I'll bake the potatoes longer and use a ricer. That ought to make 'em uber-silky and up the dish.