Not just your regular joe

Gochujang gives this sloppy joe an extra bit of flavor.

Warmed ground beef and sauce on a bun? Or shredded beef with not much sauce? Or some combination in between? Everyone seems to have grown up with their own definition of sloppy joes, loose meats, Maid Rites or taverns. In my family, we had taverns, which is how we referred to the same sauced ground meat sandwich other families around home called sloppy joes. We attributed this to our mother growing up in Des Moines, but I also see references to others thinking of taverns as being more like what I'm told Maid Rites were like, but never having been exposed to the chain, I couldn't verify that. I saw one claim that the tavern name came from a local restaurant named the Tavern, but given that my mother's childhood predated that restaurant's existence, I'm a tad skeptical. 

At any rate, whatever you call them and however you choose to prepare them, at heart they are a simple way to fix a warm meal for a crowd, and easy to make ahead and keep warm in a slow cooker, making them a busy mom's uncomplicated way to get a kid-approved meal that could keep until whenever practice was over. 

They are an unpretentious comfort food it there ever was one, and really don't need to be messed with. Of course, cooks gotta tinker, so  I thought I'd explore some variations as an excuse to have a bite of nostalgia. All four of these are way better than school cafeteria sloppy joes, although that was comparatively edible as school meals went.

Gochujang sloppy joes

From Bon Appetit by Hana Asbrink in February 2023. They allege it serves 4. I would say it serves 10. See takeaway below.

This recipe smacks to me of how I used to approach making meatloaf when my mother put it on the menu. It showed up on the menu a lot, since we raised cattle, and it was not my favorite dish since the basic recipe seemed so very, very bland. So I would try to dump the contents of various condiments into the meat mixture in hopes of spicing it up. I can't say as it accomplished that, but it didn't make it any worse, at any rate. I was limited to the spice rack offerings and condiments of a Midwestern farm kitchen in the 1970s, so there was a limit to what I could get up to. No gochujang in sight.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pound ground beef
Kosher salt, divided
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
6 to 8 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons gochujang
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon yellow mustard
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
¼ cup water
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Buns for serving

Method

Heat oil in a large deep pot. Add ground beef and brown until mostly cooked. Push to the side of the pot and add green pepper, onion and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are softened. Add gochujang, ketchup, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, mustard, tomato sauce and water. Cook, uncovered, until mixture tightens to a thick sauce; you don't want this runny. Remove from heat and add balsamic vinegar. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Serve on hamburger buns or potato rolls.

Rating: I still say this list of ingredients looks like the result of a condiment dump or cleanup, but it's a perfectly tasty one. Not spicy, but flavorful. Better than the taverns/sloppy joes I remember from school days. There are definitely worse ways to use up the condiments lurking in the door of your refrigerator. I froze the leftovers in the one-cup portion silicon freezer trays and thaw one of the cups when we want a no-fuss lunch.

Veggie sloppy joes

From Better Homes & Gardens, July/August 2024 issue. Serves 10 quite amply, maybe even 12.  I actually made this recipe before the other three which led me down the sloppy joe rabbit hole to refresh my memory of the meaty version to see how they compared.

Ingredients
1½ cups brown lentils, rinsed  and drained
½ brown rice
1 cup chopped carrot
½ cup chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1 tablespoon molasses
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon salt 
4 cups chicken broth
8 ounces cremini mushrooms, chopped
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
10 hamburger buns, toasted
Pickled unions and lettuce for optional toppings

Method

Combine lentils, rice, carrot, onion, garlic, mustard, molasses, cayenne, salt and chicken broth in a large slow cooker. Heat on high for 3½ to 4 hours or on low for 6 to 7 hours. Add tomato sauce, mushrooms and vinegar and cook for another half hour. Serve on toasted buns.

Rating: Well, it's certainly got the sloppy part nailed. Definitely not a good candidate for finger food, since so much of it escapes. Dave refers to these as faux joes or loose lentils. He liked the flavor, but found them a challenge to consume since so much sploots out the sides. It's one of those sandwiches you really can't put down once you pick it up because of structural integrity concerns. The problem was eased a bit when I dialed back the filling to bun ratio with the leftovers to what I considered to be a more normal amount; they're plenty filling. 

They don't taste that much like meat sloppy joes, but they are reasonably tasty, and apparently smell that way too. I opted to make these on high so we could have a lunch that didn't require much kitchen prep time while we had workers in the house finally repairing a plumbing disaster. When they departed, they said they were going to have to get it written into their next contract that there should be no crock pot meals being made while they're on the job site so they aren't tortured by smelling warm food. I wonder if they would have felt that way if they'd known it was lentils.

Definitely sloppy.

Leftover notes: It reheats just fine. I opted to store some of the leftovers in some souper cubes so we can opt for some warm comfort food on short notice. Just remember to provide lots of napkins or else a spoon. Having since made the gochujang version, I'm curious to know if adding some of that to this lentil version would amp up the flavor to the point where it would be a more fair fight in a taste comparison between the meaty-but-meatless lentil version and standard meat versions. I did find that mashing up some of the lentils helped it bind together a bit more.

Sloppy Janes

I wanted to try another meatless version just to give it another chance, to see if the reason the meat version was so much better than the lentil-based version was the meat itself or the spice profile. This version from "Vegetarian Heartland" by Shelly Westerhausen seemed like a decent bet.

Note: If you opt to make the pickles, you'll need to start this days ahead. I'm not going to say they're required, but I will report that you won't mind if you do, even though the need to take the very simple steps to make them delayed me making these for far too long. It's so unpredictable when I'll feel lazy in the kitchen.

Ingredients

1 24-ounce jar dill pickle spears
2 cups sugar
2 cinnamon sticks

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 cups broth or water
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon tamari
2 teaspoons seasoned rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1 6-ounce container tomato paste
½ cup finely chopped walnuts
1 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-ounce can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
Hamburger buns (figure on 8 to 10, depending on how full you fill them, we used 10)

Method
Drain the pickles and cut into bite-size chunks. Place back in the same jar and cover with water. Let soak for 24 hours, then drain and place into a large jar. Combine sugar and 1 cup of water until dissolved and pour mixture over the pickles. Tuck in the cinnamon sticks. Cover and refrigerate at least 48 hours to allow the flavors to blend. The recipe notes that they'll keep up to 6 months, but once you try them, you'll pretty quickly find uses for them.

For the filling, heat olive oil in a large deep pan. Cook onion, celery and carrots over medium heat until very soft. Add garlic and cumin and cook for 1 minute. Add oregano, broth, red pepper flakes, tamari, vinegar, honey, tomato paste, walnuts and beans and simmer until it thickens into serving consistency. Season with salt and pepper if desired. Serve on buns and top with the pickles.

Rating: OK, so these work on a lot of levels. It's kind of like going to a place that you know has a good bean burger when that's what you're in the market for; it's not a meat burger, but it's good at being what it is. It definitely brings the flavor profile. And those pickles add an interesting touch. I'm not super into sweet pickles, but this kind of splits the difference, and the cinnamon pairs with the sloppy joe spices for a nice effect. Would definitely consider making this one again.

Sloppy Ottos

And then there's Sloppy Joe's cousin, Sloppy Otto. I ran across this one online and found a number of variations. They didn't always agree on the meat, but there seemed to be a greater tendency to use pork sausage. Sauerkraut and pretzel buns seemed to be a constant, but they varied on whether you added cheese to the assembled bun and melted it. There was wide variation in the ratio of kraut to meat. Sour cream crept in, or didn't. One suspects there are as many recipes for this as there are German great-grandmothers.

Here's where I landed. It's probably closest to the Taste of Home version as any other. 

Ingredients
1 pound bulk spicy pork sausage
1½ cups sauerkraut, well drained
2 medium bell peppers of the color of your choice, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
Pretzel buns for serving (8 to 10 depending on meat serving size of choice)
Sliced Muenster cheese 

Method

Preheat oven to 350. 

In a large pan, brown sausage. Add sauerkraut, peppers and onion. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are tender.

Dish meat onto buns. Top with a cheese slice. Bake for 4 minutes or so or until cheese is melted.

Rating: The addition of cheese to this version makes them much less sloppy since the melted cheese helps hold the mixture in place. The flavor is going to depend on the spiciness of your sausage, and I would avoid a bland cheese. These weren't bad, or anything, but they do fall into the category of worth trying but not worth repeating unless you had that German great-grandmother who made these.

Takeaway

I'd kind of written taverns/sloppy joes permanently off my menu as kid food, and we no longer eat much in the way of beef, but maybe I was a bit hasty. Given that each recipe yields a lot of servings that you can freeze to pull out later, they count as a pretty good meal prep option. 

And whatever you call them, there seems to be one other point of contention: how much they serve. Ordinarily I quibble with the number of servings in a recipe in the other direction: that they're way too stingy, but the original specified serving amount in these recipes were off wildly in the other direction from my perspective. If you tried to pile on that much meat it would immediately squelch out when you pick it up and result in a soggy sandwich that instantly loses integrity. Dave remembers being served the same quantity per bun as I do, so perhaps it was a Midwestern church basement standard serving size we were used to. It was farm country, so it's not like people were always trying to stretch the meat since that was one thing for which you didn't have to pay retail. I don't know how to account for that disconnect, but it was consistent across all the recipes.

Three apps I'm apt to make again

 

I'm always in the market for fresh appetizer options to stave off food boredom, but some bear repeating. Here are three likely suspects I tried recently.

Cucumber rounds with roasted red pepper hummus and Boursin

Adapted from Fine Cooking's Weekend Cooking 2006. The section was labeled "when you need to bring the hors d'oevre," and I did, so I did. It called for making a more basic hummus, but I thought the red pepper would make it more colorful. It called for a small dollop of plain yogurt on top of the hummus, but I worried a bit about it staying put on a day when we were invited to a porch gathering while there was a heat advisory in play, so I went with the cheese instead. The original recipe says it makes 40 or so. I just stopped slicing once I'd filled up the size tray I wanted to.

Ingredients

1 large seedless cucumber 
Roasted red pepper hummus (purchased, or see recipe below)
Boursin cheese
Toasted white sesame seeds or black

Method

Slice the ends off the cucumber, then use a fork to score the outside of the cucumber vertically to make ridges. (Alternatively, the original recipe called for using a peeler at ¼-inch intervals to create a vertical striped pattern, but I really doubted I would pull that off.) Slice ¼-inch thick horizontally and place on serving dish. Salt very lightly. Top with a teaspoon of hummus and then a small ball of cheese or dollop of yogurt. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

Rating: Dave said they looked like the summer version of Christmas cookies. These were just as cute as could be, and just fine for a really hot day when you don't want to heat up the kitchen. My nit: I didn't find a large enough cucumber at the market so these were really small. That makes them both a tad harder for people to pick up as finger food and also meant those Boursin cheese balls on the top had to be super tiny, which was a bit of a logistical feat. Also, being that small made it hard to get very much of the roasted red pepper hummus on top, so that flavor was a little more muted than I would have liked, because that recipe is the bomb. I've purchased a variety of prepared roasted red pepper hummus from stores, but this was awesome. Definitely would make that part again.

Roasted red pepper hummus

Adapted very slightly from immigrantstable.com. The only change was swapping out the lemon juice for lime.

Ingredients

1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3 roasted red peppers
¼ cup tahini
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine chickpeas, roasted peppers, tahini, olive oil, lime juice, cumin, paprika and cayenne in a food processor or blender until very smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and adjust thickness with additional olive oil if you need a less thick mixture.

Rating: Really nicely balanced spice. Definite keeper.

Creamy cilantro sauce (or dip, or spread)

Adapted from Bon Appetit, Summer 2006. This sauce was part of a recipe that called for putting it over tofu that had been marinated and grilled, an adaptation of a Peruvian chicken recipe. It called for a serrano chile but I didn't have one on hand, so it would be much hotter with that swap. And it called for half an avocado and adding ¼ cup of water, which would make it a runnier sauce.

Ingredients

1 bunch of cilantro, bottom stems removed
6 scallions, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 pitted, peeled avocado
1 jalapeño chile
¼ cup fresh lime juice
¼ cup mayonnaise
½ teaspoon ground cumin

Method
Combine all ingredients in a food processor until mostly smooth. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Rating: We first served this over baked chicken, and it was a delight. Then we used it as a spread for a club sandwich and for BLTs, and it was heaven. Great on fish tacos. We made another batch to serve as a chip dip, and it was dandy there too. Super fast to make, and if you cover it well it retains its color when made ahead. An absolute keeper.

Smoked salmon and caper spread

From "Wine Bites" by Barbara Scott-Goodman. The book is subtitled "Simple morsels that pair perfectly with wine" and it's filled with lots of likely looking recipes. I can attest that in this case, the morsel also paired perfectly with gin and tonics.

Ingredients

1 8-ounce container cream cheese, softened a bit
4 ounces smoked salmon, divided
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon drained capers
Dash of hot pepper sauce
Grated black pepper
Sliced red onion, sliced tomatoes and bread for serving

Method
Combine cream cheese, ¾ of the smoked salmon, parsley, lemon juice, milk, capers and hot pepper sauce in a food processor and process until smooth. Mix in remaining salmon and black pepper. Serve as a spread for toasted bread or crackers. Top with red onions and sliced tomatoes if desired. Spread can be made ahead; bring to room temperature before serving so it's spreadable.

Rating: Not bad. I might like to add dill and/or lemon zest if I make it again, and I might well, because it's just so fast to make and doesn't heat up the kitchen. I just served it with gluten-free crackers rather than the bread route to accommodate dietary considerations, but if serving on bread I think some pickled red onions as a topper would be dandy. At any rate, our hosts' cat was pretty darn sure this dip was worth exploring and had to be continually dissuaded, so the salmon clearly comes through.

Leftover notes: This also worked well as a sandwich filling along with cucumber slices, tomatoes and lettuce.

Rhubarb muffins

Conventional garden wisdom is that you shouldn't do a heavy harvest of rhubarb after mid-July-ish, and many people mark the cut-off point as July 4. The theory is that the plant needs a lot of those big leaves to harvest energy to store in roots to get through our winters.

So I may be pushing it, but we really do have several months before frost that should allow the plants to rest up. Plus, a friend brought me three bunches of rhubarb stems so it's time for one last burst of rhubarb recipes.

At any rate, farmers markets still have some reasonable looking bunches if you still need to get your annual fix without fretting about root energy in your own patch.

Rhubarb pecan muffins

These were apparently available at a rhubarb festival in Aledo, Ill., visited by Midwest Living as published in June 2006. The recipe comes from Betty Erickson's grandmother.

Note: This recipe makes 16 muffins, so you'll either need two muffin pans or bake these in batches.

Ingredients

2 cups flour
¾ cup sugar, plus more for topping
1¾ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup pecans
¼ cup vegetable oil
¾ cup orange juice
1 beaten egg
2 teaspoons orange zest
1¼ cups finely chopped rhubarb

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line or grease 16 muffin tins.

Combine flour, ¾ cup sugar, baking powder, salt, soda and pecans in a large bowl.

In a medium bowl, combine oil, orange juice, egg and orange zest. Stir in rhubarb. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and mix in wet ingredients just enough to combine. Fill muffin tins about ⅔ of the way full; a ¼-cup measuring scoop is a good starting point. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 20 minutes.

Note: The original recipe called for a total of ¼ cup of sugar spread over the 16 muffins, but that seemed like a lot to me so I used 2 tablespoons instead and thought that was plenty. Some of the sugar will disappear into the dough while baking, so if you want a really pronounced sugar topping, you might want the full original amount. They seemed plenty sweet to me with half the specified amount.

Rating: Fine enough flavorwise. Good texture and releases well from the tins.

Honey-rhubarb muffins

From Midwest Living magazine, June 1995, a recipe from Bernie Brand of Shoreview, who was a honey producer/vendor at the Lowertown market in St. Paul.  Since I don't make it over to the St. Paul market, I googled to see if he was still there. He is not, but his obituary after his long life included the charming fact that his parents gave him honey bees as a high school graduation present and he sold honey at the market for some 70 years. 

Note: This recipe indicated it makes 21 muffins, filled ⅔ cup full, but I found it made 23, so results may vary.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 cup packed brown sugar
½ cup cooking oil
½ cup honey
½ teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup sour milk (measure 1 tablespoon vinegar and add milk to make ¾ cup)
1½ cups chopped rhubarb
½ cup chopped nuts

Method
Preheat oven to 325. Line muffin tins.

Cut butter into ½ cup sugar to make topping and set aside.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Combine egg, brown sugar, oil, honey and vanilla in a mixing bowl. Add flour mixture alternatively with sour milk until just combined. Fold in nuts and rhubarb. 

Spoon into prepared muffin tins. Sprinkle with butter-sugar mixture. Bake 35 to 40 minutes until golden.

(The original recipe called for making a whipped honey butter of ½ cup softened butter, ¼ teaspoon lemon zest and ¼ honey. I didn't feel the muffins needed lily-gilding, but if you want to take it to the next level, it would be worth trying.)

Rating: Good flavor; that honey really comes through. Not so good at releasing cleanly from the liners. I had happened to notice that the photo accompanying the recipe in the magazine still had the liners on and just sort of mentally noted that that was unusual for magazine photography, but now suspect there was a practical reason. Spoons came into play, but it was worth getting the last bits out. I'd give this one the flavor edge because of the honey, but probably would make the other ones or else rhubarb sour cream muffins if I had company for the sake of ease of eating. 

Although, really, I'd just make one of the many rhubarb scone recipes I've tried because they're all better than the muffins. (I would not say this about blueberry muffins vs. scones, for some reason.) That's not to say the muffins are bad; they just aren't as killer as the scones, and those you can form and freeze ahead. So I'll have to keep trying rhubarb muffin recipes until I find one I label killer. I suspect Sarah Kieffer's rhubarb cream cheese swirl muffins might well qualify.

In the scone department, Rhubarb mango scones are nice.

Rhubarb vanilla scones are very nice indeed.

Rhubarb buttermilk scones are superb.

And I'm going to reserve 1½ cups (about 4 stalks) for rhubarb bread, because it's so darn tasty.

But rhubarb isn't just for baking:

The resident cat obliged with a photo bomb seen a bit blurry through the screen at our usual cabin. 

If you need an end-of-the day rhubarb option to use up some rhubarb, I recommend these two choices: 

Rhubarb gin and tonic fixings went to the cabin with us this year. It can easily work as a mocktail as well.

Rhubarb martinis are another excellent make-ahead choice and a great way to toast the short-lived rhubarb season.

Watermelon cornbread panzanella salad and two more cucumber summer salads

My lone cucumber plant is verging on yielding fodder for tiny pickles, but Minnesota growers are ahead of me so there are plenty at farmers markets. If you've got a bumper crop of salad cucumbers, here are three recipes to consider.

I love a good tomato and bread salad in the summer time. That and some fruit and you've got a fantastic lunch that uses up copious tomatoes and bread cubes. But it turns out you don't need to have either on hand to make this variation.

Cornbread panzanella with watermelon, cucumber and za’atar vinaigrette

Adapted from “It’s Always Freezer Season,” by Ashley Christensen and Kaitlyn Goalen. A salad recipe from a book about exploiting the wonders of a well-stocked freezer? Sure thing, when one of the salad ingredients is cornbread. This book isn't the standard cook-ahead freezer-food tome that's heavy on casseroles, although there are some. Think Boulevardier slushies, parcooked risotto and herbed bechamel — all stuff I would not have thought to freeze and now want to.

Note: That vinaigrette makes a generous quantity. You will have leftovers. This isn’t a bad thing; it works great as a recipe for a multi-bean salad, for instance. But if you don’t want to deal with/store leftovers, I suggest cutting the vinaigrette ingredients in half.

Ingredients

4 squares of cornbread (out of 9 squares in a standard cornbread recipe)
4 tablespoons butter, melted

⅔ cup olive oil
⅓ canola oil
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons za’atar
2 tablespoons dried oregano
1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 English cucumber, cut into quarters lengthwise and then into ½-inch pieces
2 cups cubed watermelon
¼ red onion, thinly sliced
4 ounces feta, crumbled
2 tablespoons fresh basil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon balm
1 tablespoon fresh dill

Method

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut cornbread into 1-inch cubes. Toss with melted butter in a large bowl. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown and toasted, flipping once part way through. Set aside to cool.

Combine olive oil, canola oil, vinegar, mustard, za’atar, oregano and salt.  Set aside. (Can be made ahead and brought to room temperature before using; it’s a broken vinaigrette anyway.)

In a large serving bowl, combine cucumber, watermelon and onion. Drizzle with ¼ cup of the vinaigrette and season with salt and pepper. Fold in toasted cornbread cubes. Sprinkle with feta, basil, lemon balm and dill. Drizzle with 2 to 4 more tablespoons of dressing as desired.

Rating: Fabulous flavors together, and nice textures. And like tomato-bread salad, it feels like a lunch main course without adding protein. My only nit as this was originally written (aside for the mint for which I substituted lemon balm), was the copious quantities of za’atar called for. It wanted ½ cup, and not only did I only have half that amount on hand, I didn’t think it needed that much. I was not wrong. Even cutting that in half resulted in a sort of gritty roughage. The recipe as written above cuts it back even further reflecting my second try. There’s still plenty of flavor, but it now no longer seems like you’re consuming silage along with an otherwise delightful salad. I'd definitely put this one into the rotation.

Cucumber, radish, olive and dill salad

Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens magazine. This one is more of a side salad, but if you wanted to make it more of a main dish, some cooked chickpeas would seem to fit right in. 

Ingredients

½ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 medium cucumbers, thinly sliced
5 small radishes, thinly sliced
½ cup red onion, thinly sliced
½ cup sliced pitted Kalamata olives

Method

Whisk together vinegar, dill, olive oil, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add cucumbers, radishes, red onion and olives. Chill well before serving.

Rating: Fine. Fast. Crunchy.

Cucumber and carrot salad with tahini-ginger dressing

Adapted from Bon Appetit, Summer 2006. The original recipe calls for zucchini that's been salted and gently smashed, an approach that did not appeal to me. The theory is that it mimics the effect of a light cooking and gives it crannies for the zucchini to absorb the dressing. That theory sounds good, but all I could think of was that the nature of zucchini would not be improved by making it mushier, where as cucumber and carrot could deliver the crispness I was after.

Ingredients

3 small cucumbers, thinly sliced
2 medium carrots, thinly sliced
5 tablespoons tahini
¼ cup tamari or soy sauce
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sriracha
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1 garlic clove, finely grated
1 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
Toasted white sesame seeds and fresh cilantro leaves for garnish

Method

Place sliced cucumbers and carrots in a serving bowl.

In a small bowl, combine tahini, tamari, brown sugar, rice vinegar, sriracha, sesame oil, garlic and ginger. Mix well and toss as much as desired with the vegetables in the bowl. Garnish with sesame seeds and cilantro leaves. 

Rating: The tahini makes this dressing slightly sludgy and not the most attractive color, but it is flavorful and pairs well with the crisp veggies. Fast to fix with mostly shelf stable ingredients. (Obviously cucumbers don't count as shelf stable; those suckers turn to mush in the frig the minute you turn your back on them.)

Quick: Make me some bread

Is there anything better than a fresh loaf of yeast bread out of the oven? Possibly not. But woman does not live by yeast bread alone, and quick bread is the great utility player that fills the gap between having enough time, ambition and oomph to make that perfect risen loaf that takes hours, and no time at all. Quick breads — for when you're just slightly motivated. (Or have too many zucchini or bananas.) There's a demotivational poster in there somewhere.

The quick part is generally referring to the relatively short mixing time; figure on an hour and a half in between when you fire up the oven and when you actually remove it from the pan. Also figure in time to cool before eating or storing, because most quick breads reward waiting for a full cool down before attempting to slice them. Less mangling that way. 

Almond apricot bread with lemon thyme

From "Quick Loaves," by Jean Anderson, a book that features recipes in a variety of loaf forms, from quick breads to meatloaves. This book takes a quick mix approach, with one variety for quick cake mix approach and one for quick breads. The premise is that you keep the mix on hand in the freezer (it contains butter) so it's ready to pull out when you need it. If you plan ahead, it's fairly speedy, but otherwise it's not going to be a time saver the until the second batch you make. But you might want to after the first batch. She also makes batches of spice mix by the apparent vat, which I probably wouldn't go through while it was at peak freshness, so I opted for Penzey's cake spice instead since I have it on hand, but you could approximate hers with a generous half teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon ground ginger and a smidge of ground nutmeg.

Ingredients

2½ cups Quick Cake Mix (see below)
2 teaspoons fresh lemon thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon lemon zest (I used a mix of both)
1 teaspoon three-spice mix (see note)
½ cup chopped dried apricots
½ cup sliced almonds
¾ cup milk
1 extra large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

Preheat oven to 375. Grease and flour a loaf pan, or use the baking spray with flour in it.

Combine cake mix, thyme and or lemon zest and spice mix in a large bowl. Stir in apricots and almonds. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Mix milk, egg and vanilla. Pour into dry ingredients and just barely combine. The recipe specifies leaving it lumpy with whiffs of flour showing to avoid overmixing Pour into prepared loaf pan. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes. I had to bake this for much longer than the original range the recipe indicated to have a toothpick come out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan and then remove it to cool.

Quick cake mix

4 cups sifted flour
2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, chopped

Method

There are two ways to approach this one. 

The original recipe suggests mixing the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a food processor and then removing half of it to a bowl and adding half the butter to the food processor bowl and pulse until it looks like about the size of lentils. Then remove that bunch from the processor and repeat with the remaining half. Store in a gallon freezer bag, making sure to squeeze out all the air. You'll be using only portions of this for the various recipes, so you can refresh with more as you need, mixing any remaining mix together in the bag.

I get why she suggested that approach: There's definitely no way the processor is going to make consistent work out of that large a batch if you try to do it all at once. My take on that method was it would annoy me and get crumbs everywhere, so I instead just measured half the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in separate batches and then combined the two in the freezer bag. Either works; I just figured all that transferring of crumbs was going to make a hot mess that would annoy me more than measuring twice.

Rating: A nice loaf to have on hand for breakfast slathered with butter. The almonds seem to disappear in there once it's baked, but I'm sure there's a background note in their somewhere, and the apricots and cake spice give it a nice flavor. It popped right out of the pan, so points for loaf release. As for how I feel about the mix approach, ask me after I make my second recipe using the mix, and then we'll see if I make a third, which would require me to augment the mix.

Oh, and if you don't speak Midwestern and need a rating decoder ring, "nice" is a perfectly good thing. "Fine" is an OK thing, and "just fine," well, it's not actively bad, but we're certainly not actually raving about it. If we hate it? "It doesn't speak to me."

 

Maple nut bread

From Country Living's "Country Mornings Cookbook"

Ingredients

1 cup flour
¾ cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup finely chopped walnuts
¼ cup butter
⅔ cup milk
⅓ cup maple syrup
1 large egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping:
3 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan.

Combine flours, baking powder, salt and ¼ teaspoon cinnamon in a large bowl. Stir in ¼ cup walnuts. In a small bowl, combine melted butter, milk and syrup. Stir in egg and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry, stirring just enough to combine. 

Pour batter into prepared baking pan. Combine topping ingredients and sprinkle on top of the batter. Bake for 40-50 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack. 

Rating: Dave said nom nom, but I think that might mainly be because of the topping, which would make anything taste like breakfast. I found myself wondering if I put it on quinoa mixed with kale if it would taste inhalable. The loaf itself is more bread-like than some quick breads are. Carrot and zucchini bread, for instance, really seem more like moist cakes in loaf form, but the whole wheat in this one gives it a bit more solidity, which is not a bad thing when it comes to getting it out of the hot pan. About that: If like me you're used to automatically flipping a loaf upside down to remove it from the pan, be advised that the precious topping is going to try to scatter all over the counter. I just spooned it back on, but next time I might try levering the loaf out of the pan with a large metal spatula instead. 

Dark spices and coffee give this a darker color.

English honey loaf

From "Pillsbury's Best 1,000 Recipes: Best of the Bake-Off Collection." The winning baker was Mrs. Harry A. Winer of Kansas City, Mo., who was a winner in the senior category of whatever year that was.

Ingredients

2½ cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon allspice
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
⅓ cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
⅓  honey
1½ teaspoons lemon zest
½ cup cold strong coffee
½ cup chopped nuts
½ cup raisins

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan.

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and ginger in a small bowl and set aside.

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs, one at  time, beating well after each addition. Blend in honey and lemon zest. Add coffee and dry ingredients alternately, blending well after each addition. Stir in nuts and raisins. Pour into prepared baking pan and bake 55 to 65 minutes until it passes the toothpick test. (I found it took 65 minutes in my oven.) Let cool for a half hour before removing from pan and cooling fully on a baking rack. 

Rating: Reminiscent of ginger bread, only more breadlike than cakelike and not as sweet. Fine on its own, but better with a slather of butter to soften the spice. Decent texture, and it came out of the pan without a quibble or even the need to tack back a few bottom bits together.

Maxine's black walnut bread

From Midwest Living, August 1995. The recipe comes from Maxine Nelson of Indiana who made this winning recipe for the Elkhart County Fair. 

Ingredients

1 cup sugar
1 8-ounce carton sour cream
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1¾ cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped black walnuts

Method

Preheat oven to 325. Grease and flour an 8-by-4 loaf pan.

Combine sugar, sour cream egg and vanilla in a large bowl. (It did not specify using a mixer and I didn't feel the need of one.)

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir into creamed mixture. Fold in walnuts and pour into prepared pan. Bake for 65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing from pan to cool completely on a rack. 

Rating: This was the easiest to make out of all the recipes and the most pantry friendly. It also baked just exactly the amount of time specified and came out of the pan perfectly without resistance and without splitting the top. Decent texture and moisture thanks to the sour cream. Really needed no adornment, although I suppose one could apply butter if so desired. I can see why it passed muster with judges. Out of all of the recipes I tried, this one most nearly lives up to its "quick" name. A definite winner in the taste to effort ratio.

Kale salads aren't just for winter

Halloumi croutons are a nice touch.

Many of our local crabapple trees are in full bloom, signaling a seasonal shift. The early blooming varieties are shifting from canopy to carpet as spring waxes and wanes on its way to sudden summer.

So you might think kale season is about to be behind us, since it's often used as a reliable way to get greens in winter. But here's a reminder (to gardeners like me, at least) that kale sneaks up on you, so incorporating some throughout the growing season when the leaves aren't yet riddled with holes will leave you far less to deal with after frost hits.

Kale salad with halloumi croutons and preserved lemons

From Food & Wine, February 2024. I would link to it online, but I can't find it on their site. The original called for mint instead of lemon balm, but I don't do mint and I have an exuberant quantity of lemon balm growing even in winter, since it self sows wantonly and hitches a ride inside in pots.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots
2 tablespoons olive oil
1½ tablespoons Dijon mustard
1½ tablespoons sherry vinegar
1½ tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon maple syrup
½ teaspoon za'atar
¼ teaspoon kosher salt

2 bunches lacinato kale, stems removed and leaves coarsely torn or chopped
1 cup shredded purple cabbage
1 tablespoon thinly sliced preserved lemon peel, about 1-inch long
Canola oil for frying
1 8.8-ounce package halloumi cheese, patted dry and cut into ½-inch pieces
½ cup dried tart cherries
¼ cup fresh lemon balm leaves, chopped
¼ cup fresh parsley leaves, chopped

Method

Combine shallots, olive oil, mustard, vinegar, lemon juice, syrup, za'atar and salt in a small bowl.

Combine kale, cabbage and preserved lemon peel. Toss with ⅓ cup of the dressing and massage well into kale leaves. 

Heat ½ inch of canola oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add halloumi in a single layer. Fry, turning often, until golden brown on all sides. Remove from pan to drain on a paper towel on a plate. Let cool 5 minutes.

Add halloumi cubes, dried cherries, lemon balm and parsley to kale mixture. Serve along with the additional dressing available on the side.

Rating: Tangy. The combo pack of the salty preserved lemons and the lemon balm work well here. And crunchy cheese chunks are just fun. Nicely colorful. 

 

Kale and fennel salad with cherries

Adapted from Dan Buettner's "Blue Zones Kitchen: One Pot Meals," which aims to marry up those flavors we like with stuff that's also good for us and not so time-consuming that it discourages one from making them. I cut the amount of fennel in half because I find that unless it's roasted, fennel can easily overtake a dish. My take is that this serves 6 as a side salad.

Ingredients

1 bunch kale (dinosaur kale works well), stems discarded and leaves torn into bite-size pieces
½ fennel bulb, sliced very thinly (a mandoline does an admirable job, if you have one)
4 to 6 tablespoons apple balsamic vinaigrette (see below)
½ cup pitted fresh cherries
¼ cup pine nuts, toasted
Fennel fronds or other chopped fresh herbs for garnish

Dressing:

½ cup apple cider
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
4 teaspoons Dijon mustard
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves (if you've got lemon thyme, that's a bonus)
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Method

Combine dressing ingredients, either with a whisk or blender until emulsified. Place kale and fennel in a large bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the dressing and massage into the kale. Add more dressing to taste. Top with cherries, pine nuts and herbs. Chill until ready to serve. This benefits from having more time for the kale to absorb the dressing.

Rating: The dressing bears repeating. While it does a decent job of breaking down the kale, I actually appreciated the dressing more when I tried it with a simple lettuce and arugula salad with pepitas. As for the salad itself, it was a good counterpart to an otherwise brown meal. I liked the cherries and pine nuts both flavorwise and for looks. I also drizzled some of the dressing over some chicken before roasting and it worked well as a sort of marinade.

Tuscan kale salad with pecorino and lemon

From  Crate and Barrel

Ingredients

2 small heads of lacinato kale, stems and ribs removed, leaves coarsely chopped
3-plus tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 ounces Pecorino cheese
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

Method

Place kale in a large serving bowl. Sprinkle with kosher salt an a drizzle of some of the olive oil and then massage it in with your hands for a minute.

In a small bowl, combine lemon juice, mustard, 2 tablespoons grated Pecorino, ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of olive oil until combined.

Pour dressing over kale and toss to combine. Garnish with pine nuts and some Pecorino cheese shavings.

Rating: Super simple and fast to make, and sometimes the simple things are simply good at being what they are. Far less fuss than the other recipes and with fewer odd ingredients to assemble. Not quite as elevated perhaps as the other recipes in terms of ingredients and looks, but I still would feel fine serving it to company.

Super seedy kale salad

From Bon Appetit, Winter 2026, a recipe adapted for the home kitchen from Nick Curtola, executive chef at the Four Horsemen in New York.

Ingredients

For dressing:
1 large garlic clove, finely grated
⅓ cup olive oil
¼ cup almond butter
¼ cup fresh lemon juice (you'll use the zest of a lemon below, so I'd zest it first before juicing it)
¼ cup white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Calabrian chile paste
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons water

Salad:
2 tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup pine nuts (raw shelled sunflower seeds were listed as an alternative)
3 tablespoons raw shelled pumpkin seeds
Zest of 1 lemon
⅓ cup golden raisins
2 bunches Tuscan kale, ribs and stems removed and leaves thinly sliced

Method
For dressing, in a medium size bowl combine combine garlic, ⅓ olive oil, almond butter, lemon juice, vinegar, chile paste, onion powder, sugar, water and a large pinch of salt and whisk together well, (Incorporating the almond butter takes some vigorous whisking, so I recommend a large bowl than the ingredients would seem to call for to allow for splashing room.)

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium-size non-stick skillet over medium heat. Cook pine nuts and pumpkin seeds until golden brown, stirring as you go to avoid burning them. Remove from heat and add lemon zest, raisins and a generous pinch of salt.

Put about a quarter of the salad dressing in a large bowl. Add chopped kale and massage with your hands for a minute to combine. Add enough of the remaining dressing to coat to your liking. Then mix in a quarter of the nut-raisin mixture. Garnish with remaining mixture and serve.

You could pass the remaining dressing on the side for people to suit their taste. For us, adding all of it would have resulted in a completely drenched salad; perhaps the bunch size in the restaurant is different. At any rate, you won't mind leftovers of the dressing, which can be made ahead.

Rating: Dave, unprompted, called this a pleasant combination of flavors and textures. This is a perfectly lovely salad all around. The dressing has a nice balance; you detect a very subtle amount of heat but the almond butter and other flavors temper that. It's a nice combo of crunch between the kale and the nuts. It hits a cook's sweet spot of effort vs. outcome: Fairly minimal upfront effort with good enough for company outcomes. The dressing could have all sorts of uses. This was my favorite of the four recipes I tried and is going in the keeper pile, despite the price of pine nuts.

Leftover factor: Since we made the entire recipe, which is said to serve 4 (quite, quite generously) we had leftovers. We added grilled chicken and a tad more of the leftover dressing for a perfectly passable lunch. 

One more in the pile to try: Better Homes & Gardens posted a copycat recipe of Chick-Fil-A kale crunch salad. I've never been to one, so I can't vouch, but it looks interesting.

Yellow label tea, only it's red

 

What the L?

This morning I opened up a new box of Lipton tea, only to be confronted by tea bags that now sport a white L reversed on a red background. It's actually fairly nice looking, and I give them no notes about typography choice. But really, why?

This move was apparently made nearly a year ago, and I've certainly bought the multi-sleeve pack of tea at least once in that time but this is the first time we've encountered it, which probably says something about local store stocking....

At the time it was announced, Food Business News reported that the rebrand was a move to “refresh the image of the brand and keep relevant with consumers.” I'm sure there were focus groups involved that told them so. 

Like most repackaging moves companies make, I fail to see how this will make them more relevant with consumers. (Oh, my tea has a snazzy L on it so I feel more hip while drinking it??) At least they didn't make themselves unrecognizable on the shelves, as many brands do when they tread down that path. But the part that puzzles me in this case is the box still retains its trademarked (literally) Yellow Label black tea verbiage when the label side that's most visible is in fact, no longer yellow. (If you flip it over, there is a residual yellow label of a sort.) It's a choice, but one that's kind of a head-scratcher.

The box notes that Lipton Yellow Label tea is iconic. I would concur. It's the basic tea many of us grew up with, and while I certainly have developed near addiction levels of devotion to some Harney's products, Lipton still wins points for what it is: a reliable, basic black tea that's comparatively value priced as tea aisle offerings go. 

But when I googled to learn more about this brand shift, it hit me why they went with the red. Much better favicon than that yellow: