Lentil Sloppy Joes for All

If I were to offer the majority of the people in these United States a lentil sloppy joe, I suspect I might get, at best, a polite “no thank you.” Somewhere along the way, a line was drawn on American dinner plates.  Plants things—especially anything with a suspicious lima bean hue—were deemed a form of punishment.

History shows consuming plant pods meant you were poor.  Which might be where things initially went wrong.  But there is an odd self-righteous quality that some align with vegetables these days too.  It should not be considered ethical territory to consume something that has benefits for both you and the world.

It is just good sense.

I am not going to belabor these perks today. They are commonly known.

It really comes down to this.  When I get home on a Tuesday night, I typically do not want to handle something slippery that has the potential of giving me hemorrhagic colitis.  Perhaps eating a dead animal after an exhausting workday just cuts too close these days.

And I now think about the probability of death more than I should, thanks to our White House Clown. I do not know how much of a warning one gets when a looney tune from North Korea decides to hurl something atomic.  But in the off chance that humans have the potential to outrun a nuclear bomb, Brett and I do not own a car.  We are probably goners.

Anyway, after work I do not want to go grocery shopping just to pick up a somewhat freshly killed creature.  Entering a crowded store at 5 PM on a weekday would have surely been described in a circle from Dante’s Inferno if they had supermarkets in the 14th century. 

Lentils, on the other hand, are quietly waiting at home.  They do not easily decay, if left to their own devices, nor do they require much advanced planning to prepare. There are no videos circulating of sinister legume slaughterhouses. Plus they are cheap. 

This recipe is a take on sloppy joes, which is really all about the seasoning anyway. No one eats the sandwich for its association with high quality cattle.

So can we stop pretending a plant substitution is such a grave departure?  In almost every way it is better.

Using orange lentils is helpful, because they mash together and will look the part, but if you want the disheveled effect of a sloppy joe, you could try a more loosely formed version with a brown or French lentil. You will need some cumin and chili powder, plus another smoky spice like smoked paprika.  I found some chili powder that smells as if it was previously left in a grill for about twelve hours, which kills two birds with one stone.

A hot pepper of some sort is important too.  I like serranos because I was once told their level of heat is predictable.  I do not know if this is true, but to this day I still defer to them, as humans occasionally do even when supporting facts are slim.  You will also add more ketchup than you are probably comfortable with—it will seem like an awful lot, but it is crucial so dig deep and do it.

My favorite toppings are pickled onions and some blue cheese dressing, because I am not a monster.  But if you forgo animal products entirely, dairy can certainly be left off without judgment.  The recipe you see below is entirely vegan, pending your choice of bun, which is mainly a coincidence. Personally, I believe the enclosure of a good brioche bun is best, but any soft and squishy bread product will do.  

This is what I make when ancillary kitchen supplies are low. Sometimes I am not organized for dinner. I bet some days you are not organized for dinner, as well. The lentils can help with this.

There are serious matters that divide us. Sloppy joes should not be one of them.

Lentil Sloppy Joes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup orange lentils
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 shallot, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 serrano pepper, minced
• ¾ tsp kosher salt
• 1½ tsp cumin
• ½ tsp smoked chili powder
• ½ cup ketchup
• handful of cilantro, chopped (for garnish)
• 4 sandwich buns

Instructions:

In a medium saucepan, add the lentils and 3 to 4 cups of water (there should be about an inch of water above the lentils).  Cook uncovered on medium high heat for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the lentils are tender.

Heat a medium sauté pan and add the olive oil.  Add the shallot, garlic, and pepper and sauté until they soften.  Season with salt, cumin, and chili powder. Set aside.

Once the lentils are done add them to the pan, along with the ketchup, and stir to combine. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture thickens enough to hold its shape when tossed on a bun (which should take about 10 to 15 minutes).

Makes enough for four sandwiches

Notes:

1. Sometimes I also add a dash of Worcestershire, though be advised some versions have anchovies. (It will also add a bit more salt.)
2. Sandwich buns of any type can easily be frozen.  I find ones with higher fat content, like brioche, tend to defrost faster and make for a very quick supper.
3. If you are using smoked paprika and chili powder I would start with a ¼ teaspoon of each, but I suspect you may need to add a bit more chili powder to get the spice right.

A Butcher’s Orange Rosemary Cake with Pine Nuts, Oh Boston

My brother, Eric, texted me on March 8th to say, “It’s official. Apartment hunting in Boston is the worst possible experience.” 

He is right. 

When he and his girlfriend, Amanda, entered what would otherwise be reasonable search criteria into Craigslist—namely they wanted a dog-friendly place with in-unit laundry for less than 2,000 dollars per month—one entry in all of Boston proper came up.  And it was a scam listing.

Finding an apartment here is not for weaklings.  You need about 6,000 dollars upfront, to cover first and last’s months rent plus a realtor’s fee, which often involves forking over a couple grand to a bro in his mid-twenties so he can physically open the door and lie straight to your face that the apartment comes with a dishwasher.

Eric and Amanda are planning to move here from the D.C. area and when they came to visit last weekend, we stopped into a real estate agency, hoping some face-to-face contact might improve their chances.  Eric relayed the same reasonable criteria—minus the laundry, which I assured was an illusory ambition—and the realtor made the kind of face a crummy oncologist might give before awarding you a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Despite all of this, as we walked around the city, Amanda said she thought the people of Boston were nice.  To which I had a good laugh. The city was founded by Puritans, after all, and boasts a proud history as a place where angry mobs literally tarred and feathered people. It was ten degrees that day, which was not breeding any benevolence from inhabitants, either. 

While the city does not coddle, it does offer some fun.  We visited one of my favorite restaurants, Hojoko, a Japanese-style spot that until a few years ago, was a Howard Johnson.  They serve an addictive okonomiyaki and also offer something called wasabi roulette, wherein a pecan-sized nub of wasabi is encased in bits of raw fish and participants take turns eating similar pieces from a rotating dish until a poor soul stumbles upon the one with wasabi. This is the type of thing that the diseased people of Boston find hilarious. 

We also visited Eataly, which has imported pasta and limbs of meat hanging from the rafters, which is what sold Amanda on Boston, I think, once we discredited her nice Bostonian theory. We ended the night at a comedy club located on the third floor of a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square, whose floors will allegedly bow if enough people are on them.

So we toured the city, ate and drank to fight off the cold, and despite the gnarly weather and depressing housing prospects, had a good time.

Before they left for their 7 AM flight back to the land of the cherry blossoms, I tucked away a few slabs of this cake for the airport.

The recipe comes from a butcher named Dario who has a restaurant in Tuscany.  You can read more about its origin here.

To make it, you throw a couple oranges, rind and all, into the batter, along with some wine-soaked raisins. It is perfumed by fronds of rosemary and studded with pine nuts, which I never really kept around before, because I felt pecans could do the job of a pine nut when it came to pesto.  But I will now. 

The result is a fragrant, citrusy cake with a moist crumb. I typically soak the raisins in amaro along with a splash of sherry, because the recipe calls for vin santo, which I do not have. Although I have many characteristics of an eighty-year-old Italian man, drinking vin santo is not one of them.

Though the cake itself is not overly sweet, thanks to the dusting of granulated sugar, it has a sparkly top layer that looks like icy snow crystals. Plus it involves a tube pan. I love a good tube pan.

It also serves as a convenient metaphor for Boston.  Its ingredients are a bit finicky and at some points you feel like things are going all wrong.  The recipe calls for less than a cup of sugar, so it is by no means a saccharine dessert. Even the natural sweetness from the fruit is tamed by bitter notes from the orange peel and amaro.

It is a solid, reliable dessert made for sturdy people.  Just don’t call it nice.

A Butcher’s Orange Rosemary Cake with Pine Nuts

Adapted from Food52

Ingredients:

• ½ cup raisins
• ¼ cup amaro plus 2 tbsp of sherry (or 3 ounces of vin santo)
• ⅓ cup pine nuts
• 1½ oranges, unpeeled and halved (seeds removed)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ¾ cup plus 2 tbsp granuated sugar, divided
• ½ cup plus 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1½ cups plus 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 long fresh rosemary sprigs

Instructions:

In a small saucepan, heat the raisins and amaro-sherry (or vin santo) on high heat until simmering. Turn off the heat and let sit 30 minutes. (So the raisins can plump and soak up the liquid.)

Set the oven to 325 degrees and roast the pine nuts on a baking sheet for 8 to 10 minutes, until they are golden brown and smell nutty. (Rotate the baking sheet halfway through to ensure even cooking.) Let cool.

Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees.

Grease (I use butter) and flour a tube pan (or angel food cake pan), tapping out the extra flour.

Place the orange halves cut-side down and slice longitudinally into ¼-inch slices. Leaving the peels attached, chop the slices into ¼-inch cubes.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, place the eggs, baking soda, baking powder, and ½ cup plus two tablespoons of sugar.  Using the whisk attachment, mix on medium-high speed until the mixture becomes lighter in color and thicker (3 to 4 minutes).

With the speed on medium, gradually pour the olive oil down the inner side of the bowl and mix until emulsified.

Turn the speed to low and mix in one-third of the flour until it is barely visible and then one-third of the raisins until just incorporated.  Stop the mixer to scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Repeat two more times, each time adding one-third flour and raisins and then stopping to scrape the bowl. 

Remove the bowl from the stand and fold in the oranges with a rubber spatula (no bits of flour should be visible, but do not over mix). Let the batter rest for 10 minutes.

Scrape the batter into your prepared pan (it will be very thick and loaded with oranges) and gently smooth the top with your spatula.  Scatter the pine nuts over top and then sprinkle with the remaining ¼ cup of sugar.

Cut the rosemary sprigs into manageable pieces (I like mine a couple inches in length).  Stick the tufts into the batter so that they lay on the surface in a design of your choosing.

Bake the cake for 10 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 325 degrees and bake for another 30 to 40 minutes, or until the cake is golden and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. (Rotate the cake once during the process to ensure even baking.)

Place the cake on a wire rack and let cool to room temperature.

Run a knife around the inside of the pan and gently flip the cake upside down to free it, letting it fall gently into your hand (or nearby plate).  Quickly flip the cake back and onto a serving platter, so that the pine nuts and rosemary are facing up again.

Notes

1. If you have pastry flour, 1¾ cups of it can be used in place of the all-purpose flour and cornstarch.
2. The cake can be covered and left at room temperature overnight, but I would freeze any leftovers beyond a day or two.

Gluten Free Salvadorian Cheese Pound Cakes, When Things Go Missing

My parents used to host an annual holiday party. About fifteen minutes before showtime, a gang of flickering votives would appear in the downstairs windows. My siblings and I would be summoned for shoe patrol, which was met with groans, and meant our shoe piles in the laundry room were rounded up and tossed somewhere out of sight.

My mother would then take the miniature crustless cheesecakes she baked in holly leaf paper wrappers and arrange them on a silver tray.  Each one was jeweled with a single red canned cherry.  They were meant to last for only one bite and I could easily have consumed them all by myself, bite by bite, had it not have been for the other guests.

The dessert only made an appearance around Christmastime. Its presence indicated that everything was going to be okay, except maybe for the Keds cast into internment.

When I think about those cherry-topped cheesecakes I feel a little heartsick.  They remind me of a time when my family unit was intact, before my parents divorced and went on to become people whose pairing, in retrospect, did not make sense.

They remind me that my childhood home was sold, painted forest green, and now hosts a blowup Santa on the roof well into Valentine’s Day.  (I am sure my mother would have something to say about that state of the laundry room these days, as well.)

They remind me I can never return to that place.

A teeny dessert with a cherry on top will never taste like it did at eight years old.  Its existence indicated there were grownups that also valued tiny little cheesecakes, and these adults would be the kind to protect you, and nothing would ever change.

I suppose I could make them for myself these days, but doubt they would feel the same.

I was recently testing a recipe for a friend and it reminded me of those little cakes from childhood, adult-sized. You would never know it was gluten-free, and probably would not care after tasting it either, regardless of your stance on wheat. 

The gluten-free cakes are slightly savory, but because of this they are easily eaten for breakfast with coffee, as is said to happen in El Salvador where the recipe originates. You can leave off the lemon zest in a pinch, though its presence melds the sweet and salty aspects together seamlessly.  You cannot leave off the pecorino cheese, however odd its presence seems. It adds addictive umami. Cheesy pound cake is a pretty apt description.

They will not replace the departure of those cherry-topped cheesecakes, but that is not their role. They stand in their own right as a present-day source of comfort and of remembrance.  There is an article in The New Yorker from February 13th called “Losing Streak” that sums up this evolution perfectly.

“Disappearance reminds us to notice, transience to cherish, fragility to defend. Loss is a kind of external conscience, urging us to make better use of our finite days.”

These cakes represent this, in food form.  It was never really about the cheesecakes, after all.

Gluten Free Salvadorian Cheese Pound Cakes

Adapted from Food52

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rice flour (see notes)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• ⅔ cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk Greek yogurt
• ½ cup pecorino cheese
• zest of one lemon
• sesame seeds, to top

Instructions:

Set the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 6-cup muffin tins with butter.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar on medium high until fluffy and white (about two minutes).  Scrape down the sides and then add the eggs in one at a time, with the mixer running on low.

Turn up the speed slightly and beat in the yogurt and cheese.  Take care, the mixture may splatter a bit.  At this point the batter will look slightly separated.

Remove the bowl from the stand and fold in the flour mixture and the lemon zest with a spatula, until just combined.

Fill the muffin tins mostly full, the batter will puff up slightly but will not significantly expand.  Sprinkle each with a pinch of sesame seeds.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the edges are browned and the middles spring slightly back when touched. 

Place the tins on a wire baking rack. When the cakes are cool enough to touch, run a knife around the edges of the cups to loosen them.

Makes 12 individual cakes

Notes:

1. I like them cooled to room temperature, but enjoy them even more after being chilled overnight in the fridge.  They take on the properties of cheesecake better in this form. They can be frozen, as well.
2. The recipe makes no distinction between brown or white rice flour.  I used brown and will again (there was no notable density from the extra fiber).
3. Hard cheeses like cojita or parmesan can also be used, but pecorino is what I keep around.