SLOPPY JOES — UPDATED FOR THE 21ST CENTURY.
This fall, I became the part-time lunch lady at my kids’ school. People want to know two things: Do I have to wear a hairnet? Will I make sloppy joes? The answers: no, and of course. Just three weeks into my tenure at their independent school in the Portola neighborhood, I served 260 sloppy joes to an appreciative audience that ranged in age from 3 to 63. For the staff, the pans of tomato-y ground beef, spiked with Worcestershire sauce, vinegar and brown sugar, were a nostalgic reminder of the school lunches of their youth; for the youngest students, this may have been their first time sampling the sandwich, whose storied origins point, variously, to a cafe in Iowa, a restaurant in Havana and a bar in Key West, Fla.
Adults tend to underestimate kids all the time. As a parent of two, I find I’m guilty of it — just recently I realized my 6-year-old is perfectly capable of dressing himself, of spreading peanut butter and jelly on bread, of teaching his 4-year-old brother to play tic-tactoe.
This is especially true when it comes to food. We expect kids to be picky, to prefer plain foods, to shudder at the sight of a green vegetable. At school, parents stop me in the hallway to tell me, incredulous, that their kids are eating the coleslaw, the turkey tetrazzini, the black bean soup we’re serving for lunch. We don’t cook down to these kids; the hope and the expectation is that they’ll come to appreciate — even love — good, nourishing food (peer pressure helps convince almost every student to try something for the first time).
Prior to making them for school lunch a few weeks back, it had been years since I made sloppy joes. It turns out they’re just as delicious as I remember, and the combination of seasoned ground meat and a squishy bun is a good place to start. But having just made massive pans of the original version at school, I wanted to riff on it a little, so at home I cooked the ground beef with shallots, red curry paste and coconut milk until it was saucy and a little sweet. This matrix spooned on a soft roll or even over rice would make a fine dinner. But a nouveau joe, I reasoned, requires a nouveau bun, and so I made some drop biscuits flavored with coconut and green onions. The biscuits are less flaky and buttery than some, but that is by design; they’re sturdy enough to split and top with the rich meat without falling apart, with an open crumb that absorbs the coconut milk gravy.
It’s a new — some might say an adult — take on an old favorite. But I know better than to underestimate these hungry kids: Maybe I’ll make this version of sloppy joes for school lunch soon.