Sloppy turkey joes

Taking the sandwich to another level
I've mentioned before how my 'American' tastes were developed based on pre-packaged foods. The other (probably more direct) source of my American tastes was my elementary school cafeteria. There, I was introduced to chocolate milk, spaghetti, tacos, pizza and... sloppy joes. My brother and I would return home after school and beg our mom to make these exotic foods for us. Which is what led to the pre-packaged varieties, because how would my mom, a recent immigrant, have any idea how to make such foods?


For sloppy joes, we relied on the Manwich canned sauce, a tangy, sweet sauce which was mixed into some ground beef. They had a particularly successful ad campaign going on in the early 80s which had us hooked (I am a sucker for Mad Men in every sense of the term).


Suffice it to say, I have not had sloppy joes since then. They'd been relegated to the back of my mind, a reminder of a more innocent (naive?) time. To my surprise then, I was drawn to a recipe for Chipotle Sloppy Joes I found while searching for some quick and easy dinner ideas. The only ingredient that was foreign to me were the chipotle chiles in adobo sauce. The recipe only required one chile and little bit of the sauce. Seemed a bit wasteful to me but I figured I could use it in some other Mexican/Tex-Mex recipe in the future. And, as I discovered later, there is a reason you don't need the entire can--the stuff is really spicy and adds a tremendous amount of flavor.


I used ground turkey instead of beef, and bulked up the veggie quotient by also adding some red onion to about half a chopped red bell pepper. In went tomato paste, the single adobe chile (chopped) and cumin, then an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce. Salt and pepper added at every stage to taste.


Meanwhile, I toasted some sourdough bread.


I skipped the sauted onion step of the original recipe and instead added a few thin slices of red onion.


And what sandwich would be complete without pickles? This is my third attempt, a brine of just salt water--the most basic pickle ever, probably the closest to those Vassar pickles I've been trying to recreate. I think I do miss the tang of vinegar though, so I'll probably return to a variation of my second attempt.


Yum, this was one of the more satisfying meals I've made for myself in a long time. I loved the chipotle flavor--I'm going to use it in everything now (you'll see).

P.S. NL--is this enough meat??