No Ordinary Joe

In a (perhaps futile) quest to health things up a bit, I made the drastic decision to give up lazy Sunday brunches, delicious trips to lively restaurants, and the beckoning glow of ice cream shops for the month of March. However, even though I can't eat out for a couple of more weeks, my cravings for certain dishes are still managing to get the best of me.

Having made pasta fagioli to go with my Irish soda bread, I was left with a container of fresh sage begging to be employed in my kitchen. One of our favorite places to eat is Longman & Eagle, a Michelin star restaurant conveniently a ten minute drive from our apartment doorstep. If it's after brunch hours, the significant other has the tendency to order their Wild Boar Sloppy Joe. With the right amount of heat and sweetness, this dish knocks it out of the park. The official description of the dish includes crispy sage and onion and pickled jalapeno.

As is the case with sloppy joes, this recipe involved a lot of "a little of this" and "a little of that." I began by crisping up some leftover pancetta (also from the pasta fagioli) for 10 minutes and using the leftover fat to crisp up some sage which we dipped in a flour mixture to replicate tempura as best we could. Next up was carmelizing some onions, browning some bison and then putting the mean, onions, and a made-up sloppy joe sauce together to simmer. We used ketchup, mustard, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce with no real rhyme or reason. With some pickled jalapenos added at the last second and crisp sage thrown on the top, we were left with a perfectly suitable substitute of one of L&E's best dishes.