Molly Yeh Makes Dinner Fun With Mozzarella Stick Salad and Sloppy Joe Pitas

Television personality, best-selling author and food blogger Molly Yeh is stopping by the TODAY kitchen to cook up a couple of her favorite comforting recipes from her new cookbook, "Home Is Where the Eggs Are: Farmhouse Food for the People you Love." She shows us how to make a fresh green salad with mozzarella stick croutons and spiced sloppy Joe pita pockets — perfect for kids … and those who are kids at heart.

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Sloppy Joe Pitas by Molly Yeh

Growing up, I was extremely neutral about sloppy Joes, but I was inspired to revisit the concept after watching "It Takes Two" for the hundredth time, in which the rich Olsen twin takes her first bite of one at summer camp and loses her dang mind.

Like most things that will allow it, I gave it the shakshuka treatment. That is, I projected the flavors of my go-to shakshuka onto this format, and, well, a star was born. She will not answer to Slop-Shuka, and her artist rider consists of funky preserved lemon, salty feta, sour pickles, and the much less sloppy vessel of a thick, fluffy pita pocket.

Mozzarella Stick Salad by Molly Yeh

The only food groups that I was ever really forbidden to eat growing up contained the words "cheese" and "fry," so … cheese fries or fried cheese. The occasional fried food was fine, and cheese was encouraged in my mom's life mission to ensure I got enough calcium, but the two concepts were kept very far from each other. No matter how many times I'd ask for a post-skating-practice concession stand cheese fry or mozzarella stick, I was always met with something along the lines of how they'd clog my arteries. Now that I'm a grown-up, it's really cool that I can eat mozzarella sticks whenever I want, but of course I inherited some guilt about it, so I counteract it by eating mozzarella sticks on top of a salad.

While the idea of plopping an already perfect food on top of a salad might seem kinda kitschy, when mozzarella sticks are put on a bed of peppery crunchy arugula and briny olives with a bright creamy marinara dressing, they actually somehow become even better versions of themselves. They're a solo star and a team player, a regular LeBron James.

If you like those family-friendly recipes, you should also try these:

Meatball-Stuffed Biscuits by Molly Yeh

Everything Bagel Mac and Cheese by Molly Yeh

This article was originally published on TODAY.com