Two years ago: Dark Chocolate Coconut Macaroons One year ago: Strawberry-Rhubarb Soda Syrup The results were so good, half the vegetables didn’t make it to the dinner table because my husband and I kept plucking away at them. But, because I’m a heretic, or someone who at best inauthentically dabbles in Indian cooking, I didn’t want my tikka on skewers as it’s usually presented, but with some aloo gobi (cauliflower and potatoes) in there for more of a meat-and-potatoes type meal. The chicken tikka you see in restaurants is, in the words of Meera Sodha, “so luminously orange you could see it from space.” Fortunately, in her excellent Made In India cookbook - a collection of recipes aimed at dispelling the myth that Indian food is intimidating or complicated, intended for first-timers and/or seasoned cooks, using no wild goose chase ingredients, which means if I could stamp it with the praise hands emoji, I would - Sodha shares her family recipe. Another great solo act in this category is Melissa Clark’s Roasted Chicken with Potatoes, Arugula and Garlic Yogurt as charming for its flavors and textures as it is for the stop-you-in-your-tracks stunning work of Andrew Scriviani’s camera.īut all I’ve ever wanted to add to this lot is a riff on an Indian-spiced chicken that favors roasting over a saucy braise. The holy grail of the single-tray category I’d say is the 2014 Sheet Pan Suppers cookbook from Molly Gilbert, a paean to maximum ease, minimal cleanup and flavor intensification of roasting and broiling.

It shouldn’t be a radical concept - everything on a sheet pan, into the oven, roasted at once - but I think in these days of restaurant chef-driven home cooking, subrecipes and cooking with multiple components has become more the norm than it should. In fact, I wanted to talk about something that can fit nicely into the fifth item: sheet pan dinners, because I’m rather taken with them these days. All the best food writers are doing it! I kid, I kid. Meal delivery services, which take the recipe-selection, shopping and prep work out of cooking, making it go faster.Īnd so, with this, I am announcing that I’m leaving my job here at Smitten Kitchen LLC to go work for a meal delivery start-up.Contentment with quick simple meals ( scrambled egg toasts, frozen tortellini, sandwiches) and/or a deep arsenal of great recipes that come together quickly.Mastering the pressure-cooker, so long cooking times can be reduced to smidgens.Mastering the slow-cooker, so your dinner is ready when you get home.(Requires a desire to spend any part of the weekend prepping meals, which I, regrettably, do not.) Prepping and planning meals over the weekend so everything is mostly ready to go when you get home from work.Children, should you have them, happy to eat dinner at 8/9 p.m.In the game of weeknight cooking - which I feel, at best, is rigged and not in our favor especially if you (or you and your partner) are out working all day - our allies are as follows:

Blue apron cashew chicken stir fry