Sheet Pan Chicken Tikka

February 16, 2023February 12, 2023 by akc

This Sheet Pan Chicken Tikka is another entry in the “chicken and veggies on a sheet pan” dinner category. I’ve made it many times and always as written, though I do tend to skip the finishes.

I like the combination of potatoes and cauliflower here, and in particular that they aren’t heavily spiced. You could certainly dust them with some of the spices used in the marinade, but I like the contrast between the chicken and the veggies. And you should make the lightly pickled onions she suggests, as that zing goes very well. (We typically have pickled red onions on hand and just use those, though depending on how long they’ve been sitting sometimes they aren’t quite as pungent as I’d like for this application.)

I can usually get the veggies prepped in about 15 minutes, so the chicken can get at least that minimum amount of time in the marinade. For maximum flavor, I pull up the skin on the chicken thighs and rub some of the marinade under the skin, and I don’t brush off the excess like she tells you to (I’ve never had trouble with it burning, but your oven may have other ideas). In general I make the full recipe of veggies, which fills the sheet pan, and marinade the full amount of chicken, but only half of it goes in the oven. The other half goes in the freezer to make dinner some other night even easier.

A pile of roasted cauliflower florets and potato cubes rests on a white plate. They are flicked with cumin seeds and topped with pickled red onions.Next to them is a chicken thigh coated in an orangey sauce that has been baked on. — Sheet Pan Chicken Tikka from The Smitten Kitchen Blog.

Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter

February 6, 2023February 4, 2023 by akc

This Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter is the cover dish for Smitten Kitchen Keepers and Deb’s fans immediately went wild making it when she released the recipe on the blog on publication day.

For this recipe, you roast a head of garlic in a bunch of butter and then make a sauce out of that and a ton of baby spinach. This was super easy to make, although looking at her photos on the blog now I can see I definitely should have added more pasta water to the sauce.

I roasted the garlic a couple of days ahead of time because I already had the oven on that evening. I did it in two ramekins because I don’t have small enough baking dish. That worked out really well. When it came out of the oven I let it cool a bit, then got the garlic cloves out of the peels and scraped it all into one ramekin, which I covered with foil and shoved in the back of the fridge. On the night I made this, I threw it into the microwave to melt the butter. I didn’t have quite as many brown butter solids, but I think if I did a little bit less butter (and then added the rest after roasting, don’t worry) I could get a bit more browning.

On the night I served this, I made a full batch of the sauce using a 5oz box of baby spinach, but just made half the amount of pasta (thin spaghetti, which worked out just fine) and used about half the sauce to dress it.

This is not an in-your-face spinach dish, which surprised me. It’s very buttery and the garlic flavor was surprisingly mild. Mine was a little bit under-seasoned, because I neglected to taste the sauce. But that’s on me, I missed a cue in the recipe (“Pour the spinach sauce…”) that would have told me that I didn’t have the consistency right. But it was still tasty! I think you do want to be careful with the salt here, because you’ll be adding more with the pasta water. Next time I’ll keep that in mind and make sure to taste and adjust after I make the spinach sauce.

I put the rest of the spinach mix into the freezer, covering the top with some plastic wrap since it didn’t quite fill the container. I imagine the vibrant green color will change, but am interested to see how it holds up otherwise. It’ll be nice to pull that out sometime when we just want a quick and easy meal, or when I’m looking for something for lunch for a couple of days.

I did serve a protein with this, but I didn’t make a veggie side. I figure that we each ate an amount of spinach equal to the amount I’d use for side salads, and it was nice to not have a third element going on a weeknight.

A shallow white bowl nearly fills the frame. A tangle of thin spaghetti is heaped in the middle. The pasta is coated in a green sauce with lots of flecks of spinach throughout. — Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter from *Smitten Kitchen Keepers.*

(A Riff On) Old School Baked Ziti

January 16, 2023January 8, 2023 by akc

We were spending New Year’s Eve with some friends and decided to bring a baked ziti to share, and this Old School Baked Ziti immediately jumped to mind. I’ve made it a couple of times previously and it’s simple and delicious and I knew it would lend itself well to being riffed on.

For this variation, we omitted the sausage (we were feeding a vegetarian). To backfill a bit of the flavor I added a heaping tablespoon or so each of crushed red pepper, dried basil, dried oregano, and fennel seeds. And lots of garlic. To fill it out a bit I used a huge onion and about 5oz of spinach. For cheese, we used a mix of mozzarella and parmesan, and also threw in some ricotta we had leftover from making ravioli.

We assembled this and then baked it at our friends’ house, where it came out perfectly, and was cozy meal for a cozy night in.

A corner piece of baked ziti sits on a small white plate edged in red and black stripes. The ziti is made with a ribbed penne, and is coated in melty, browned cheese. It is falling apart and looks delicious. — Some of the leftover Old School Baked Ziti from the Smitten Kitchen blog.

Whole Wheat Raspberry Ricotta Scones

January 11, 2023January 10, 2023 by akc

These Whole Wheat Raspberry Ricotta Scones were one of the first Deb recipes my husband made for me when things started getting serious. As it’s the 10th anniversary of our first date this month (how?!) he made them again. They are delightful — light and just barely sweetened. The raspberries melt into the scone.

The first time he made them, he copied the recipe out of my copy of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook while I was otherwise occupied. “This was early enough that it still felt like sneaking around.” He made the dough at his place and brought them to mine to bake them off, where they came out “woefully undercooked. But they’re OK this time because I put them back in for a few more minutes.”

These come together very quickly. He made them and popped them into the oven, and had just enough time to clean up the kitchen and make eggs before they came out and cooled for a couple of minutes.

I asked what he likes about the recipe, and he pointed to a formatting choice Deb made. He didn’t have a pastry blender (we still don’t) and she includes instructions to make these with and without one. She also makes it easy to see in the recipe by breaking out the step that uses the pastry blender into separate “with and without” paragraphs. Knowing exactly what to do made him confident that he could make them.

While I can’t promise that making these scones for someone will lead to marriage, I can promise that you’ll have a lovely morning if you do.

A partially eaten scone on a white plate, with some crumbs in the background. The scone is square, lightly golden brown, and has spots of pink here and there. — The Whole Wheat Raspberry Ricotta Scones from *The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.*

Essential Raised Waffles

December 31, 2022December 31, 2022 by akc ♥ 1 Comment

I like to have some sort of special, sweet carb at breakfast on Christmas Day. Ideally cinnamon buns, but those are finicky to make yourself. I did it last year and they turned out OK but not great. Also I did not like the part where I had to get up early for them to do the second rise. (In our very cold kitchen, where they did not rise until I tried to turn our microwave into a proofing box.)

This year, I had picked out a Deb recipe that does the second rise in the fridge and tried to set my expectation that I would enjoy a bun with my second cup of coffee. But I decided to switch to waffles at the last minute, because I wanted to relax instead of doing all the cooking past me had decided I would do on Christmas Eve and Day. We don’t make waffles often — maybe once or twice a year — so they feel a bit special.

I don’t have a recipe I’m in love with, so I decided to see if Deb had something that used ingredients I already had on hand. I settled on the Essential Raised Waffles on the Smitten Kitchen blog. Technically they aren’t a Deb recipe but since this project really doesn’t have any rules it doesn’t matter.

What I liked about this was that most of the work is done the day before, and it’s nothing particularly complicated. I was also very interested in something that would have a little more flavor than your typical waffle batter that you mix right before you make them. I opted to let ours rise in the fridge instead of the counter and was very happy with the flavor. I’m not sure the volume increased that much but I made a half batch so it’s hard to tell. Christmas morning, I was able to finish the batter while the waffle iron heated up.

Because these are so light they cooked up really fast. I have an older, non-ceramic version of the Presto FlipSide Belgian waffle maker. I got 2 and 3/4 waffles out of a half recipe, but I could have put a little more batter in the two full waffles. They were pretty much perfect at 4 minutes. We enjoyed them with a little bit of butter, some frozen blueberries I warmed up, and syrup.