At the start of a new year, predictions are invariably made.
“Pistachios are in, hazelnuts are out,” I hear on a podcast on the BBC, while assembling a simple tray bake for dinner. It’s said with the conviction of a seer. Sauvignon Blanc is out, Bacchus grapes are back. Honey: out; peanut butter: in. Flavored gin: in the bin; creamed liqueurs are here! “Swicy” — sweet and spicy — is the new “swalty,” we’re told, as everyone looks for the next salted caramel. Who knew? I inspect my simple tray bake — chicken and chickpeas, potatoes and peppers: It’s familiarity, it’s timelessness. It seems almost quaint.
Recipe: Chicken and Chickpea Tray Bake
Predictions used to be something of a hunch, everyone’s best guess about what would take off in a given year. People traveled back and forth, saw something on television, read the latest cookbooks or looked things up online. Trends churned, at least to my mind, a bit more slowly.
Today it all spreads far faster, mostly on social media platforms. Somebody eats somewhere, and before you know it, a line forms around the corner. A dish, a diet, a tool can suddenly go viral and be seemingly everywhere. An air-fryer is great, I have no doubt, but what about the toaster?
When it comes to cooking, the internet can be a limitless source of information, but this sense of endless choice can be misleading. What you’re seeing amplified by the algorithm is just a very small number of dishes of the many, many in the world.
I’m no technophobe, but I want to hold on to the importance of the human hand in all this. Two cooks are never the same. We all bring a different set of memories and expectations to a dish. That we have our own memories of the same dish — roast chicken, chocolate cake — leaves space for the romance to come in: the thing an algorithm can never quite pin down.
These layers can be found in the ras el hanout spice mix I use in my chicken tray bake. Roughly translating as “head of the shop” or “top shelf,” this blend can have anywhere from eight to 80 (or more!) ingredients, depending on the region and on what the particular attar, or spice mixer, considers their own “best” version. The story behind it, according to Ghillie Basan in her “Flavours of Morocco,” claims that “a warrior, presumably one of the Arab invaders, created the mix with all the scents and flavors of the countries he has passed through. Rich in flavor and known to contain various aphrodisiacs, as well as several unknown ingredients, each spice merchant has his own recipe.”
So no two recipes are ever the same. My version, for example, has black pepper in it, cumin, cloves, allspice, coriander, nutmeg and cinnamon. Others see rose petals as crucial, but as Paula Wolfert writes in her “The Food of Morocco,” “Theoretically almost any addition is permissible.” This vast variation thwarts any attempt to find a definitive version.
It also makes every dish unique. Sprinkling ras el hanout over my chicken, before adding it to the other ingredients in an otherwise-familiar tray bake, means that what I make in my kitchen will be different from what is made in the next, and the next, and the next. It feels romantic, somehow, so different from the noise of social media, viral trends and predictions. It’s not either-or, I know: Algorithms are here, they’re there, they are everywhere and they are not going away. But so long as we still have shelves full of spices to reach for, we’ll always need a human being, standing on tiptoes to get to the top shelf, set to create a little bit of alchemy.
The post A Sheet-Pan Chicken Dinner With a Dash of Romance appeared first on New York Times.
