As If By Magic - Bee Wilson 🌞

As if by magic

‘Why would I want to go to all that trouble just for
me? My answer is: If you like good food, why not
honour yourself enough to make a pleasing meal
and relish every mouthful?’
Judith Jones, The Pleasures of Cooking for One

One of the things that you miss out on when cooking every meal as a single
person is that moment of solace when someone tells you to put your feet up
and wait until dinner is ready. But it’s possible to recreate this restful
feeling with baking tray or roasting tin cookery, except that you are that
generous person who is telling yourself to relax and wait.

I find the sudden interest in ‘sheet pan’ cooking, as it is known in the
States, over the past few years to be fascinating. Anything that can be
cooked on a tray in the oven now is, from full English breakfast to
bibimbap.

Roasting tin food is the younger sibling of the 1990s roasted vegetable
trend discussed on page 21. Most households have had baking trays and
ovens for many decades but – according to Google trends – it has only been
since 2009 that the term ‘sheet pan’ has risen in interest. At the time of
writing, #sheetpandinner is a huge trend on Instagram.

‘This is cooking I could actually do,’ said my sister, picking up my copy
of The Green Roasting Tin by Rukmini Iyer, a book which every twenty
something I know holds dear because it makes cooking affordable
vegetarian food so easy and yet somehow stylish.

Whether I am cooking for myself or for others, I turn to roasting-tin
cooking on days when I feel overloaded and want a bit of peace. It’s a way
to get the taste and nutrition of homemade food without the effort of
homemade food. It seems like a modern way of cooking but I am struck that
it is actually a very old one. Until the twentieth century, to own your own
oven was a relatively rare thing and people would take casseroles full of
raw ingredients to the baker, paying a few coins to have them cooked in the
baker’s oven.

Cooking things all-in-one in the oven can feel like a kind of
enchantment: as if the food has cooked itself. As Diana Henry writes in
From the Oven to the Table (my favourite of all the sheet-pan cookbooks),
‘although I know I’m the one who has smeared the bird with butter, mixed
the crumble with my fingers or halved the peppers and turned them in olive
oil, I always feel, when I take food out of the oven, that someone else has
cooked it’. You get all the goodness of the cooking smells with a fraction of
the effort. This is the kind of cooking I do on days when I want to avoid
eating a takeaway. I often put a tray of roasted vegetables into the oven
alongside whatever else I am cooking, to get the most out of the oven’s heat
and to get ahead on tomorrow’s lunch. The only thing to be said against
oven cooking is that compared to hob cooking, it is not very energy
efficient so it makes sense to stash a few things in the oven at a time, if
possible. Having said this, human energy matters too and if switching the
oven on is what will get you happily fed, I’m all in favour of that. These
sheet-pan dishes all make two portions – one for tonight and one for
tomorrow – but you can double the quantities if cooking for four.

Paneer Jalfrezi with Potatoes

One night, home alone and feeling tired, I wished that someone would
come along and make me a dish of spiced jalfrezi with red peppers.
Eventually, I realised that this person would have to be me. But the oven
also played its part. This took me only two songs of prep followed by
another song to clean up and after that I had 35 minutes clear to sit and wait
as the scent of cumin, cinnamon and ginger wafted from the kitchen. Adapt
to whatever vegetables you have in the fridge.

Makes 2–3 portions

200g (7oz) block of paneer, cut into 2cm cubes
2 red peppers, deseeded and cut into strips
1 red onion, peeled and cut into wedges
3 large tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses (or leave it out and add 1
tablespoon rice vinegar at the end)
300g (10 1/2oz) (new potatoes, halved or quartered if large
5cm (2in) piece of ginger, grated
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and grated
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
¼ teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 tablespoons oil

To serve

Chopped fresh coriander, yoghurt, flatbreads, lime pickle

Put everything into a large roasting tin or sheet pan and add ¾ teaspoon of
salt. Toss with your hands until thoroughly combined. Put into the oven, set
it to 200°C fan (400° F) and roast for 30 minutes, or until the paneer is
browned and the potatoes are tender. If you didn’t use pomegranate molasses,
sprinkle with a tablespoon of rice vinegar and toss gently. Serve sprinkled with
coriander, perhaps with some yoghurt, flatbreads and lime pickle on the
side.

Thanks Bee, get out your sheet pans everybody!