Hmmmmmmmm.
My favorite meal on the planet is the "Trust Me" menu at Sugarfish, a sushi place with a couple of locations around the Southern California area. The menu has some a la carte options, but really you have three choices: the "Trust Me," the "Trust Me Lite," and the "Nozawa" (a.k.a. "Trust Me Mega"). You tell your server how hungry you are, and then you sit back, trust, and allow the joy to happen.
That is what I need you to do here. Trust, and allow the joy to happen.
During quarantine, I got really into making my own ramen. I made it in the biggest possible pain-in-the-butt way that I could, because honestly: What else did I have to do? Might as well spend two days making soup!
Except I don't always want to spend two days making soup. Sometimes - like last night - I want truly excellent ramen, except I want it now.
Enter: This absolutely spectacular (ifIdosaysomyself) broth, which blends in hints of lemongrass and ginger to make it a perfect, ever-so-slightly-spicy base for noodles. It's about two hours start to finish (much faster than most stock recipes), because of a little secret: While it tastes 100% homemade, it actually involves a little cheating (ssh).
I would like to officially announce that I shall be commencing my residency as "That Blogger Chick Who Won't Shut Up About Her Instant Pot." I can't help it; it makes me feel like a GENIUS.
Enter the dish I fully went ahead and improvised the other night, because I happened to have chicken thighs and mushrooms in the refrigerator, because everybody likes cream, and because my son requires pasta to be present in 100% of his meals. Presto: Creamy Chicken & Mushroom Tetrazzini. (I'm not sure this is technically tetrazzini, but whatever: My recipe, my rules.)
What You Need:
Which one do you want? That one. And that one. And that one.
Noritake China Blue Hammock Serving Dish
I do not eat tacos. I will, on occasion, eat a burrito (and only "on occasion" because if I were to eat burritos as often as I would like to, I would become a burrito myself), but hard-shell tacos aren't something that's ever appealed to me. Don't they, like, break apart into tiny, shard-like pieces which then a) hurt you and b) result in the deliciousness inside getting out, which, as I gather, is not the point?
Noritake Blue Hammock Dinnerware | HomeGoods Macrame Placemats (similar from World Market)
You guys sent SO MANY RECIPES! My stomach thanks you, as does my wallet - because something I really appreciated was that so many of the ideas you sent - and please keep them coming - use normal-ish ingredients that I already have in my cupboard, as opposed to, say, saffron threads (WHY must saffron be so expensive?).
The first recipe I decided to try was one for Garlicky Chicken with Lemon-Anchovy Sauce. It was sent over by Mimi, who called it "one of the best things I've ever eaten." Sounds good to me.
Remember when I started this site, and I didn't know how to cook, but pretended I did because I thought I was supposed to know how to do things if I was going to write about them? (I abandoned that ethos pretty quickly, but there was definitely a period when I authoritatively delivered tomato sauce recipes that included actual Prego - which I still enjoy as its own thing, because come on, Prego is delicious, but no longer add to meat to make "homemade bolognese.") My meal repertoire at that point was mostly a rotation of roast chicken from a recipe I'd found in Allure in the '90s and Bertoli four-cheese tortellini with, yes, Prego.
But writing this site inspired me to do many, many (many many many) things I never would have done otherwise, and among them was learning my way around a kitchen. I don't consider myself a "food blogger," obviously - I consider myself a person who likes food, and writes about it, but who still has to solicit advice from Google and my next-door neighbor Alisa whenever I run into something tricky. And while I might make little adjustments to recipes (usually more salt, less pepper, because in my opinion pepper should be illegal) I wouldn't ever really presume to have improved upon an actual recipe written by an actual food person. I always assume, in other words, that everybody who has ever come up with and published a recipe is a better cook than I am, and I should probably sit down and listen.
And then, last night, this cool little thing happened: I found a recipe I wanted to make on The Kitchn, and as I was reading it I thought...hm. Some of this doesn't sound like it'll work quite right.
I first discovered a version of this meal about six months after I started blogging, when a reader sent me a Giada recipe for a dish called "Chicken Vesuvio" (as an aside, the photos I took of the dish are terrible...but also kind of cool examples of something I realized very early on that I had to work on). Over time that recipe evolved into the dish you see here, which is one of our all-time family favorites. Even when I think, "ehhh, not in the mood for chicken"…I am always in the mood for this. It's that good.
Oh - and this is an important part: it uses chicken thighs, which are apparently a thing that nobody wants to buy, because they are hella cheap. So cheap that I just said "hella." (They're also hella good.)
Chicken With Artichoke Hearts (serves 3-4)
Hm.
OK, so I think I might have done something wrong here.
It's pretty likely, actually, mostly because while this is a preparation (baked chicken over vegetables) that I do often, I've never ventured into yogurt-marinating territory before. It sounds great; I've just never thought to try it. And so when reader Mary suggested a twist on my Skillet Chicken And Potatoes incorporating a yogurt, lemon juice and garlic marinade, I thought: YES.
There are two especially great things about this recipe, which is based on one that I spotted in People awhile back (I tore the page out and carried it around in my purse for weeks because it looked so good that I didn't want to forget to make it):
1) It requires about ten minutes of hands-on work and exactly one pot's worth of cleanup, making it great for busy weeknights;
2) It costs about $12 (and easily feeds 4). And that's only if you go for the fancy, organic chicken.
I was going to pick up some thighs, but my neighbor was all, "Oh, if they have the spatchcock, you have to get it."
