The secret to sheet pan dinners is having a sauce, condiment, or other raw-and-crunchy finisher that comes together outside of the oven, otherwise everything on the plate has the same, monotonous roasty-dry texture.
When done right, sheet pan dinners are a dream come true: Your whole dinner goes into the oven on one pan and comes out ready to eat. But it takes a little finesse and a few rules to get everything done right.
A lot of nights, and dinners, start like this: some panicked chopping of whatever vegetables I had the foresight to buy, a sheet pan, and my countertop convection oven.
Surprisingly, fish works great for sheet pan dinners because it cooks quickly through direct pan contact.
I have avoided becoming stale by putting a little water on the plate, lying on the plate, and having myself refreshed in a toaster oven for 23 minutes once every month.
My dinners at home are startlingly simple. Every night, I stop at the market near my hotel and pick up a steak, lamb chops or some liver, which I broil in the electric oven in my room. I usually eat four or five raw carrots with my meat, and that is all. I must be part rabbit; I never get bored with raw carrots.
I love cheese, and I love onions, pickles, and crunchy things. That's as far as I go with having things crunchy on my burger. I wouldn't go as far as having carrots on my burger. I'll just keep it simple with pickles and cucumbers and some raw onions.
Persian cuisine is, above all, about balance - of tastes and flavors, textures and temperatures. In every meal, even on every plate, you'll find both sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, cooked and raw, hot and cold.
I was baking cakes for a gourmet shop and put two chocolate cakes in oven to bake and when I opened the oven an hour later, they were raw - the oven wasn't working. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't borrow an oven and I didn't want to waste the batter, so I came up with the idea of steaming them and they came out great! Thick and fudgy, like pudding cake. That happy accident was always in the back of mind.
Raw and honest is what I go for [in my style of shooting]. I am looking for your inner beauty. The outside tells a story... But together is raw honesty.
Always bake in the center of the oven. A pan placed too close to the bottom of the oven will receive more heat radiating from the oven floor, baking it faster from the bottom. The reverse is true of something baked on the top rack. Always bake in the center for the most even baking and browning all around.
You start realizing that good prose is crunchy. There's texture in your mouth as you say it. You realize bad writing, bland writing, has no texture, no taste, no corners in your mouth. I'm a great believer in reading aloud.
When I do my own hair, I love Oribe Texture spray and Redken dry shampoo whenever I'm in a rush. It gives it texture and makes it look clean!
For when a ship is floating calmly along, the sailors see its motion mirrored in everything outside, while on the other hand they suppose that they are stationary, together with everything on board. In the same way, the motion of the earth can unquestionably produce the impression that the entire universe is rotating.
I happen to love coconut, particularly for that sweet and crunchy texture it adds to any dish.
Toast is bread made delicious and useful. Un-toasted bread is okay for children's sandwiches and sopping up barbecue sauce, but for pretty much all other uses, toast is better than bread. An exception is when the bread is fresh from the oven, piping hot, with butter melting all over it. Then it's fantastic, but I would argue that bread fresh out of the oven is a kind of toast. Because I'm an asshole and I refuse to be wrong about something.
I make a wicked clam chowdah, and linguine with clam sauce. Oysters I like to eat raw, and mussels in either a white wine sauce or in beer with paprika.