A Sheet-Pan Chicken Dinner With a Dash of Romance

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.