THE COOKBOOK TEST #0074: THE 'I DON'T WANT TO COOK' BOOK: DINNERS DONE IN ONE POT

INSTALLMENT #0074 (PAID) EXPECTATIONS? FINE, FINE THEY WERE SUBVERTED / NAAN? ON A PIZZA?! OH, NO, IT IS THE PIZZA, OK, I GET IT / CHILAQUILES DONE QUICK(ER) AND DIRTY

Dear Subscribers,

Before I dive into the particulars of THE 'I DON'T WANT TO COOK' BOOK: DINNERS DONE IN ONE POT, I should make it clear that I condemn the book's premise in no uncertain terms. Dinner should take time. It should contain some non-negligible amount of sweat and tears (blood only if you're making blood sausage, otherwise hopefully no blood.)

If you're cooking for people you care about (and why else would you cook, even if only to show that you care about yourself?), then you should be willing to spend the time and get the right ingredients and make something that makes an impression on your audience's heart.

With that out of the way: It is with grudging respect that I concede that the author of The 'I Don't Want to Cook' Book is onto something important with this volume. Alyssa Brantley's recipes are clear, concise, brief, and the definition of "unintimidating." They are written to be thrown together quickly, so much so that often comically brief timing is emblazoned up near the top of each recipe.

The Quick Beef Enchilada Skillet, for example: Prep Time: 8 minutes, Active Cook Time: 7 minutes, Hands-Off Cook Time: 12 minutes. Copycat Chicken Lettuce Wraps are 5 minutes of prep, 8 minutes of active cook time, and a big old zero for hands-off time. Creamy Buffalo Blue Cheese Chicken Sandwiches, a slow cooker recipe, is 5 minutes of prep time, 7 hours and 10 minutes of hands-off cook time. Not fast per se, but definitely easy.

In terms of depth and complexity of flavor, many of these recipes seem to be only scratching the surface of the more traditional versions that they're scaling down, but that's not uniformly true. Brantley makes liberal use of ingredients like store-bought salsa, herbed cheeses, barbecue sauce, spice blends, and cured meats to pack layers of flavors into most of these dishes, with the work done off-site by factory workers rather than by your own lonesome self with the aid of a cutting board, exotic aromatics, and a whole lot of time.

If you're ever wearing the hat of "harried homemaker," there's a lot to love in this relatively slim but surprisingly dialed-in little book.

at your service,

James

THE 'I DON'T WANT TO COOK' BOOK: DINNERS DONE IN ONE POT
ALYSSA BRANTLEY
ADAMS MEDIA | 2024 | $19

The truth of the matter is that no matter how low impact you try to make your scratch (or semi-scratch) meals, you're going to have to do two things: at some point, shop for ingredients and mess up and then clean up your kitchen. The 'I Don't Want to Cook' Book mitigates that harsh reality by generally calling for common, pantry-stable ingredients and limiting your cookware to a single pot, but you can and will find yourself picking up odds and sods and needing to tidy up serving platters / prep bowls / utensils to make most of these recipes.

That said, Brantley's overall approach is a surprisingly shrewd balance of cost, shopping time, prep time, and flavor. You might be able to do this well with carefully honed home recipes or similarly bulletproof books such as Milk Street Tuesday Nights, but random "so easy you can't believe it" Internet slop generally won't come close to the average quality of the 'I Don't Want to Cook' Book's offerings, which seem uniformly thoughtful in terms of their calibration.

I tested two of the book's recipes, and they both passed the "easy and rewarding to make" test with flying colors.

NAAN? ON A PIZZA?! OH, NO, IT IS THE PIZZA, OK, I GET IT

The premise behind Copycat Barbecue Chicken Naan Pizza is pretty straight forward: deliver a California Pizza Kitchen-style BBQ chicken pizza experience without any of the drudgery and stress involved in making actual pizza. In terms of ingredients and proportions, this thing is right on: the mix of red onions, pickled jalapeños, cheese, barbecue sauce (I used the unbeatable Show Me Sauce from Kansas City), and rotisserie chicken is everything you want and nothing more. You get sweet, you get heat, you get satisfying protein, chewy cheese, and the kick of onions, all in the right amounts.

Using store-bought naan as a pizza base is a perfectly good "good enough" solution to the crust problem. While it doesn't have the gorgeous appeal of making and proofing your own dough (something I've been doing a lot lately, which has made me appreciative of how much work it involves), it's a lot better than most pre-made, store-bought crusts, or junky crusts from substandard restaurants.

Naan lacks the definition and structure of a quality crust but it has some of the tender, chewy affability that you're looking for, and you legitimately can't beat it for being quick and easy. And it doesn't detract from the toppings it carries - it does its job quietly and effectively.

My only complaint with this recipe is extremely minor - because the naan I bought were likely larger than typical, I needed to use almost double the suggested barbecue sauce. I've scaled up the original 1/2 cup called for to "about a cup," but use what seems appropriate without getting too hung up on quantities here.

COPYCAT BARBECUE CHICKEN NAAN PIZZA

4 naan breads, fresh or frozen
About a cup of Kansas City-style barbecue sauce 
1 cup (about 6 oz.) shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup (about 6 oz.) shredded or chopped rotisserie chicken
1/4 red onion, peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
20 pickled jalapeño slices

Preheat oven to 425 F. Place naan on sheet pans. Spread a thin layer of barbecue sauce across the top of all your naan, leaving a thin border. 

Sprinkle half of your mozzarella onto the saucy naan. Top evenly with chicken, onions, and jalapeños. Finish with remaining mozzarella and drizzle streaks of barbecue sauce atop pizzas before baking for 14-16 minutes, until cheese begins to bubble and start to brown.

CHILAQUILES DONE QUICK(ER) AND DIRTY

Chilaquiles and okonomiyaki are my two favorite "don't underestimate the power of a deliberate mess" recipes. Both of them sound underwhelming on paper ("cabbage pancakes for dinner!" "tortilla chips cooked in salsa for breakfast!") but are remarkably versatile and downright delicious in practice. Chilaquiles are easy enough that I worried that cutting additional corners (such as using jarred salsa verde, as called for in The 'I Don't Want To Cook' Book) would result in disaster.