July 2025 Entries

With two littles, we’ve been primarily making food that works for them in a short amount of time. I’ve always loved Nigella’s fattoush recipe—it’s the closest to the fattoush I fell in love with at a hole in the wall middle eastern restaurant in Prague. The recipe email on morning happened to be for fattoush and za’tar chicken. The kids skipped a nap, wreaked havoc around the house, and went to bed early. I had skin-on chicken thighs I needed to use, and just needed a couple of ingredients for the fattoush, so I set out to make it (and realized what I thought was za’tar was two jars of sumac in my pantry, so a quick trip to the grocery store later, I set out to marinate the chicken. I used an air fryer as the oven flamed out after preheating. I didn’t want to lose the marinade or juices so I started it out in a loose papillote style, and finished the chicken directly in the air fryer. The skin was so crispy, the meat juicy, tender, flavorful—and paired so well with the brightness of the fattoush. Absolutely the best dinner we’ve made in a while and a favorite to return to often.