“Salmon with Baby Boy Choy and Soy-Ginger Sauce” from “Hot Sheet”

Kirstin: This is such a delicious meal and so ridiculously easy to cook too. First you roast the boy choy and spring onions before adding the salmon to the oven for a final bake. The sauce is then drizzled over the completed dish. It’s a great, great way to cook salmon and I would definitely recommend giving it a try (see how I also managed to get my new quarter sheet tray in on the act too). The simplicity of this recipe reminded me of one of my favourite dishes of all time. It’s a Jamie Oliver salmon recipe from his 1999 masterpiece, The Naked Chef, with all the ingredients cooked in one tray, accompanied by olives, green beans, anchovies and tomatoes. I made this SO MANY times during the late 90s and early noughties, for friends, for us, here, away. But when I looked up the recipe I saw it was described as a tray-bake. Which got me thinking. Sheet pan vs. Tray bake. Is there a difference? And then of course there’s Rukmini Iyers with her amazing Roasting Tin series. What’s the truth?  Well, I had a lovely rummage around Google Trends and it turns out that “tray bake” is more of an English term whereas “sheet pan” is more of an American term. But both started being used around the same time, with Martha Stewart and Melissa Clark being given credit for the rise of the sheet pan in America. Interestingly there was a peak in 2020 due to some pandemic Thanksgiving meal suggestions — including some from one of the authors of this book . 







But whatever you call them, it’s not just the ease of use of sheet pans or trays that explains their rise. The other big factor in the popularity of this style of cooking is of course Instagram, which reached one billion users in June 2018. That the end results are so very photogenic is clearly a huge bonus. So I say let’s, um, tray some more recipes! Maybe even start with this one.