Paprika Chicken With Sweet Potatoes and a Crispy Kale Crown
Whenever I smell chicken paprikash or goulash, two warhorse Central European stews, I’m taken back to playing in my backyard at dusk. Growing up, my next-door neighbors were an elderly Polish couple, and an intoxicatingly savory, spicy, and slightly smoky smell would waft into our yard from their house around dinnertime—a smell that I’m now convinced came from chicken steeping in paprika. To be honest, I think there could be a whole cookbook devoted to chicken and paprika recipes alone, so a chicken paprikash stew translated for cooking on a sheet pan was one of the first ideas I rushed to create for this book.I’ve given it some nontraditional accents with roasted sweet potatoes and a crispy kale crown—a canopy of oiled leaves draped over the whole sheet pan. The crispy kale can actually be applied to just about any other recipe in the last 15 minutes of cooking, so I’ve included it as a bonus recipe here. And since chicken paprikash stews are enriched with sour cream for thickness and dairy tang, I’ve included an optional sour cream-based sauce to serve on the side.
