By The week after Passover and the house is returning to its leavened state — the Passover dishes washed and boxed, the regular dishes back, the bread in the breadbox, the chametz restored to its rightful place in the pantry. The transition back is always easier than the transition to, because the transition to Passover requires discipline and the transition from Passover requires only laziness, and after eight days of dietary restriction, laziness comes naturally.
I made a sandwich. A regular sandwich, on regular bread, with turkey and mustard and lettuce, and I ate it at the kitchen table and the bread was soft and leavened and unrestricted and I thought: this is what freedom tastes like. Not the grand freedom, not the parting-of-the-Red-Sea freedom, but the small freedom, the daily freedom, the freedom to eat bread, which we take for granted fifty-one weeks a year and appreciate enormously during the fifty-second. The sandwich was a prayer of thanksgiving. I did not say this to anyone because saying "my sandwich is a prayer" is the kind of sentence that makes people think you need a nap, but I thought it, and I meant it.
David came for Sunday dinner — alone, without the children, which means it was a Marvin visit, a checking-in visit, the kind of visit David makes when he wants to assess his father without the buffer of grandchildren and noise. He sat with Marvin for an hour. He talked to him. He showed him the photos on his phone — the grandchildren, the baby, the house. Marvin looked at the photos with interest and without recognition, the way you look at someone else's family album: pleasant faces, nice children, no connection. David came to the kitchen afterward and sat at the table and said, "He's different, Mom." I said, "I know." We sat together in the knowledge, the shared, terrible, medical, son-and-mother knowledge that Marvin is declining, that the trajectory is one direction, that the visiting and the feeding and the Hebrew prayers are all we have left, and they are not enough, and they are everything.
I made David's favorite dinner — roast chicken with lemon and herbs, the Thursday chicken but on a Sunday, because David needed his favorite and a mother knows when to break the schedule for the child who needs it. He ate two helpings. He said, "Thanks, Mom." He drove home. I washed the dishes. Marvin slept. The house was quiet. The chicken was gone. The love was not.
The roast chicken I made for David that Sunday wasn’t fancy — it never is, and that’s exactly the point. Broiled chicken has always been my shortcut to the same warmth as a long slow roast, and when your son drives over to sit with his father and comes to the kitchen afterward carrying that particular quiet, you don’t want to fuss. This recipe — bright with lemon, simple enough to make without thinking — is the one I reach for when the cooking has to carry more weight than words can. It fed David. It filled the house with something good. That was enough.
Broiled Chicken & Artichokes
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 2 lbs total)
- 1 can (14 oz) artichoke hearts, drained and halved
- 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 lemon, zested and juiced
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Instructions
- Preheat the broiler. Set your oven to broil on high and position a rack about 6 inches from the heating element. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and lightly oil it.
- Season the chicken. Pat the chicken thighs dry with paper towels. In a small bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, oregano, thyme, salt, and pepper. Rub the mixture all over the chicken, including under the skin where possible.
- Broil the chicken. Place the chicken thighs skin-side down on the prepared baking sheet. Broil for 10 minutes, then flip and broil skin-side up for another 10–12 minutes, until the skin is golden and crisp and an instant-read thermometer reads 165°F at the thickest part.
- Prepare the artichokes. While the chicken broils, toss the drained artichoke hearts with the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and a pinch of salt. In the last 8 minutes of cooking, add them to the baking sheet around the chicken to warm and lightly char.
- Finish with lemon. Remove the pan from the oven. Squeeze the lemon juice over the chicken and artichokes while everything is still hot.
- Rest and serve. Let the chicken rest 5 minutes before serving. Scatter fresh parsley over the top and serve directly from the pan.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 390 | Protein: 34g | Fat: 24g | Carbs: 8g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 420mg