Chicken Marinara

Farmers planting again. The tractors in the fields, the straight rows, the annual faith of putting seeds in the ground. I watch them from the cab and I think about the cookbook as a kind of planting — I am putting words in pages the way they put seeds in soil, and the harvest is uncertain, and the faith is the work, and the work is the faith. Truckers and farmers. We share the road and the faith and the horizon.

I am writing every morning. 5 a.m., the kitchen table, coffee, the laptop that I bought used from Walmart and which runs slowly and does not care about deadlines. I write about the slow cooker chili and the morning I made it while hauling frozen beef on I-80 and the first blog post and the ten thousand followers and the woman from Tulsa. I write about Darla's chocolate sheet cake and the way I frost it warm. I write about Larry dying on I-80 and the cornbread in buttermilk. The writing is the hardest thing I have done since taking in Amber and Justin, because the writing requires looking at everything — every loss, every meal, every mile — and putting it on a page where anyone can see it, and the seeing is the vulnerability, and the vulnerability is the opposite of driving a truck, which is armor and speed and the safety of forward motion.

Amber started looking at UNK seriously — campus tours, financial aid applications. She is a junior, a year away from applying, and the early looking is Amber's style: thorough, careful, the groundwork laid before the building begins. She asked me to drive her to Kearney on Saturday. We drove together, forty-five minutes on I-80, and she looked out the window at the fields and the sky and the exit signs, and one of the exit signs was the exit for the street where Darla died, and neither of us mentioned it, and the not-mentioning was loud.

I made BBQ chicken with baked beans and corn on the cob — a spring dinner that was almost summer, a dinner eaten on the patio with the evening light stretching across the yard like a promise.

That Saturday drive to Kearney with Amber, the exit sign we both saw and neither of us named — it left something heavy in the cab, and I needed dinner to be the opposite of heavy. I needed something that came together without a fight, something that smelled like good intentions and filled the table the way a long evening light fills a yard. This chicken marinara is exactly that: honest, warm, and steady, the kind of meal that doesn’t ask anything of you except to sit down and eat it.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 oz each)
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups marinara sauce (jarred or homemade)
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Fresh basil leaves, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Season the chicken. Pat chicken breasts dry with paper towels. Combine garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper and sprinkle evenly over both sides of each breast.
Sear the chicken. Heat olive oil in a large oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook for 3–4 minutes per side until golden brown. The chicken does not need to be cooked through at this stage.
Add the sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Pour marinara sauce over and around the chicken breasts, turning them once to coat.
Simmer. Cover the skillet and let the chicken simmer in the sauce for 10–12 minutes, until the internal temperature reaches 165°F.
Add the cheese. Sprinkle mozzarella and Parmesan over each breast. Cover and cook an additional 2–3 minutes until the cheese is fully melted.
Rest and serve. Remove from heat and let rest for 3 minutes. Garnish with fresh basil if desired. Serve directly from the skillet with crusty bread, pasta, or a simple green salad.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Marinara — A Patio Dinner Under a Stretching Sky