Chicken Mushroom Stir Fry

First week of March. The virus has a name now — COVID-19 — and it is no longer distant. Cases in Washington state. Cases in California. The news has shifted from weather-in-another-country to weather-approaching, and the barometric pressure of collective anxiety is rising, and I am a woman who is already intimately familiar with anxiety, and the collective version is a frequency I can hear before most people notice it. My body knows this sound. My body has been making this sound since I was fourteen.

I made onigiri — lots of onigiri, a tray of them, the simple rice balls that are Fumiko's contribution to my muscle memory. Salmon filling, umeboshi filling, plain with just salt. I made them because onigiri is what you make when the world is uncertain and you need the world to return to its known dimensions: rice, salt, hands, pressure, shape. The shaping is the comfort. The rice yields to my hands and becomes something portable, something I can wrap in plastic and put in a lunchbox and carry into whatever comes next. Onigiri is preparedness food. Onigiri is "I don't know what's coming but I have rice."

The yoga studio is discussing protocols. Sanitizer at the door. Spacing between mats. The conversation feels surreal — we are yoga people, we breathe together, we synchronize our breath in a room, and now we are talking about whether breath is dangerous. The irony is heavy. The anxiety is heavier. I teach my classes and adjust nothing and watch the news at night and feel the familiar tightness in my chest that is either the world ending or my anxiety or both, because anxiety and reality have never been easy to distinguish, and this is the week they become impossible to distinguish.

Brian is unbothered. Brian is always unbothered. His unbotheredness is either courage or denial and I have never been able to tell the difference, because courage and denial look the same from the outside — both involve continuing as if nothing is wrong — and the difference is only visible from inside, and I cannot see inside Brian, because Brian is closed the way a door is closed: completely, quietly, without explanation.

Miya is three and does not know what a virus is and does not need to know. She goes to preschool and comes home with paintings and says "itadakimasu" before dinner and shapes onigiri with wet hands and the world, from her height, is normal. The normal is a gift I am holding for her, maintaining it with both hands, keeping the ceiling from falling until she is old enough to know that ceilings fall.

Onigiri got me through the first week, but by the second I needed something hot — something that required me to stand at the stove, knife in hand, moving. The shaping of rice calmed a particular kind of fear; the high heat of a stir fry addressed a different one entirely, the restless kind that lives in the shoulders and won’t sit still. This chicken and mushroom stir fry is what I made for dinner the night Miya pressed her small hands into leftover rice and called it a moon: fast, savory, deeply satisfying over a bowl of the same short-grain rice I’d been pressing into triangles all week.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sliced thin
3 cups cremini or shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons neutral oil (such as vegetable or avocado), divided
2 scallions, sliced, for garnish
Cooked short-grain white rice, for serving

Instructions

Make the sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and cornstarch. Set aside.
Marinate the chicken. Toss sliced chicken with 1 tablespoon of the sauce mixture and let sit for 10 minutes while you prep the remaining ingredients.
Sear the chicken. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large wok or heavy skillet over high heat until shimmering. Add chicken in a single layer and cook, undisturbed, for 2–3 minutes until golden. Stir and cook 1–2 minutes more until cooked through. Transfer to a plate.
Cook the aromatics and mushrooms. Add remaining tablespoon of oil to the hot wok. Add onion and cook 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add garlic and ginger and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant. Add mushrooms and cook 3–4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they release their liquid and begin to brown.
Bring it together. Return chicken to the wok. Pour remaining sauce over everything and toss to coat. Cook 1–2 minutes more, until the sauce thickens and coats the chicken and mushrooms evenly.
Serve. Spoon over warm rice and garnish with sliced scallions.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Mushroom Stir Fry — When Your Hands Need Something to Do