Chicken with Mustard Cream Sauce and Pasta

Hurricane season has officially begun its late-summer intensification, and Charleston is doing what Charleston always does in August: watching the Weather Channel, stocking up on batteries, and pretending we are not worried while being exactly as worried as we should be. I lived through Hugo in 1989 — I was in college in Charleston, a freshman, and the storm rearranged the city the way grief rearranges a life: permanently, comprehensively, with a violence that leaves everything standing in a different place. We evacuated for Matthew last year. We will evacuate again if necessary. The Lowcountry teaches you to live with impermanence, and the lesson is useful beyond storms.

At the library, we held a Banned Books Week event on Saturday that drew 75 people, which is a record and which I attribute partly to the display — every challenged book on a shelf marked with caution tape — and partly to the current political climate, which has made people more aware than usual that the freedom to read is a freedom that must be actively defended. A woman told me afterward that seeing "Beloved" on the banned list made her angry enough to check it out immediately. I said, "That's the point." She said, "You're a dangerous woman." I said, "I'm a librarian. Same thing."

James brought home a book from the store that he insisted I read — "Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi, a novel about a family split by the slave trade, tracing generations from Ghana to the American South. I started it Wednesday night and finished it Thursday morning at two AM, which I have not done since my twenties, when reading until dawn was a habit and not an event. The novel is extraordinary — each chapter a different generation, each one connected to the last by blood and fire and the slow, relentless pull of history. I wept at the kitchen table at two AM and then went upstairs and stood in the doorway of James's room and watched him sleep and thought about what we inherit and what we choose and how the two are more tangled than any of us are comfortable admitting.

I made she-crab soup again this week — the second time this month, which is unusual for me, but the she-crabs at the market were perfect and the weather, despite the heat, had a quality of transition that made me reach for the soup the way you reach for a familiar book when the world feels uncertain. She-crab soup in my kitchen is not just food. It is an anchor. It says: you are here, you are home, the roux is thickening, the cream is warming, and everything that matters is within arm's reach.

Carrie's English teacher, Mrs. Yamamoto, has assigned the class to keep a reading journal. Carrie showed me hers — detailed, thoughtful, already five pages long after two weeks. She writes the way she thinks: precisely, with a directness that leaves no room for ambiguity. "I don't like symbolism," she wrote about a poem they're studying. "Just say what you mean." I told her that symbolism is what you do when saying what you mean isn't enough, and she considered this with the gravity of a judge weighing evidence and said, "I'll think about it." Coming from Carrie, this is the equivalent of a standing ovation.

She-crab soup is my anchor in August, but it is not always practical — the roux demands patience I do not always have on a weeknight when the weather radio is murmuring in the background and I have just put down a book that rearranged something inside me. On those evenings, when I need something warm and cream-laced and grounding but simpler than a proper soup, I reach for this chicken with mustard cream sauce over pasta. The cream and the mustard do the same work the roux does: they say stay here, tend this, let the world outside wait. After finishing “Homegoing” at two in the morning and standing in James’s doorway thinking about inheritance and loss, this was exactly the kind of dinner I made the following night — quiet, deliberate, and deeply comforting.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
8 oz pasta (penne, rigatoni, or fettuccine)
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup dry white wine (or low-sodium chicken broth)
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons whole-grain Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon smooth Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for pasta water
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan, for serving

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup pasta water before draining. Drain and set aside.
Sear the chicken. Pat chicken pieces dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken in a single layer and cook, undisturbed, for 3–4 minutes until golden. Flip and cook another 2–3 minutes until cooked through. Transfer to a plate.
Build the sauce base. Reduce heat to medium. Add garlic to the same skillet and cook 30 seconds until fragrant, stirring constantly. Pour in the white wine and scrape up any browned bits from the pan. Let reduce for 2 minutes.
Add the cream and mustard. Pour in the heavy cream and stir in both mustards and the thyme. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook 4–5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Combine and finish. Return the chicken and any resting juices to the skillet. Add the drained pasta and toss everything together over low heat. If the sauce is too thick, loosen with reserved pasta water a few tablespoons at a time. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve. Divide among bowls, scatter with fresh parsley, and finish with grated Parmesan. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken with Mustard Cream Sauce and Pasta — A Lowcountry Kitchen in Transition