Chicken and Pasta with Asparagus and Tomatoes

Spring has arrived with its particular urgency — everything blooming at once, the garden exploding, the neighborhood suddenly green after months of gray. Marvin's tomato plants are in the ground. His optimism about tomatoes borders on religious conviction: every year he plants them with the certainty that this will be the year of the perfect tomato, and every year the tomatoes are good but not perfect, and every year he plants again. This is faith. This is the same impulse that makes me cook the same brisket every week: the belief that practice leads to perfection, and if not perfection, then something close enough to sustain.

I made a spring vegetable soup — peas, asparagus, leeks, fresh herbs from the garden. This is not Ashkenazi food. Ashkenazi food does not do "light spring vegetable" anything. Ashkenazi food does "dense winter stew that will carry you through a Polish January." But I am sixty years old and I have earned the right to cook beyond the canon, and besides, the peas at the farmers' market were so green they practically glowed, and when produce is that beautiful, you have an obligation to cook it immediately and simply and let it speak for itself.

At school, the seniors are writing their final essays — the capstone project that I assign every year, in which they choose a book we read this year and write about what it taught them. Not what it means. What it taught them. The distinction matters. A book can mean many things to many people, but what it teaches you is personal, specific, yours. One girl wrote about how The Great Gatsby taught her that wanting something doesn't mean you deserve it. I read the sentence and thought: you are seventeen and you already know this. Some people live to ninety and never learn it. I gave her an A. I don't give many A's. She earned it.

I am thinking about next year's blog. More posts, maybe. Longer ones. The essays are getting more ambitious — less recipe-and-memory, more essay-essay, the kind of writing I always wanted to do but didn't have time for because I was teaching and mothering and cooking and living, and living takes a lot of time. Sixty gives me a strange new freedom: not more time, exactly, but more clarity about how to use the time I have. I want to write about the big things — about being Jewish in America, about what Ashkenazi food means in a post-Holocaust world, about the women who carried recipes out of burning villages and into kitchens on the Grand Concourse. Big things. The soup is simple. The stories are not.

The soup I made that afternoon — peas, asparagus, leeks, a handful of fresh herbs — reminded me that spring produce doesn’t need much persuasion to be delicious. But on a night when I wanted something a little more substantial, something to sit down with after reading thirty student essays and thinking about women who carried recipes out of burning villages, I turned those same asparagus spears into this pasta. It has the same logic as the soup: start with something beautiful from the market, don’t overcomplicate it, and let the season do the work. Marvin ate two bowls and declared it worthy of the garden he’s so carefully tending.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

12 oz penne or rotini pasta
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 lb fresh asparagus, tough ends trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup dry white wine or low-sodium chicken broth
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more for pasta water
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup pasta cooking water before draining. Drain and set aside.
Season and sear the chicken. Pat chicken pieces dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon 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.
Cook the asparagus. In the same skillet, add the remaining tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add asparagus and cook, tossing occasionally, for 3–4 minutes until just tender and bright green. Season lightly with salt.
Build the sauce. Add garlic and red pepper flakes (if using) to the skillet and cook for 30 seconds until fragrant. Pour in the white wine or broth, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Let it reduce by half, about 1 minute.
Add tomatoes. Stir in the cherry tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes, just until they begin to soften and release their juices.
Combine everything. Return the chicken to the skillet. Add the drained pasta and toss to combine. If the mixture seems dry, add reserved pasta water a splash at a time until the sauce loosens to your liking.
Finish and serve. Remove from heat. Stir in lemon juice and Parmesan. Taste and adjust seasoning. Divide among bowls, scatter with fresh parsley, and pass extra Parmesan at the table.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken and Pasta with Asparagus and Tomatoes — When the Garden Tells You What to Cook