Chicken Tortellini Bake

The anniversary. February eighth. Ten years. A decade without Reynaldo Santos. The number is round and final and wrong in the way that all death anniversaries are wrong — the calendar says ten years but the grief says yesterday, and the calendar and the grief exist in different time zones and neither is lying.

I took the day off. Angela drove me to Angelus Memorial. Lourdes met us there with sampaguita garlands — the frozen ones from the Filipino shop, the jasmine flowers still fragrant despite the Arctic journey. We stood at the headstone. REYNALDO SANTOS, 1955-2008, BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER. Lourdes prayed in Ilonggo. Angela held my hand. The ground was frozen. The flowers were frozen. Everything in Alaska is frozen in February, including the grief, which preserves perfectly in cold storage and thaws only when you stand in front of the headstone and let it.

Jason came over in the evening. He brought food — not Filipino food, he's not there yet, but pizza from Moose's Tooth, which is Anchorage's best pizza and is exactly the right food for a day when you've been at a cemetery and you don't want to cook. He sat on the couch. I sat next to him. He didn't ask if I was okay. He ate pizza and watched me eat pizza and when I cried, he put his hand on my knee and left it there and the hand said everything his mouth knew not to say.

Later, after the pizza, I made Reynaldo's salmon sinigang. Not because I was hungry. Because the anniversary requires it, the way Undas requires dinuguan, the way the dead require the living to cook for them so the recipes don't die with the people. The salmon went into the tamarind broth and the steam rose and the kitchen smelled like my childhood and my father and the particular alchemy of wild salmon and sour broth that tastes like Alaska and the Philippines simultaneously.

I added one more squeeze of tamarind. The rule. Always one more. The sinigang was sour and hot and the salmon broke apart in the broth and I ate a bowl and Jason ate a bowl and neither of us said much. The silence was full. The soup was Reynaldo's. The decade was long. The kitchen was warm. I am twenty-eight years old and I have been fatherless for ten of them and the math hits different at round numbers — heavier, rounder, the kind of weight that sits in your chest like a stone that has been polished smooth by years of carrying.

Ten years. One more squeeze. The sinigang survives. Reynaldo survives in the sinigang. That's the deal. That's the recipe. Cook for the dead. Let the soup carry what the body can't. One more squeeze. Always one more.

Not every night after a hard day ends with sinigang — sometimes Jason stays later than expected, and sometimes the fridge holds rotisserie chicken and a bag of tortellini and that is its own kind of answer. This chicken tortellini bake is what I make on the nights that follow the heavy ones, when the grief has settled back into its usual shape and I still need the kitchen, still need the steam and the warmth and the act of feeding someone who showed up and stayed. It is not my father’s recipe, but it belongs to the same drawer — the one labeled cook for the people who hold your hand and say nothing and mean everything.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

20 oz refrigerated cheese tortellini
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded or roughly chopped (rotisserie works perfectly)
2 cups marinara sauce
1 cup whole-milk ricotta cheese
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
Salt and black pepper to taste
Fresh basil or flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
Cooking spray or olive oil, for the baking dish

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish with cooking spray or a drizzle of olive oil.
Cook the tortellini. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the tortellini for 2 minutes less than the package directions — they will finish cooking in the oven. Drain and set aside.
Make the filling. In a large bowl, combine the drained tortellini, shredded chicken, marinara sauce, ricotta, 1 cup of the mozzarella, the Parmesan, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes if using. Season with salt and black pepper. Stir gently until everything is evenly coated.
Fill the baking dish. Transfer the tortellini mixture into the prepared baking dish and spread it into an even layer.
Top with cheese. Scatter the remaining 1 cup of mozzarella evenly over the top.
Bake. Bake uncovered for 25–30 minutes, until the cheese is melted, bubbling, and beginning to turn golden at the edges.
Rest and serve. Remove from the oven and let the bake rest for 5 minutes before serving. Scatter torn fresh basil or chopped parsley over the top and bring it to the table warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Tortellini Bake — The Warmth You Make When Grief Asks You to Feed Someone