Chinese Chicken Spaghetti -- The Fusions Carrie Brought Home

Mid-June, and Carrie is in the kitchen with me every evening, cooking the way we cooked before she left — side by side, the mother teaching and the daughter learning, except that the dynamic has shifted: the daughter is now teaching the mother. Carrie has learned things at Emory — from friends, from restaurants, from the particular culinary education that a college town provides — and the things she has learned are expanding the Lowcountry palette. Japanese-inspired shrimp. Korean-spiced collard greens. Miso-glazed sweet potatoes. The fusions are Carrie's invention, and the inventions are both heretical and delicious, and the deliciousness forgives the heresy.

Mama watches us cook from her chair. She does not direct anymore — the directing has faded with the words, the authority dimming with the cognition. But she watches, and the watching is its own form of participation, the way a retired coach watches from the stands: no longer calling the plays but still reading the game, still understanding, at some level, the rhythm of what is happening in the kitchen that was hers and is now ours.

I told Carrie about the cookbook. I showed her the manuscript — sixty pages now, five chapters, the early architecture of a book that will take years to complete. She read the first chapter at the kitchen table on Saturday afternoon, and when she finished she looked up and her eyes were wet and she said, "Mom, this is the book." Not "a book" — "the book." The definite article, the declaration, the pronouncement of a young woman who reads critically and who has just read something that is not just good but necessary, and the necessary is the compliment that matters more than the good.

I made peach ice cream — the annual summer ritual, Johns Island peaches, hand-cranked. Carrie cranked. Robert supervised. Mama sat on the piazza and waited, and the waiting was patient and faithful and the patience was rewarded with a bowl of ice cream that tasted like every summer she has ever lived and every summer I have ever cooked, the seasons stacked inside the sweetness like geological layers, each one a year, each year a life.

The peach ice cream was the ritual, the anchor, the thing that tasted like every summer stacked into one bowl—but it was Carrie’s fusions that changed how I cook now, and this Chinese Chicken Spaghetti is exactly the kind of dish she brought back from Emory: not quite Eastern, not quite Western, entirely itself, and better than either thing alone. We made it on one of those mid-June evenings when she was teacher and I was student, and I wrote it down the way Mama once wrote things down for me, because “the book” needs recipes like this—the ones that mark the season when the daughter starts expanding what home tastes like.

Chinese Chicken Spaghetti

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 12 oz spaghetti
• 2 cups cooked chicken breast, shredded
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
• 1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter
• 2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 cup shredded red cabbage
• 1 cup shredded carrots
• 4 green onions, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup chopped roasted peanuts, for garnish
• 2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped, for garnish
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds, for garnish

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook spaghetti according to package directions until al dente. Drain, rinse briefly with cold water to stop cooking, and set aside.
2. Make the sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, hoisin sauce, peanut butter, grated ginger, minced garlic, and red pepper flakes until smooth and fully combined.
3. Combine the base. In a large mixing bowl, toss the cooked spaghetti with the shredded chicken, red cabbage, and carrots until evenly distributed.
4. Dress and toss. Pour the sauce over the pasta mixture and toss thoroughly so every strand is coated. Taste and adjust with an extra splash of soy sauce or rice vinegar as needed.
5. Finish and serve. Divide into bowls and top each serving with green onions, chopped peanuts, fresh cilantro, and a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 420 | Protein: 28g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 48g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 620mg