Coconut Lime Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry

Monday: Terrell called. I almost didn't answer because his name on my phone still produces a physical reaction — not the flutter it used to, but something closer to the feeling you get when you touch a door handle after walking across carpet in socks. A zap. A reminder that electricity can hurt.

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He wants to take Marcus and Jasmine for Memorial Day weekend. Four whole days. He's never taken them for four days. The longest stretch was two nights, three years ago, after which Marcus came home saying Terrell's girlfriend let them eat candy for dinner. (The girlfriend was gone by July. They always are.) I said I'd think about it, which means yes but I need him to work for it, because Terrell Washington has never worked for anything involving his children and I'm not going to make it easy.

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The thing about Terrell is that he's not a bad person. I know that. I lived with him for six years and I know the man behind the man, the one who cried when Marcus was born and stayed up all night rocking Jasmine through colic and used to bring me coffee in bed on Saturday mornings. That man existed. He just wasn't strong enough to survive the pressure of Emory Law and his family's expectations and whatever it is inside him that makes him need to be admired more than he needs to be good. The affair was the end, but it was really just the last in a long series of small betrayals — the criticism, the control, the way he made me feel like Cascade Heights was something to be ashamed of.

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I called Vanessa after I hung up with Terrell. Vanessa is my best friend and has been since Spelman. She's a nurse at Grady Memorial and she does not suffer fools, least of all my ex-husband. She said, "Let him have them for the weekend. You need a break and he needs to be reminded that parenting is a full-time verb." Vanessa talks like that. It's why I love her.

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School was heavy this week. End of the year is coming and the kids can feel it — they get twitchy in April, like horses before a storm. Two fights in the hallway on Wednesday. A parent conference on Thursday where the father showed up drunk at 10 AM and I had to call the assistant principal. On Friday a sixth grader told me she was moving to Alabama to live with her grandmother because her mom was going to rehab. She was ten. She asked me if Alabama was nice. I said it was beautiful, because what else do you tell a ten-year-old whose world just shifted under her feet?

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This week's cooking was survival mode. Monday: spaghetti with meat sauce (Marcus's request). Tuesday: baked chicken thighs with rice. Wednesday: breakfast for dinner — scrambled eggs, turkey sausage, toast — because I got home late and couldn't face a real recipe. Thursday: leftovers. Friday: pizza delivery, and I refuse to feel guilty about it because sometimes pizza is self-care and I am a woman who needs a lot of self-care right now.

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Saturday at Mama's. She was in bed when I arrived, which happens more on chemo weeks. I heated up the meals I'd prepped and sat on the edge of her bed and we watched a cooking show together. Some woman on TV was making a soufflé, and Mama said, "Black people don't make soufflés" with such authority that I nearly fell off the bed laughing. She said when she feels better, she wants to teach Jasmine how to make her sweet potato pie. "Not you," she said. "You already know. It's Jasmine's turn." I nodded and didn't let her see that the word "when" broke something in me, because "when" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

After that Saturday at Mama’s — the cooking show, her laughing, that word “when” sitting heavy in my chest the whole drive home — I needed something that felt like an embrace without requiring much of me. I wanted warmth and lime and coconut, something that would fill the kitchen with smell and not ask me to stand over it while I was still holding my feelings. This curry did that. Fifteen minutes, one skillet, sweet potatoes soft enough to fall apart on a fork, and enough flavor to remind me I was still a person who could make something good even on a hard night.

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

3 tablespoons coconut or olive oil
1 large sweet Vidalia or yellow onion (diced small)
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast (diced into bite-sized pieces)
3 to 5 cloves garlic (finely minced or pressed)
2 to 3 teaspoons ground ginger or 1 tablespoon fresh ginger (finely chopped)
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 extra-large sweet potato or 2 medium sweet potatoes (peeled and diced into 1/2-inch pieces)
One 15-ounce can coconut milk (I used lite)
1/4 cup Thai red curry paste
2 teaspoons kosher salt (or to taste)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (or to taste)
1 to 2 teaspoons lime zest (or to taste)
1/4 cup lime juice
2 to 4 tablespoons fresh cilantro (finely minced)
2 to 4 tablespoons brown sugar (packed; optional and to taste)
Rice for serving (optional)

Instructions

Sauté the onion. To a large skillet, add the oil, onion, and sauté over medium-high heat until the onion begins to soften, about 5 minutes; stir intermittently.
Sear the chicken. Add the chicken and cook to sear for about 2 minutes; flip often to ensure even searing.
Add the aromatics. Add the garlic, ginger, coriander, and cook for about 1 minute, or until fragrant; stir frequently.
Simmer with coconut milk. Add the sweet potatoes, coconut milk, Thai curry paste, salt, pepper, and stir to combine. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and allow mixture to gently boil for about 5 minutes. Remove the lid and allow mixture to boil, uncovered, for about 5 minutes or until sweet potatoes are done.
Add the lime and cilantro. Add the lime zest, lime juice, cilantro, stir to combine, and taste.
Adjust sweetness. Optionally or as desired, add brown sugar. I find the brown sugar balances the lime zest and juice and I enjoy some light sweetness but if you do not, omit it. Also, if desired, add additional curry paste, salt, pepper, etc. to taste.
Serve. Serve immediately and optionally with rice.

Nutrition (per serving)

Coconut Lime Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry — The Kind of Dish That Holds You When You Can’t Hold Yourself