Creamy Chicken Vegetables

April begins inside the sealed house, and the sealing has become normal — the way all abnormal things become normal when you live inside them long enough. The five of us have found our places: James in his room with his textbooks, Carrie at the dining table with her laptop, Robert in the guest bedroom with his depositions, Mama in the kitchen with me. The kitchen is the commons, the public square, the only room where all five of us converge, and the converging is three times a day, at meals, and the meals are the punctuation marks that give the sentence of each day its structure.

I am cooking more than I have ever cooked in my life. Three full meals, every day, for five people who are always here and always hungry and who have no restaurant, no cafeteria, no takeout counter to supplement what the kitchen produces. The cooking is relentless and beautiful and exhausting and the most important work I have ever done, because the work is not just feeding bodies but feeding a household's sanity, and the sanity depends on the rhythm of meals appearing at the appointed hours, the way churchgoers depend on services appearing at the appointed hours, because the appearing is the faith.

Carrie has begun cooking with me — not because she wants to but because the alternative is another hour at the laptop, and the laptop has become the instrument of her imprisonment, and the kitchen is the escape from the instrument. She chops vegetables with the focused intensity of a girl releasing frustration into a cutting board. She makes salads with the precision of someone who is channeling her fury into vinaigrette. The cooking is not joy for Carrie. Not yet. It is therapy. And the therapy is working, because the fury is less visible at dinner than it was at lunch.

I visited Joy through a window. Magnolia House allows window visits — you stand outside, they hold the phone inside, and you wave and talk and pretend that the glass between you is not a wall but a veil, thin enough to see through, too thick to touch through. Joy pressed her hand against the glass and I pressed mine against the other side and our hands were the same size and the same temperature and separated by a quarter-inch of glass that might as well have been an ocean.

I made chicken pot pie — the comfort food of confinement, the dish that seals everything good inside a crust the way the house seals everything safe inside its walls. The crust was golden. The filling was creamy. The pot pie was the meal of a family that is contained and warm and fed and afraid and managing, all at once, all in one kitchen, all from one oven that does not know there is a pandemic because ovens do not read the news.

Chicken pot pie was the dish that made the most sense that April — something sealed, something whole, everything good gathered inside and held. When I couldn’t hold Joy’s hand through the glass, I could at least put something warm and golden on the table for the four of us who were home. This creamy chicken and vegetables recipe is the heart of that meal: the filling, the comfort, the smell that told everyone in the house that dinner was coming and the day still had a shape.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
3 stalks celery, sliced
1 cup frozen peas
1 cup frozen corn
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
Salt and black pepper to taste
Fresh parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

Season the chicken. Pat chicken pieces dry and season generously with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Sear the chicken. In a large, deep skillet or Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken in a single layer and cook 4–5 minutes, turning once, until golden. Transfer to a plate; it does not need to be fully cooked through yet.
Sweat the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add butter to the same pan. Once melted, add onion, carrots, and celery. Cook 6–8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more.
Build the sauce. Sprinkle flour over the vegetables and stir to coat, cooking 1–2 minutes to eliminate the raw flour taste. Slowly pour in the chicken broth, stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Add heavy cream, thyme, and rosemary. Stir to combine.
Simmer together. Return the chicken to the pan. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat and cook, uncovered, 12–15 minutes until the sauce has thickened and the chicken is cooked through.
Add the peas and corn. Stir in frozen peas and corn and cook 2–3 minutes until just heated through. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
Serve. Ladle into bowls or over biscuits, mashed potatoes, or rice. Garnish with fresh parsley.

Nutrition (per serving)

Creamy Chicken Vegetables — The Pot Pie That Held Us Together