15 Minute Thai Basil Chicken

The chapbook reading was on Saturday August twenty-sixth at one in the afternoon, in the small chapel-meeting-room at the Tulsa County Youthful Offender Unit. I want to start there because the recipe today is from Tuesday and the recipe is the dinner that came after, and the after only makes sense after the during.

Mama and I drove in Saturday morning. Aunt Tammy met us in the lobby. Mrs. Tilford drove herself in the Cavalier behind us, and parked next to us. Mrs. Davis from the Tulsa Library was already there with three other workshop volunteers. The room had been set up with about thirty folding chairs in rows facing a small lectern. The whole thing was small and clean and quiet. The eight inmate writers from the workshop sat together in the front row. Cody was second from the right. He had on the orange uniform. He looked nervous. He looked also, I want to say, like a writer who had earned his place at his reading.

The reading started at one-fifteen. Mrs. Davis introduced the chapbook. She said the title of the chapbook is Twenty-Eight Pages. She said the title was suggested by Cody, who had said in workshop one Wednesday night that he wanted the chapbook to be named after how long it actually was, because the truth of how long the writing was felt important. The other workshop students had agreed. Twenty-Eight Pages stuck. The cover of the chapbook is a small pencil drawing of a window, drawn by one of the other writers, and the chapbook is stapled along the spine on cream-colored paper.

Eight inmate writers read. Cody read second. He read The Sister at the Stove in his quiet careful voice, four pages, in front of the audience of family and unit staff and volunteers. I cried for most of the reading. The piece is about me. The piece is about a girl at a stove making chicken and dumplings while her brother is somewhere she does not know, and about how the kitchen kept being the kitchen even when the rest of the house was not. I have read the piece three times since the reading. Each time I have cried in a different way.

Mama held my hand for the entire four pages. Aunt Tammy cried beside Mama, with her hand on Mama’s shoulder. Mrs. Tilford in the row behind us sat with her hands folded in her lap. Mrs. Davis in the back of the room sat very still in the way librarians sit when they are listening to the words come out the way they had hoped the words would. At the end of the reading the audience clapped, the way you clap at a small reading, with quiet steady applause, and Cody nodded once and went back to his seat.

The eight pieces took ninety minutes. The pieces were good. Cody’s was, by the consensus of the room afterward, the lead piece for a reason. Mrs. Davis came over to us at the small reception table after the reading, where coffee and store-bought cookies had been set out, and she said to Mama, Mrs. Moreland, your son is a writer. Mama said, I know he is. Mrs. Davis said the Tulsa Review editorial committee had read the piece and accepted it for the winter issue. The journal pays $50 per accepted piece. Cody is going to have his first paid publication in February 2018 in a real literary journal.

We took five copies of the chapbook home. One for our kitchen, one for Aunt Tammy, one for Mrs. Tilford, one for Mrs. Henderson, one for Mr. Briggs. The kitchen copy is on the kitchen table next to the recipe box. I have not stopped looking at it.

And the recipe Tuesday was fifteen-minute Thai basil chicken. The schedule has been tight all week with junior-year homework and Sonic shifts and the emotional weight of the reading. The recipe was a Cafe Delites one designed for fifteen minutes, which was all I had on Tuesday between coming home from the Sonic at eight-thirty and bedtime. Ground chicken sauteed with garlic and chili in a hot pan, finished with fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and a big handful of fresh basil at the very end.

The math: a pound of ground chicken from the markdown rack $2.49, four cloves of garlic free, a small Thai chili from the produce section $0.49, fish sauce $1.99 (a small bottle, the most exotic ingredient and one that will live in the pantry for the rest of the year), soy sauce from the bottle, sugar, basil from the windowsill plant. Total: about $4.97 for a dinner that fed Mama and me with leftovers for my Wednesday Sonic-shift lunch.

The technique is the high heat. You heat oil in a hot wok or cast-iron skillet over high heat. You add the minced garlic and chili for thirty seconds. You add the ground chicken. You stir-fry for five minutes, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon, until the chicken is no longer pink. You add a tablespoon of fish sauce, a tablespoon of soy sauce, and a teaspoon of sugar. Stir for another minute. You take the pan off the heat and stir in a packed cup of fresh basil leaves. The basil wilts in the residual heat. You serve over rice.

The dinner came together in fifteen minutes from the moment I walked in the door from the Sonic. Mama had a bowl. Cody’s chapbook was on the kitchen table during the dinner, next to the recipe box. The household has been holding the chapbook in the air this week the way a person holds something carefully fragile.

The recipe is below. The trick is the high heat and the basil at the very end — do not cook the basil; let it wilt in the residual heat. Use fresh basil, not dried; this is one recipe where the substitution does not work.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 Thai chili peppers, thinly sliced (or 1 serrano pepper)
1 cup fresh basil leaves, packed
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced
Cooked jasmine rice, for serving

Instructions

Mix the sauce. In a small bowl, stir together soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, and brown sugar until the sugar dissolves. Set aside.
Heat the pan. Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok over high heat until it just begins to smoke.
Sear the chicken. Add chicken pieces in a single layer and cook without stirring for 2–3 minutes until golden and crispy on one side. Stir and cook another 2 minutes until cooked through. Transfer to a plate.
Cook the aromatics. In the same pan, add garlic, chili peppers, onion, and bell pepper. Stir-fry for 1–2 minutes until fragrant and slightly softened.
Combine everything. Return chicken to the pan and pour the sauce over. Toss to coat and cook for 1 minute until the sauce thickens slightly and coats the chicken.
Add the basil. Remove from heat, add basil leaves, and toss until just wilted.
Serve. Spoon over jasmine rice and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

15 Minute Thai Basil Chicken — The Tuesday Dinner the Week of My Brother’s Reading