Rhubarb and Honey Chicken —rsquo; Spring on a Plate, Three Hundred Weeks In

Mid-March. Spring returns and the cherry blossoms open and I take Miya to the waterfront and she opens her mouth to the falling petals and the annual gesture is the annual miracle and I am crying in the way that spring makes me cry: not from sadness but from the accumulated beauty of being alive when the trees are pink and the child is laughing and the book is coming and the miso is homemade and the father is sick but present and the grandmother is dead but everywhere.

I made sakura onigiri — cherry blossom rice balls, with pickled cherry blossom petals in the rice. The onigiri are pink and floral and they taste like spring and like Japan and like the trip I have promised Miya and have not yet taken and will take, someday, when she is twelve, when she is old enough to remember. The promise is five years old now. The promise is alive. The promise is shiso: growing, patient, waiting for the right season to be harvested.

Three hundred weeks of blog posts. Three hundred weeks of Jen Nakamura writing about food and grief and the space between. Three hundred bowls of miso soup described, analyzed, mourned, celebrated. Three hundred weeks of practice. The practice has produced: a book, a readership, an identity, a voice. The practice has also produced: peace. Not the absence of anxiety — the anxiety is still there, will always be there, the refrigerator hum — but the presence of something larger than anxiety, something that holds the anxiety the way a bowl holds soup, something that says: you are here. You are making soup. The soup is good. The being-here and the making and the good — these three things together, these three ingredients — are the recipe for a life. My life. The recipe is mine.

I am thirty-seven years old. I live alone with my daughter in a one-bedroom apartment in Portland. I make miso soup every morning. I write about it every week. I teach yoga. I visit my father. I carry my grandmother's recipes in my hands and in my heart and in a book that will be published in September. I am a writer. I am a mother. I am a cook. I am the granddaughter of a woman who never said "I love you" but who made dashi every morning, and the dashi was the love, and the love was the dashi, and I am standing in her kitchen now — not the physical kitchen, which is gone, but the practice-kitchen, which is everywhere, which is eternal, which is the kitchen I carry with me, the kitchen that is me. I am the kitchen. The kitchen is the practice. The practice is the life. The life is three hundred weeks old and counting.

I made the sakura onigiri for the waterfront—for Miya, for the petals, for the three hundredth week—but when we came home and she fell asleep with pink rice still on her fingers, I wanted something that honored the season in a different register: not soft and floral, but sharp and golden and warm. Rhubarb arrives in Portland exactly when the blossoms do, those sour red stalks like a counterweight to all that sweetness, and honey is patience itself, the thing that waits. This rhubarb and honey chicken is what I cooked that evening, after the crying and the counting, because spring deserves more than one recipe, and so does a life.

Rhubarb and Honey Chicken

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 2 lbs)
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups fresh rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (about 3–4 stalks)
• 1/3 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
• 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

1. Preheat and season. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C). Pat chicken thighs dry with paper towels and season all over with salt and pepper.
2. Sear the chicken. Heat olive oil in an oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Place chicken thighs skin-side down and sear without moving them for 6–8 minutes, until the skin is deep golden and releases easily from the pan. Flip and sear the other side for 3 minutes. Transfer chicken to a plate.
3. Build the rhubarb sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Add the rhubarb to the same skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3–4 minutes until it begins to soften. Add garlic and ginger and cook 1 minute more until fragrant. Stir in honey, apple cider vinegar, and red pepper flakes if using. Let the sauce bubble and thicken slightly, about 2 minutes.
4. Braise and roast. Nestle the seared chicken thighs skin-side up back into the skillet, settling them into the rhubarb sauce. Transfer the skillet to the preheated oven and roast uncovered for 20–25 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through (internal temperature of 165°F) and the skin is crisp and lacquered.
5. Rest and serve. Remove from oven and let rest 5 minutes. Spoon the pan sauce over the chicken, scatter with fresh parsley, and serve alongside steamed rice or crusty bread to catch every bit of the sauce.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 380 | Protein: 28g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 28g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 310mg