Tomato, Basil, and Mozzarella Chicken

Day eighty-seven of ninety. Three to go. The year turned over Saturday night while the three of us were asleep, and 2017 has started without much ceremony in this house. Mama and Cody and I went to bed at ten-thirty on New Year’s Eve. We did not have champagne. We did not stay up for the ball drop. The year that is going to decide what kind of year it is going to be was already starting in our calendar in the form of Monday January ninth at ten o’clock at the Tulsa County Courthouse on Denver Avenue, and we have decided to ration our energy.

I made black-eyed peas Sunday for New Year’s Day because Grandma Carol’s rule was that black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day are luck for the year, and we are people who cannot afford to skip the rituals around luck. The recipe is the simple one: dried peas soaked overnight, simmered with a smoked ham hock and an onion and a few cloves of garlic and a couple of bay leaves until the peas are tender and the broth is silky. We had them with cornbread Monday at lunch. Mama said, baby, your grandmother would say this is going to be a good year. I want it on the page that Mama said that.

And I want to write about the Friday afternoon Mr. Garcia conversation, because Cody told me about it at the kitchen table Friday night after Mama had gone to bed, and the conversation has been sitting in the back of my mind all weekend. Mr. Garcia, the boss at the auto-body shop, has known for two weeks about the Monday January ninth sentencing because Cody had told him about it as soon as the date got finalized. Friday afternoon, when Cody was clocking out, Mr. Garcia walked over to him in the office and said, very plainly, kid, whatever happens, your job is here when you come back.

Cody told me this at the kitchen table Friday night with his coffee in his hands and his face turned down at his hands. He said, Mr. Garcia is the kind of man, Kay, that I want to be when I am that age. And I said, you are going to be, Cody. He did not say anything to that. He nodded once. He went to bed at ten.

And then there is the dinner. I made tomato basil mozzarella chicken Sunday night for what we have all silently agreed might be the last Sunday dinner together for a while, depending on what happens Monday. I want to walk through it because the dinner had two specific touches that I want to put down on the page.

The first touch was the basil. Mrs. Henderson three doors down knocked on the back door Saturday afternoon at four o’clock with a small terra cotta pot in her hands. She said she had been growing the basil in her sunroom all winter on a wooden shelf next to the south-facing window, and she had been thinking about the cooking girl down the street, which is me, and she had decided to give the basil plant to me because she had two and only needed one. She pressed the pot into my hands. I tried to give it back. She said, no, baby, you are the one who is going to use this. She walked back to her house.

The basil plant is on my kitchen windowsill now. The leaves are bright green and slightly fuzzy on the underside and they smell, when you brush past them, like a different country than mine. I have been smelling them every time I walk past the kitchen window for the past two days.

The second touch was the fresh mozzarella. The recipe called for fresh mozzarella, the kind that comes in a ball in water, not the shredded bag-kind. Fresh mozzarella was $3.99 for a small ball at Walmart. I bought it. I want to be honest that the $3.99 was the only splurge of the month and that I was nervous about it, because $3.99 is a Sonic shift’s tip pool divided by twelve, and I was not used to spending it on a cheese. But the recipe called for fresh and I had decided that the last-Sunday-before-the-sentencing dinner was the place to spend it, and I bought the cheese, and Saturday afternoon I sliced it into thick rounds and laid them on a paper towel to let some of the water drain.

The recipe technique was simple. I pan-seared chicken thighs in the cast iron, skin-side down, eight minutes, the way I have learned to. Flipped, three more minutes. Took them out. In the same pan with the rendered fat, I sliced two roma tomatoes and warmed them through for two minutes. I returned the chicken thighs to the pan, skin-side up, and arranged the warmed tomato slices on top of each thigh. I laid two slices of fresh mozzarella on top of the tomatoes. I tore six leaves of the Mrs. Henderson basil from the plant on the windowsill and scattered them over the cheese. I slid the whole skillet under the broiler for three minutes. The mozzarella melted — not into a greasy puddle the way the shredded kind does, but into a glossy stringy white drape over the tomatoes. The basil leaves crisped slightly at the edges. The chicken skin had stayed crisp from the broiling.

I served it Sunday at six. Mama got home from her shift at five-fifty and walked into the kitchen and she said, baby, what is this smell. I said, tomato and basil and fresh mozzarella, Mama. She said, I have not had fresh basil in twenty years. She sat down at the table and ate the whole portion in the silence she goes into when something has hit a memory.

I have learned to recognize that silence over the last two years. Mama goes silent when food reaches a memory of her own mother or her own younger self, and the silence is not a sad silence, it is a kind of full silence, the silence of a person letting a memory take a few seconds at the table without explaining the memory to anybody else. I let her have the silence. I ate my own portion. Cody had two thighs. The basil plant on the windowsill watched the dinner from above the sink.

The total cost of the dinner: about $9.20 for three people. The fresh mozzarella was the most expensive ingredient. The basil was free, because Mrs. Henderson had decided I was the cooking girl, and you do not turn down the gifts that the neighborhood decides to give you when the neighborhood has finally decided to give them.

The X marks on the calendar are at eighty-seven. Three to go. Cody has the suit Aunt Tammy bought him last week from the men’s section at JCPenney hanging in the closet. The hearing is Monday at ten. We are not going to write any more this week. The cooking is the only useful thing my hands know how to do until then.

The recipe is below, the way Averie Cooks wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the fresh mozzarella — the bag-kind shredded mozzarella will work, but the fresh kind in water makes the dish what it is. The fresh basil is non-negotiable; if you cannot get a plant, the small clamshell of fresh basil at the grocery store is what you want, not dried. Make this on a Sunday night when somebody you love is at the table with you. Some Sundays are the kind of Sundays you hold the dinner for.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 6 oz each)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
4 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon balsamic glaze (optional, for drizzling)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a baking dish or rimmed sheet pan with foil or lightly coat with cooking spray.
Season the chicken. Pat chicken breasts dry with paper towels. Rub both sides with olive oil, then season evenly with garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper.
Sear for color. Heat an oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and sear 2–3 minutes per side until golden. Transfer to prepared baking dish if not using an oven-safe skillet.
Add the tomatoes. Scatter the halved cherry tomatoes and minced garlic around the chicken in the baking dish. Give everything a gentle toss so the tomatoes are coated in the pan drippings.
Bake. Transfer to the oven and bake 18–20 minutes, or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165°F and the tomatoes have softened and begun to burst.
Top with mozzarella. Remove from oven and lay mozzarella slices over each chicken breast. Return to the oven for 3–4 minutes, just until the cheese melts and turns slightly golden at the edges.
Finish and serve. Remove from the oven and scatter fresh basil over the top. Drizzle with balsamic glaze if using. Serve immediately, spooning the roasted tomato juices from the pan over each plate.

Nutrition (per serving)

Tomato, Basil, and Mozzarella Chicken — The Last Sunday Dinner Before the Sentencing