Cherry Chicken Croissants

Late March. The vaccines are arriving and Portland is cautiously, carefully, beginning to imagine a world that is not a pandemic. The yoga studio is adding classes. The farmers market is relaxing spacing. The air has a different quality — not relief, exactly, but the beginning of relief, the way the sky lightens before sunrise: the sun is not here yet, but the darkness is less dark.

I made spring onigiri — rice balls filled with pickled cherry blossom (sakura) and wrapped in a shiso leaf instead of nori. The spring onigiri is my invention, not Fumiko's, and the invention matters because for five years I have been cooking Fumiko's food and this year I am starting to cook my own food alongside hers, the way the spring light sits alongside the remaining gray. Both are present. Both are necessary. The inherited and the invented share the plate.

I got a response from one of the literary agents. She wants to see sample chapters. The response is not a yes — it is a "tell me more," a door cracked open, a hand reaching through. I sent the chapters — the miso soup chapter, the internment chapter, the one about the tamagoyaki pan — and then I closed the laptop and sat in the kitchen and the anxiety said: they will read the chapters and find them wanting. And the writing said: the chapters are good. And the practice said: you have made dashi every morning for five years and the dashi is good and the chapters are dashi, the same practice, the same patience, the same overnight soak before the heat. The chapters will be good. The practice guarantees it.

Miya lost another tooth — her first real baby tooth, the front one. She held it in her palm and looked at it with the scientific curiosity of a child who has just expelled a piece of her own body and is trying to understand the mechanism. "Will a new one grow?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "Better?" she asked. "Different," I said. "Same but different." She considered this. "Like the two houses?" she asked. And I said yes. Like the two houses. Same Miya but different address. The same tooth but different size. The continuity runs through the change. The change does not break the continuity. The continuity is the root. The tooth will grow back. The tooth always grows back.

The sakura I folded into those rice balls was my own invention—but the cherry, the bright particular sweetness of it against something savory and soft, kept pulling at me long after the onigiri were gone. That’s how I ended up returning to this recipe: Cherry Chicken Croissants, which I’d bookmarked in a different season and almost forgotten, the way you forget that spring is coming until suddenly it isn’t. There is something about the combination—the cherry, the tenderness, the buttery flake of a croissant split open—that sits exactly where this moment lives: not quite relief, but the beginning of it, the door cracked open, the hand reaching through.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 cups cooked chicken breast, shredded or finely chopped
1/2 cup dried tart cherries, roughly chopped
1/3 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt
1/4 cup celery, finely diced
2 tablespoons green onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 large croissants, halved horizontally
4 leaves butter lettuce

Instructions

Mix the filling. In a medium bowl, combine the shredded chicken, dried cherries, celery, and green onion. Stir to distribute evenly.
Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, Greek yogurt, Dijon mustard, and garlic powder until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.
Combine. Pour the dressing over the chicken mixture and fold gently until everything is well coated. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.
Assemble. Lay a lettuce leaf on the bottom half of each croissant. Spoon a generous portion of the cherry chicken salad over the lettuce, then place the croissant top over it.
Serve. Serve immediately, or wrap tightly and refrigerate for up to one day—the flavors deepen as they rest.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cherry Chicken Croissants — The Inherited and the Invented, Sharing the Plate