Kimchi Grilled Cheese

New Year. 2018. I spent New Year's Eve at Sujin's — the first New Year's I haven't spent alone since starting the cooking journey. Sujin, Tom, Daniel, Grace, and I gathered in Sujin's living room, eating tteokbokki and drinking soju and counting down to midnight in both English and Korean: Ten! Nine! Eight! ... 하나! 새해 복 많이 받으세요! (One! Happy New Year!) At midnight I ate tteokguk — my third New Year's tteokguk, the tradition firmly established now — and the soup tasted like community, like the people in Sujin's living room, like the Korean-American social world I've built over two years of showing up and cooking and being Korean.

My New Year's intention for 2018, stated to Dr. Yoon: "Closer." Closer to what? "Closer to her. My birth mother. Closer to the search. Not doing it yet — but closer. Moving toward it instead of away from it." Dr. Yoon said, "What would moving toward look like?" I said, "Research. Learning about the adoption search process. Talking to people who've done it. Maybe — maybe — contacting the adoption agency." She said, "That's a lot of maybe." I said, "Maybe is further than I was last January, when the answer was no." She nodded. Maybe as progress. Maybe as the space between no and yes, the space where readiness ferments like kimchi, slowly, below the surface, transforming no into maybe into someday into — maybe — yes.

The year begins with cooking that feels both routine and revolutionary. Routine: I make kimchi jjigae three times a week, doenjang jjigae twice, banchan on Sundays. Revolutionary: I'm experimenting now, not just replicating. This week I made a fusion dish — kimchi grilled cheese — that is exactly what it sounds like: sourdough bread, sharp cheddar, a layer of well-aged kimchi, grilled in butter until the cheese melts and the kimchi softens and the bread is golden and crispy. It's not Korean. It's not American. It's Korean-American, hyphenated, fused, the culinary equivalent of me. The kimchi grilled cheese is my identity in a sandwich: two cultures, melted together, better for the melting.

At work, new year means new projects. I've been assigned to lead the Fresh recommendation platform redesign — a massive project, twelve months, team of ten. It's the biggest project of my career. I should be fully invested. I am invested — but the investment is professional, not existential. I will do excellent work on this project. I will also, simultaneously, plan a return to Korea, inch toward a birth mother search, attend Korean class, cook Korean food, go to therapy, go to adoptee meetups, and continue the slow, relentless construction of a Korean-American identity that is now, at twenty-four, the most important project of my life. The Amazon project is work. The identity project is everything else.

Saturday: Bellevue. Karen made her winter minestrone. I brought the kimchi grilled cheese. Karen tried one and said, "Kimchi in a grilled cheese? That's clever." David tried one and said, "This is really good," with the emphasis on "really" that David reserves for things he genuinely likes, as opposed to the flat "good" he uses for things he's tolerating. The kimchi grilled cheese: approved by David Park. Filed under: small victories that feel enormous.

That kimchi grilled cheese — the one David gave his genuine “really good” to, the one that felt like my identity pressed between two slices of sourdough — deserved to be written down properly. It’s the kind of recipe that doesn’t need precision so much as intention: good bread, sharp cheese, kimchi that’s had time to ferment into something deeper than where it started. Here’s how I make it.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 8 minutes | Total Time: 13 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

4 slices sourdough bread
4 oz sharp cheddar cheese, sliced or shredded
1/2 cup well-aged kimchi, drained and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes), optional
1 teaspoon sesame oil, optional

Instructions

Prep the kimchi. Drain the kimchi well, squeezing out excess liquid so the sandwich stays crispy. Roughly chop it into smaller pieces.
Build the sandwiches. Butter one side of each slice of sourdough. On the unbuttered side of two slices, layer half the cheddar, then the chopped kimchi, then the remaining cheddar. If using gochugaru, sprinkle it over the kimchi layer. Top with the remaining bread slices, buttered side facing out.
Grill low and slow. Heat a skillet over medium-low heat. Place the sandwiches in the pan and cook for 3 to 4 minutes per side, pressing gently with a spatula, until the bread is deep golden and the cheese is fully melted. Medium-low heat is key — it gives the cheese time to melt before the bread burns.
Finish and serve. If using sesame oil, brush a thin layer over the top of each sandwich as it comes off the heat. Slice in half and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Kimchi Grilled Cheese — Two Cultures, Melted Together