Korean-Style Marinated Cucumbers -- The Banchan I Practice With My Chopsticks

I've been using the Korean metal chopsticks all week. Every meal. The learning curve is steep — metal chopsticks are slippery, the flat shape requires a different grip than round wooden ones, and picking up a piece of tofu with metal flat chopsticks is an exercise in patience and frustration that would make a lesser person switch to a fork. I have not switched to a fork. I eat slowly, I drop things, I curse quietly in English (I don't know enough Korean to curse in Korean yet, which is a gap in my language education that I should address), and I persist. Because Korean people eat with these chopsticks. Because Jisoo — my birth mother, if she exists, if she's alive, if she eats tofu — probably uses chopsticks like these. Because my hands should know this tool the way they know a keyboard, instinctively, without thinking, an extension of the body rather than an obstacle to it.

By Friday, I was better. Not good — I'm months from good — but better. I can pick up a piece of kimchi without dropping it. I can maneuver a slippery piece of tteok into my mouth. I can eat rice from a bowl using chopsticks, which is a fundamental Korean skill that I'm learning at twenty-three, and the lateness of it makes me want to cry and also laugh, because I am a person who can build a machine learning pipeline from scratch but cannot reliably eat rice with sticks. The absurdity is part of the story. The story is absurd. I'm absurd. The whole project of reconstructing an identity from restaurant visits and YouTube tutorials and a Duolingo streak (now at 189 days) is absurd. And it's working. Absurdity is working.

This week's cooking focus: doenjang jjigae, continuing from last week's halmeoni inspiration. I made it three times, adjusting the doenjang-to-gochujang ratio, the vegetable combinations, the stock base. Tuesday's batch used zucchini and potato and was good. Wednesday's used mushrooms and tofu and was better — the mushrooms adding an umami depth that complemented the doenjang. Friday's was the best: a combination of zucchini, mushrooms, tofu, and a small amount of ground beef, the stock enriched by the meat. I'm approaching the halmeoni's version asymptotically — getting closer with each iteration, never quite reaching it, the gap narrowing but always present, like a limit in calculus that the curve approaches but never touches.

Dr. Yoon and I talked about perfectionism. She said, "You approach Korean identity the way you approach code: with a target state in mind and a metric for how close you are." I said, "Is that bad?" She said, "It's not bad. It's limiting. Identity isn't a system you can optimize. It's a relationship you develop." That distinction — optimize versus develop — keeps rattling around in my head. I optimize code. I optimize recipes. I optimize my performance at Amazon. But you can't optimize a self. You develop it. You grow it. You let it be imperfect and ongoing and never finished, the way doenjang jjigae is never quite as good as the halmeoni's and maybe that's the whole point: not the arriving but the approaching.

Saturday: Bellevue. Kevin called during dinner — he and Maria are doing well, he's been promoted to head barista at the coffee shop, his sobriety is strong. Karen made her chicken noodle soup (homemade noodles, a Saturday project she loves for the meditative quality of rolling pasta dough). I brought doenjang jjigae, the Friday version. Karen ate a full bowl and asked for seconds. David ate one bowl and said, "This has grown on me." The highest compliment from a man for whom "grown on me" represents the summit of gastronomic openness. I'll take it. I'll take all of it — the growing, the approaching, the metal chopsticks and the Duolingo streak and the doenjang jjigae that is good and getting better and will, given time, be mine in the deep way that Karen's chicken noodle soup is hers: not just a recipe but a relationship, developed over years, never optimized, always growing.

That Saturday dinner — David’s grudging “grown on me,” Karen’s second bowl, all of it — sent me home wanting to keep cooking Korean, to stay in the approaching. These marinated cucumbers are what I made the next morning: a small, bright side dish, nothing as ambitious as doenjang jjigae, but a thing I’ve been practicing long enough that it feels genuinely mine. Here’s how I make them.

Korean-Style Marinated Cucumbers

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Rest Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 English cucumbers (or 4 Persian cucumbers), thinly sliced into rounds
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 tsp gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes), plus more to taste
• 1 tsp granulated sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 3 green onions, thinly sliced on the bias
• 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds

Instructions

1. Salt the cucumbers. Place sliced cucumbers in a colander set over a bowl. Toss with the kosher salt and let sit for 10 minutes. This draws out excess moisture so the dressing clings rather than dilutes.
2. Make the dressing. While the cucumbers rest, whisk together the soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, gochugaru, sugar, and minced garlic in a medium bowl until the sugar dissolves.
3. Press and dry. After 10 minutes, squeeze the cucumber slices firmly in your hands (or press between paper towels) to remove as much liquid as possible. Add them to the bowl with the dressing.
4. Toss and taste. Add the green onions and sesame seeds, then toss everything together. Taste and adjust — more gochugaru for heat, a splash more vinegar for brightness, a pinch more sugar if the soy sauce dominates.
5. Serve or rest. Serve immediately for crunch, or let sit 5–10 more minutes for the cucumbers to absorb more of the dressing. Both are right. It’s a relationship, not an optimization.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 65 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 7g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 420mg