Pad Thai With Chicken — The Asian Kitchen I’m Learning to Own

Four weeks. I can feel Korea approaching the way you feel weather changing — a pressure shift, a charge in the air, the sense that something large is coming and you're standing directly in its path. I've been sleeping badly. Not from anxiety exactly — from anticipation, which is anxiety's optimistic cousin. My brain spins at 2 AM with Korean phrases and restaurant names and flight times and the image of myself standing in Incheon Airport, looking Korean in a country of Koreans, invisible for the first time in my life. Invisible. The opposite of what I've been in America. In Bellevue, I was the visible Asian kid. In Seattle, I'm the visible Korean-American. In Korea, I'll just be — a person. A face in a crowd of faces that look like mine. The thought makes me want to cry with relief.

This week I made a dish that requires more courage than skill: beondegi — silkworm pupae. Yes. Silkworm. Pupae. I know. I bought a can at H Mart (they sell them canned, like tuna, which is a sentence that tells you everything about the difference between Korean and American grocery stores). I heated them in a pan with salt, and the smell — the smell is something, earthy and insect-y and deeply polarizing — filled my condo and I ate them and they tasted like... dirt? Protein? Korea? I'm not sure I liked them. I'm not sure liking them is the point. The point is: Korean street food includes beondegi, and if I'm going to eat my way through Korea, I need to be prepared for the full spectrum, not just the photogenic dishes. Beondegi is the least photogenic food in the Korean canon. It's also the most Korean food I've eaten, in the sense that no other cuisine does this, and the uniqueness of it — the willingness to eat something that Americans would find horrifying — is itself a form of cultural belonging. I ate silkworm pupae. I'm Korean enough for silkworm pupae. That's a credential nobody can take away.

Sujin came over for dinner on Wednesday. I made doenjang jjigae and bulgogi and we ate on the floor — I don't have floor seating, so we just sat on cushions around my coffee table, Korean-style, which was uncomfortable for my American back but felt culturally correct. Sujin said, "When you get to Korea, eat at the small places. Not the tourist restaurants — the tiny ones in alleys, the ones with the plastic tables and the ajumma who cooks everything herself. That's where the real food is." I wrote down her recommendations: specific neighborhoods, specific dishes, the kinds of places that don't have English menus because they don't need them.

Dr. Yoon and I did something different this week: she asked me to practice a meditation. Not traditional meditation — a guided visualization. She asked me to close my eyes and imagine arriving in Korea. What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell? I closed my eyes and I saw: an airport, signs in Korean everywhere, people rushing past, all Korean, all anonymous, all mine in a way that no crowd in America has ever been. I heard: Korean. Everywhere. Not the occasional word caught in a Seattle crowd but a wall of sound, a river of my language, the language I should have learned as a child, washing over me. I smelled: food. Kimchi and doenjang and sesame and gochugaru, the smells of my kitchen but amplified, coming from everywhere, from every restaurant and every cart and every apartment building. I opened my eyes and I was crying. Dr. Yoon said, "Good. Now you know what you're going toward."

Saturday: Bellevue was brief this week — I had Korean class in the morning and shopping to do in the afternoon (clothes for the trip, a new suitcase, practical things). Karen made pasta primavera. I brought leftover bulgogi. Quick dinner, quick hugs. Karen squeezed my arm at the door and said, "Four weeks." She's counting too. My mom is counting the weeks until I go to Korea. My mom, who is not Korean, is counting the weeks until her Korean daughter goes to Korea. The counting is love. All of it — the journal, the fish market research, the Korean cooking class, the counting — is love.

After the week I’d had — the beondegi, the floor-sitting dinner with Sujin, the visualization in Dr. Yoon’s office that left me crying — I needed a night where the kitchen felt less like a test and more like a comfort. I still wanted to stay in that umami-forward, fish-sauce-and-soy world I’ve been living in all month, but something a little looser, a little more forgiving. Pad Thai is not Korean, and I know that, but it sits in the same emotional neighborhood: the wok smell, the bright lime at the end, the way a bowl of noodles can feel like a whole continent. Four weeks out, this is the dish I made for myself, quietly, at 7 PM on a Sunday, with nobody watching — just me and the food and the counting.

Pad Thai With Chicken & Tofu

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 8 oz flat rice noodles (pad thai-width)
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, thinly sliced
• 7 oz firm tofu, pressed and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 shallots, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 cups bean sprouts
• 3 green onions, cut into 1-inch pieces
• Pad Thai Sauce:
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons tamarind paste
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon sriracha (or to taste)
• To Serve:
• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
• 1 lime, cut into wedges
• Fresh cilantro leaves
• Dried chili flakes (optional)

Instructions

1. Soak the noodles. Place rice noodles in a large bowl and cover with warm (not boiling) water. Soak for 20 minutes until pliable but still slightly firm. Drain and set aside. They will finish cooking in the wok.
2. Make the sauce. Whisk together fish sauce, tamarind paste, oyster sauce, brown sugar, and sriracha in a small bowl until the sugar dissolves. Taste and adjust — it should be tangy, salty, and just a little sweet. Set aside.
3. Crisp the tofu. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large wok or skillet over high heat. Add tofu cubes in a single layer and cook without moving for 2 to 3 minutes until golden on the bottom. Flip and cook another 2 minutes. Remove to a plate.
4. Cook the chicken. Add another tablespoon of oil to the wok. Add sliced chicken and season with a pinch of salt. Stir-fry over high heat for 3 to 4 minutes until cooked through and lightly caramelized at the edges. Remove to the plate with the tofu.
5. Build the aromatics. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil. Add garlic and shallots and stir-fry for 60 seconds until fragrant and just beginning to color. Do not let them burn.
6. Add noodles and sauce. Add the drained noodles to the wok along with the sauce. Toss everything together using tongs or two wooden spoons, working quickly over high heat for 2 minutes until the noodles absorb the sauce and begin to char slightly at the edges.
7. Scramble the eggs. Push the noodles to one side of the wok. Pour the beaten eggs into the cleared space and let them set for 20 seconds, then scramble gently and fold into the noodles before they fully firm up.
8. Finish the dish. Return the chicken and tofu to the wok. Add bean sprouts and green onions. Toss everything together for 60 seconds — the sprouts should stay crisp. Taste and add more fish sauce or a squeeze of lime if needed.
9. Serve immediately. Divide into bowls and top with chopped peanuts, a lime wedge, fresh cilantro, and chili flakes if you want the heat. Pad Thai waits for no one — eat it hot.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 32g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 54g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 940mg