Peanut-Sesame Slaw with Soba Noodles

Fourth of July. Independence Day. A holiday celebrating the birth of a nation built by people who came from somewhere else, which is something I think about differently now than I did as a child, when the Fourth meant sparklers and Karen's corn on the cob and David lighting fireworks in the driveway with the precise, controlled competence of a man who builds airplanes for a living. I still love the Fourth. I love the excess of it, the unapologetic Americanness, the way the whole country eats hot dogs and sets things on fire and calls it patriotism. It is my holiday, this American holiday, because I am American. I am also Korean. The Fourth of July doesn't know what to do with that, and neither do I, so I make potato salad and kimchi and bring both to the barbecue.

David's July Fourth barbecue is an institution. He has been grilling on the Fourth since before I was born, and he approaches it with the engineering precision he brings to everything: the charcoal arranged in a specific pattern, the meat temperature-checked with a digital thermometer, the grill lid opened at precisely timed intervals. This year's menu: burgers, hot dogs, Karen's corn on the cob (boiled with a splash of milk, her one non-negotiable technique), her coleslaw, and my contribution — a container of kimchi and a bowl of potato salad. The potato salad was Karen's recipe, which she taught me over the phone on Wednesday. The kimchi was mine. Both felt right.

No one at the barbecue commented on the kimchi, which is exactly how I wanted it. It just sat there on the table between the ketchup and the mustard, a jar of fermented Korean cabbage at an American barbecue in a Bellevue backyard, and some people took some and some people didn't, and the world kept spinning. David's neighbor, a retired pilot named Frank, tried the kimchi and said, "This has got a kick to it," and went back for more. Karen ate it on her burger, which was a gesture of love so profound that I almost commented on it but decided to let it just be what it was: a mother eating her daughter's food because that's what mothers do.

I turn twenty-three in ten days. July 14. My birthday has always been complicated — not the celebration part, which the Parks handle with characteristic warmth and too many candles, but the fact of it, the date itself, which is the anniversary of a day I don't remember, in a city I've never visited, in a country I've never been to, involving a woman I've never met who held me for three days and then let go. I don't know what time I was born. I don't know what hospital. I don't know if my birth mother cried or was relieved or both. The adoption records say: Baby Girl #4719, approximately three days old, Eastern Social Welfare Society, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. That's my origin story. A number and a district and the word "approximately." Not even my age was certain.

I've been thinking about this more than usual as the birthday approaches. Therapy keeps coming up in my mental periphery — the idea of talking to someone, a professional, about the things I carry. Not crisis things. Not Kevin-level things. Just the low-grade, persistent ache of not knowing where I come from, the way it colors everything, the way I can be standing at a barbecue in Bellevue surrounded by people who love me and still feel, underneath the potato salad and the fireworks, a loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone and everything to do with being unknown.

But I'm not ready for therapy. Not yet. I'm still in the phase of believing I can figure this out myself, through cooking and Duolingo and Saturday trips to H Mart. The engineer in me wants to solve the problem before admitting it's a problem. The adoptee in me wants to be grateful and fine and not make a fuss. These two impulses work together to keep me out of a therapist's office, and I know, somewhere below the knowing, that this is not sustainable. But July 4, 2016 is not the day I deal with that. July 4, 2016 is the day I eat burgers and kimchi in Bellevue and watch David's precisely-engineered fireworks and feel American and Korean and neither and both.

Home by 10 PM. I made rice and heated up leftover kimchi jjigae and ate it on the couch while the fireworks popped outside my window, distant and muffled, other people's celebrations filtering through the glass. I thought about the woman in Korea who, twenty-three years ago next week, gave birth to a girl she couldn't keep. I wondered if she thinks about the Fourth of July. She probably doesn't even know what it is. Our worlds don't overlap anywhere except inside me, and I am the only map of the territory between us, and the territory is vast and mostly unmapped and I'm charting it one recipe at a time.

That night on the couch, eating kimchi jjigae alone while other people’s fireworks faded through the glass, I didn’t want to cook anything heavy or complicated—I wanted something that felt like being in-between, something that didn’t have to choose a side. This peanut-sesame slaw with soba noodles is exactly that: Japanese noodles, a dressing that borrows from everywhere, crunchy and cold and a little tangy, the kind of dish that doesn’t explain itself. It’s what I made the next day with what was left in the fridge, and it tasted, somehow, like the right answer to a question I hadn’t figured out how to ask yet.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

8 oz soba noodles
3 cups shredded green cabbage
1 cup shredded purple cabbage
1 cup shredded carrots (about 2 medium carrots)
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
1/4 cup roasted salted peanuts, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
For the dressing:
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1–2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce or sriracha, to taste
2–3 tablespoons warm water, to thin

Instructions

Cook the noodles. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook soba noodles according to package directions, usually 4–5 minutes. Drain, rinse thoroughly under cold water, and set aside.
Make the dressing. Whisk together peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, honey, ginger, garlic, and chili garlic sauce in a small bowl until smooth. Add warm water one tablespoon at a time until the dressing is pourable but still thick.
Combine the slaw. In a large bowl, toss together green cabbage, purple cabbage, carrots, green onions, and cilantro.
Add the noodles. Add the rinsed soba noodles to the slaw mixture and toss to distribute evenly.
Dress and toss. Pour the peanut-sesame dressing over the slaw and noodles. Toss well until everything is thoroughly coated. Taste and adjust seasoning—more soy sauce for salt, more vinegar for brightness, more chili sauce for heat.
Rest and serve. Let the slaw sit for at least 10 minutes before serving to allow the flavors to meld. Top with chopped peanuts and toasted sesame seeds just before serving. Serve cold or at room temperature. The slaw keeps well refrigerated for up to 2 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Peanut-Sesame Slaw with Soba Noodles — The Dish That Sits Between the Ketchup and the Mustard