Pork Bok Choy Udon Soup

The equinox is this week — Shunbun no Hi in the fall version, the Japanese holiday for visiting graves. Last spring I honored it by cooking. This fall I honor it differently: I drove to a spot on the coast, near Cannon Beach, and stood on the sand facing west, facing the Pacific, facing Japan, and I said Fumiko's name out loud. Not a prayer. Not a ritual. Just her name, spoken into the wind, carried over the ocean toward the country she came from and never returned to. Fumiko Nakamura. Ninety years. Sacramento. A kitchen. A woman who made dashi smell like the ocean and who is now part of the ocean, or at least part of the wind, or at least part of the sound that the world makes when someone says your name after you are gone.

Miya was with Brian. I went alone. The aloneness was the point. Grief, like cooking, is sometimes best done in solitude — not because company is unwelcome but because the thing you need to feel requires a stillness that only solitude provides. I stood on the beach for an hour. I watched the waves. I said her name three more times. And then I drove home and made miso soup and the soup smelled like the ocean and I drank it from the chipped bowl and the chip fit my lip and I was okay. Not healed. Not over it. Okay. Which is enough. Which has always been enough.

I have started cooking Fumiko's recipes in order — one card per week, working through the collection systematically. This week was card number one: dashi. Not miso soup — dashi alone. The foundation. The base. The thing everything else is built on. I made it three times in three days, adjusting, tasting, comparing to my memory. By the third time, it was right. Not Fumiko-right — I may never achieve Fumiko-right — but right enough that the ocean was there, in the steam, in the taste, in the golden clarity of the liquid strained through cloth. The foundation holds. Everything else can be built.

I wrote about the equinox and the beach for the blog. It was the first post where I used Fumiko's name publicly. "My grandmother, Fumiko Nakamura, died in June. She made dashi that smelled like the ocean. I am learning to make dashi that smells like the ocean." The response was overwhelming — hundreds of comments, emails, people sharing their own grandmothers, their own kitchens, their own oceans. The grief, shared, became a bridge. The bridge carried all of us.

Card number one was dashi — the foundation — and now that I had it right, or right enough, I needed somewhere to put it. Udon felt inevitable: thick, forgiving noodles that hold heat the way grief holds memory, pork for substance, bok choy for the brightness Fumiko always said a bowl needed. This is not her recipe exactly, but it is built on what she taught me first, and that feels like the right place to begin.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

6 cups dashi or low-sodium chicken broth
3/4 lb pork tenderloin, thinly sliced
2 heads baby bok choy, halved lengthwise
2 portions (about 7 oz total) fresh or refrigerated udon noodles
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon mirin
1 teaspoon sesame oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon neutral oil (such as avocado or canola)
White pepper, to taste

Instructions

Sear the pork. Heat neutral oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add pork slices in a single layer and cook 2–3 minutes per side until just browned. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
Build the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add garlic and ginger to the same pot and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant, scraping up any browned bits from the pork.
Simmer the broth. Pour in the dashi or broth. Add soy sauce and mirin. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, about 5 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Cook the bok choy. Add bok choy halves to the simmering broth, cut side down. Cook 3–4 minutes until the stems are just tender but still have some bite.
Return the pork and add noodles. Return the pork to the pot. Add udon noodles, separating them gently. Simmer 3–4 minutes until noodles are heated through and pork is cooked completely.
Finish and serve. Stir in sesame oil and a pinch of white pepper. Ladle into bowls and top with sliced green onions. Serve immediately while the broth is steaming.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pork Bok Choy Udon Soup — The Foundation Holds