Seaweed Salad — The Ocean I Didn’t Know I Remembered

Second session with Dr. Yoon. She asked me about my childhood in a way no one has before — not "was it happy?" but "what was missing?" The question reframed everything. Of course it was happy. Karen and David loved me. The house was warm, the food was good, the school was excellent. But what was missing was: mirrors. People who looked like me. Food that came from where I came from. Language, culture, history — the invisible scaffolding of identity that most people inherit without thinking about it, and that I was never given, not from cruelty but from ignorance, from the well-meaning belief that love alone is enough to raise a child of a different race in a different culture.

Dr. Yoon introduced a concept: racial mirror. The idea that children need to see themselves reflected in their environment — in their parents, their community, their media, their food. Korean children in Korean families get this automatically. I didn't. My racial mirrors were the kids at school who asked if I ate dogs, the occasional Asian character on TV who was always either a ninja or a math nerd, and my own reflection, which looked Korean in a house that was American in every other way. Dr. Yoon said, "You've been building racial mirrors for yourself. The Korean cooking, the language learning, the H Mart trips — those are mirrors." I hadn't thought of it that way. But she's right. Every dish I make, every Hangul character I learn, every time I walk into H Mart and the ajumma speaks Korean to me — those are mirrors. Small ones, imperfect ones, but mirrors.

I thought about this all week. At work, I coded with the usual focus but my mind was running background processes — Dr. Yoon's words cycling through my thoughts like a subroutine. Missing mirrors. Missing food. Missing language. The list of missing things is long but not infinite, and the cooking is filling in one section of the gap, one dish at a time. I'm not just learning recipes. I'm building mirrors.

This week's cooking was reflective of this insight. I made a dish I'd been avoiding: doenjang jjigae with anchovy stock made completely from scratch. Not the shortcut version with dashi packets. The real version: dried anchovies and kelp, simmered for twenty minutes, strained, the resulting stock clear and oceanic and so deeply Korean that when I tasted it — just the stock, nothing added — I felt the recognition again. My body knows this flavor. How? I was five months old when I left Korea. I couldn't have eaten anchovy stock as an infant. And yet.

The jjigae, made with this stock, was noticeably better than my previous versions. The depth — that's what was missing. The shortcut stocks are fine, functional, but they lack the depth that comes from slow extraction, from bones and dried fish and kelp surrendering their minerals and umami into water over twenty minutes of patient simmering. I'm learning that Korean cooking rewards patience in ways that mirror what I'm learning in therapy: you can't shortcut depth. You have to sit with the process. The anchovy stock takes twenty minutes. The therapy takes however long it takes. The identity takes a lifetime.

Kevin called midweek. He's six months sober — the longest stretch in three years. His voice on the phone has a quality I'm finally able to name: presence. He's present. He's in his life instead of beside it. We talked about the coffee roastery where he works, about a girl he's met (tentative, not ready to call it dating, just "a person I see sometimes"), about whether he'll come up for Thanksgiving. I told him I started therapy. He said, "Good. I've been waiting for you to do that." I said, "Waiting?" He said, "Steph, you've been not-fine for years. You just hide it better than I do." The accuracy of that statement was painful and freeing in equal measure.

Saturday: Bellevue. Karen's roast chicken with roasted vegetables. I ate it with the appetite of someone who's been crying in therapy and cooking from scratch and building mirrors and slowly, painfully, becoming herself. I brought a container of the doenjang jjigae for David and Karen to try. Karen ate a full bowl. David ate half a bowl and said, "It's got a lot going on," which is a fair assessment of both the stew and my emotional state. A lot going on. Inside the pot, inside the person. But the flavors are balancing. The salt and the sour and the funk and the sweet. They're balancing.

The kelp I used for the anchovy stock left me thinking about seaweed differently—not as garnish or health food, but as something foundational, something that had been holding up the flavor of Korean cooking long before I ever noticed it. After a week of sitting with Dr. Yoon’s words about mirrors, I wanted to keep pulling on that thread, to let the oceanic umami lead somewhere I could actually eat without a pot on the stove. This seaweed salad was that somewhere: cold, quick, dressed in sesame and soy, tasting exactly like the side dishes that appear at every Korean table without fanfare, as if they’ve always been there—because they have.

Seaweed Salad

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 5 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 oz (about 1 cup dry) dried wakame seaweed
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
• 2 green onions, thinly sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes or gochugaru (optional)

Instructions

1. Rehydrate the seaweed. Place dried wakame in a large bowl and cover with cold water. Let soak for 5 minutes until fully expanded and tender. Drain in a fine-mesh strainer and gently squeeze out excess water with your hands.
2. Trim and cut. If any pieces are very large, use kitchen scissors to cut the rehydrated wakame into roughly 2-inch lengths. Transfer to a clean mixing bowl.
3. Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, grated ginger, and minced garlic until the sugar dissolves.
4. Dress the salad. Pour the dressing over the seaweed and toss well to coat every piece evenly.
5. Finish and serve. Add the sliced green onions and red pepper flakes if using. Toss once more, then transfer to a serving plate or bowl. Scatter toasted sesame seeds over the top. Serve immediately at room temperature, or refrigerate for up to 30 minutes for a colder salad.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 55 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 4g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 510mg