Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts

The week after publication. The book is in the world and the world is responding. The Oregonian review was published — a warm, generous review that called the book "a quietly devastating memoir wrapped in the steam of miso soup." Devastating. The word is both compliment and diagnosis: the book is devastating because Fumiko's absence is devastating, because the grief is devastating, because the love is devastating, because all the things that are most true are devastating when they are said clearly, without decoration, in a voice that does not flinch.

I made Fumiko's gyoza for the celebration dinner — Lin, Rachel, Marie, the yoga friends, twenty people in my apartment, which should not hold twenty people but did, because love stretches rooms the way it stretches everything. The gyoza were perfect. The champagne (Lin's contribution) was cold. The evening was warm. The people who came were the people who had been with me through the divorce and the pandemic and the writing and the parenting, the community that had been built one dinner at a time, one Thanksgiving at a time, one Wednesday night nabe at a time, and the community was here tonight to say: you did it. The book exists. Fumiko is in the world.

Miya stood on a chair and made a toast (at Lin's prompting): "To Mama's book. And to Obaachan's soup. They are the same thing." The toast was the truest literary criticism ever spoken. They are the same thing. The book and the soup. The writing and the cooking. The practice and the product. The granddaughter who learned to read and the grandmother who wrote the recipes. They are the same thing. Miya knows this at seven. The knowing is the inheritance completed.

I received an email from a woman in Japan — Osaka — who read the New York Times essay (it was translated and shared on Japanese social media) and said, in careful English: "Your grandmother's miso soup is the same as my grandmother's miso soup. The ocean is not so wide." The ocean is not so wide. The sentence is the book. The sentence is the blog. The sentence is nine years of writing distilled into eight words by a stranger in Osaka. The ocean is not so wide. The soup crosses it. The love crosses it. The words cross it. Everything crosses the ocean that Fumiko crossed when she left Japan and never went back.

The gyoza were Fumiko’s, and I’ll never share that recipe — it belongs to her, to memory, to the steam of a kitchen I can only visit in writing. But a celebration dinner for twenty people needs more than one thing to pass around, and these bacon-wrapped water chestnuts have been my go-to party bite for years: the crunch, the sweet-salty glaze, the way they vanish from the plate before you’ve finished setting it down. That night, with the champagne cold and the room warm and Miya standing on a chair making the truest toast I’ve ever heard, these were the things people reached for between hugs — small, warm, and impossible to resist, which felt exactly right.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 12 (about 24 pieces)

Ingredients

2 cans (8 oz each) whole water chestnuts, drained
1 lb thin-cut bacon, strips cut in half crosswise
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
Toothpicks, for securing

Instructions

Marinate. Combine soy sauce, brown sugar, ketchup, garlic powder, and ground ginger in a small bowl and whisk until the sugar dissolves. Add the drained water chestnuts and toss to coat. Let marinate at room temperature for at least 15 minutes, or cover and refrigerate for up to 4 hours.
Preheat. Heat your oven to 400°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and set a wire rack on top, then lightly coat the rack with cooking spray.
Wrap. Remove each water chestnut from the marinade (reserve the marinade). Wrap one half-strip of bacon snugly around each chestnut and secure with a toothpick. Arrange in a single layer on the prepared rack.
Glaze. Pour the reserved marinade into a small saucepan over medium heat. Simmer for 3—4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it thickens slightly into a glaze. Brush generously over each bacon-wrapped chestnut.
Bake. Bake for 25—30 minutes, brushing with the glaze once more halfway through, until the bacon is crispy and deeply caramelized and the glaze is sticky and burnished. Watch the last few minutes — the sugar can go from golden to burnt quickly.
Serve. Transfer to a serving platter and serve hot. Leave the toothpicks in for easy grabbing. They will disappear before you expect them to.

Nutrition (per serving)

Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts — The Party That Said You Did It