Beef and Pumpkin Shepherd’s Pie -- The Comfort of Both Tables

One year. Fifty-two weeks since I stood in a silent condo on Capitol Hill with a drawer full of takeout menus and a heart full of nothing I could name. Fifty-two weeks since the scrambled eggs and the pad see ew and the fine-I'm-fine-everything-is-fine. Fifty-two weeks since the code that didn't work.

I changed the code.

Here is what I know now that I didn't know then: I am Korean. Not Korean like someone born and raised in Korea — not that kind of Korean, maybe never that kind — but Korean like someone who was born in Korea and raised in America and lost her culture and is finding it, dish by dish, word by word, mirror by mirror, in a Capitol Hill kitchen with a Zojirushi rice cooker and three onggi pots and hands that are permanently faintly red from gochugaru and a birth mother she's never met and an adoptive mother who just learned to make japchae and a brother who is sober and a therapist who is wise and a Korean class in a strip mall in Federal Way and a friend named Daniel who calls Korean cooking "physical therapy for an amputated identity" and a friend named Sujin who said "진짜 한식" about my food, and all of this is true, and all of this is me, and me is who I've been becoming for fifty-two weeks.

I cooked today. Not anything new — I made kimchi jjigae, the dish that started the Korean cooking part of my life, the dish I've made more times than I can count, the dish I can now make without thinking, the way Karen makes pot roast and Sujin makes her halmeoni's version and somewhere in Busan a woman I've never met might be making her own. I made it because it's Monday and I was hungry and kimchi jjigae is what I eat when I'm hungry, the way American people eat soup or sandwiches, automatically, without ceremony. The lack of ceremony is the point. A year ago, making kimchi jjigae was a pilgrimage. Now it's Tuesday. That's the transformation. Not from ordinary to extraordinary, but from extraordinary to ordinary. The Korean food has become my ordinary. My daily. My default. And the ordinariness of it — the muscle memory, the automatic reach for gochugaru, the kimchi in the fridge that I don't think about because it's always there — is the deepest form of identity I've built. Identity isn't the dramatic moments. It's the ordinary ones. It's the Tuesday kimchi jjigae, unremarkable and essential, the thing you make without thinking because it's who you are.

Saturday: Bellevue. Last Saturday of year one. Karen made her pot roast — the dish she taught me over the phone fifty-one weeks ago, the first thing I ever cooked, the recipe that started everything by showing me that I could feed myself, that the kitchen wasn't hostile territory, that a person who eats takeout every night can also be a person who makes pot roast. I brought kimchi, naturally. The pot roast and the kimchi on the same table, Karen's first recipe and my constant companion, the American origin and the Korean destination. We ate them together. They don't go together, flavor-wise — pot roast and kimchi is not a pairing you'll find in any cookbook — but they go together the way my life goes together: improbably, imperfectly, both things true at once.

After dinner, I helped Karen with the dishes. Standing at the sink, the warm water running over my hands — hands that have made kimchi and pot roast and bibimbap and lasagna and tteokguk and green bean casserole — I said, "Mom, thank you." She said, "For what?" I said, "For the pot roast recipe. For the cookbook. For the cooking class. For being okay with all of this." She said, "All of what?" I said, "The Korean thing. The me becoming more Korean thing." She turned off the water and looked at me and said, "Stephanie, you becoming more Korean doesn't make you less mine. You have always been mine. You will always be mine. Becoming more of who you are doesn't take you away from us. It brings you closer." And she hugged me, soapy hands and all, and I stood in Karen's kitchen being held by the woman who raised me, and I thought: both. Both mothers. Both cultures. Both foods. Both. The answer was always both.

I drove home in the dark. March in Seattle, the days lengthening, the light returning. In my condo, I made rice — just rice, the Zojirushi singing its song — and ate it with kimchi, standing at the counter, the way I've eaten a hundred meals this year. Rice and kimchi. The simplest Korean meal. The foundation. The thing I'll build on in year two and year three and year thirty, if I'm lucky, if I'm persistent, if the fermentation keeps working and the hands keep learning and the bridge keeps being built, one dish at a time, one word at a time, one week at a time.

Year one is done. I am not done. I am just beginning.

After that Saturday at Karen’s — pot roast and kimchi on the same table, soapy-handed hugs at the sink, the quiet revelation that both has always been the answer — I wanted a recipe that lives in that same warm, sturdy, arms-around-you space. This beef and pumpkin shepherd’s pie is that dish: hearty and unpretentious, the kind of thing Karen would slide across the counter on a weeknight, the kind of thing that says you are home without needing to say it at all. It’s not Korean, and it’s not trying to be. It’s the other half of both — and there’s always room for it on my table, right next to the kimchi.

Beef and Pumpkin Shepherd’s Pie

Prep Time: 25 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or fresh)
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
• 1/3 cup whole milk, warmed
• 1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef (85/15)
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 cup beef broth
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Instructions

1. Boil the potatoes. Place cubed potatoes in a large pot of salted water. Bring to a boil and cook until fork-tender, about 15 minutes. Drain well and return to the pot.
2. Make the pumpkin mash. Add pumpkin puree, 2 tablespoons butter, warm milk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and nutmeg to the potatoes. Mash until smooth and creamy. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
3. Preheat the oven. Set oven to 400°F (200°C).
4. Brown the beef. In a large oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat, cook ground beef, breaking it into pieces, until browned, about 6-7 minutes. Drain excess fat, leaving about 1 tablespoon in the pan.
5. Build the filling. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter, onion, and carrots to the skillet. Cook over medium heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook 30 seconds. Stir in flour and tomato paste, cooking for 1 minute. Pour in beef broth and Worcestershire sauce, stirring to combine. Add thyme, smoked paprika, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Simmer until the mixture thickens, about 3-4 minutes. Stir in frozen peas.
6. Top and bake. Spread the pumpkin-potato mash evenly over the beef filling, using a fork to create ridges on top. Place the skillet on a baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the top is golden and the filling is bubbling at the edges.
7. Rest and serve. Let the shepherd’s pie cool for 10 minutes before serving. The filling will thicken as it rests.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 445 | Protein: 28g | Fat: 21g | Carbs: 36g | Fiber: 5g | Sodium: 680mg