Cheesy Garlic Zucchini Bites

Long evenings. Light until ten PM. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 2, on a step stool stirring miso into broth. She knows the order. She is bilingual already in food vocabulary. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Kimbap Saturday for the picnic. The seaweed-rice rolls. Hana helped.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

The week held. The kitchen held. The two cultures shared the counter.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

Kimbap is the planned dish — the one you start an hour early with a two-year-old on a step stool, the one that requires the right rice and the right rolling pressure and a level of patience the week doesn’t always leave you with. These zucchini bites came together the Sunday after, when David had just left his garden tomatoes on the counter and there was a zucchini from the Wallingford farmers market sitting next to them and I had maybe thirty minutes and exactly zero ambition. Hana placed the cheese on each round with absolute seriousness. That was enough — two cultures, one counter, and the kitchen holding again.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 medium zucchini, sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (for garnish)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 425°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Season the zucchini. In a large bowl, toss the zucchini rounds with olive oil, minced garlic, garlic powder, Italian seasoning, salt, and black pepper until evenly coated.
Arrange on the baking sheet. Spread the zucchini rounds in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet, making sure they don’t overlap so they roast rather than steam.
Add the cheese. Sprinkle mozzarella evenly over each round, then follow with Parmesan. Press the cheese gently so it adheres.
Bake until golden. Roast for 18—22 minutes, until the zucchini is tender and the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned at the edges. For extra browning, broil on high for the final 2 minutes — watch closely.
Garnish and serve. Transfer to a serving platter, scatter fresh parsley over the top, and serve warm. These are best eaten immediately but hold up reasonably well at room temperature for a picnic spread.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cheesy Garlic Zucchini Bites — What You Make When the Kimbap Is Already Gone