Garlic Miso Pasta

Something happened this week that shifted the ground. I received an email from GOA'L — not a match, but an update: the Korean government has expanded access to adoption records, and GOA'L is encouraging all registered adoptees to submit supplemental information. The email included a form asking for: my current photo, a personal statement, and updated contact information. The personal statement prompt: "What would you want your birth family to know about you?"

I stared at the prompt for three days. What would I want my birth family to know? That I'm alive? That I'm twenty-five? That I work at Amazon and live in Seattle and have a Taiwanese boyfriend who makes beef noodle soup? That I can cook Korean food — thirty dishes, from scratch, without recipes? That I speak Korean badly but persistently? That I went to Korea and cried over pancakes? That I've been searching for a year and a half and the databases are silent and the silence is not a no but a not-yet?

I wrote the statement on Thursday night, at my kitchen counter, with a bowl of kimchi jjigae beside me. I wrote it in English first, then translated the key sentences into Korean, because I want my birth mother — if she reads it, if she's looking, if she exists in the database — to see that her daughter learned her language. Even badly. Even imperfectly. The effort is the message.

The statement: "My name is Stephanie Grace Park. I was born on July 14, 1993, in Seoul, South Korea. I was adopted at five months and raised in Bellevue, Washington, by David and Karen Park. They are good people who loved me well. I am a software engineer. I cook Korean food every day — kimchi jjigae, doenjang jjigae, japchae, bibimbap. I learned to cook because I needed to find the Korean in me, and the Korean was in the food. I have been to Korea. I ate at Gwangjang Market and cried. I am learning Korean. I am searching for you. If you are looking for me, I am here. ∞áçδèö ∞ù1/4Ω╕░ ∞₧ê∞û┤∞üö." (I am here.)

I submitted the statement. The photo I attached was recent — me in my kitchen, onggi pots behind me, Korean knife in hand, the gochugaru stain on the cutting board visible. The photo says: this is my kitchen. This is my Korean kitchen. This is who I became without you, and I became her because of you, because the DNA you gave me led me here, to this counter, to this food, to this life.

James held me while I cried after submitting. Not the big, dramatic crying of year one. The quiet crying of a woman who has been brave enough to put her name and face and story into a database and say: find me. The brave and the crying coexist, the way everything in my life coexists: the Korean and the American, the adopted and the belonging, the searching and the living. James held me and said nothing because nothing is sometimes the exactly right thing to say, and the holding was the saying, and the saying was enough.

The kimchi jjigae was gone by the time I finished submitting the form, and I was still sitting at the counter, not ready to move. I needed something else with that same deep, fermented warmth — the kind that tastes like it took a long time to become itself. Garlic miso pasta is not Korean, but miso is fermented soybean paste, and doenjang is fermented soybean paste, and sometimes the soul of a thing matters more than its passport. I made this at midnight, standing at the same counter where I’d written my statement, and it tasted like exactly what it was: something ancient and quiet, keeping me company while I waited to be found.

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

Ingredients

12 oz spaghetti or linguine
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
6 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons white miso paste
1/2 cup pasta cooking water, reserved
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
Salt and black pepper to taste

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente. Before draining, scoop out 1/2 cup of pasta cooking water and set aside. Drain pasta and set aside.
Build the miso base. In a large skillet over medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter. Add the minced garlic and grated ginger and cook, stirring frequently, for 2–3 minutes until fragrant and just beginning to turn golden. Do not let it burn.
Whisk in the miso. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add the miso paste and whisk it into the butter and garlic, pressing and stirring until it forms a smooth, thick paste, about 1 minute. Add the soy sauce and sesame oil and stir to combine.
Loosen the sauce. Add the reserved pasta water a splash at a time, whisking constantly, until the sauce is silky and just pourable — not watery. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and whisk until melted and emulsified.
Toss the pasta. Add the drained pasta to the skillet and toss vigorously over medium-low heat for 2 minutes, coating every strand in the sauce. Add red pepper flakes if using. Season with salt and black pepper to taste.
Serve. Divide into bowls and top with sliced green onions and toasted sesame seeds. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Garlic Miso Pasta — The Fermented, Umami Soul of a Night I Won’t Forget