Honey Cinnamon Milk

A normal week. I am going to write about a normal week because not every week is a milestone and not every week is a drama and not every week is Jisoo arriving or Hana saying her first sentence or Karen meeting my birth mother. Some weeks are just weeks. Some weeks are Tuesday dinners and Wednesday errands and Thursday recipe testing and Friday bath time and Saturday farmers market and Sunday calls with Kevin. Some weeks are ordinary. The ordinary is where most of life happens. The ordinary is where the love accumulates. The ordinary is the kimchi fermenting in the onggi — nothing dramatic happening, just the slow transformation of cabbage and salt into something extraordinary. The ordinary is the fermentation. The extraordinary is what results.

Hana is twenty months old. She helps me cook — "helps" in the loosest possible sense. She stands on David's step stool and she stirs whatever I let her stir (usually rice, which is forgiving of toddler stirring) and she tastes whatever I let her taste (usually broth, cooled, from a spoon) and she says, "Cook" and "bap" and "more" and she is learning the kitchen the way I learned the kitchen: by being in it. By standing at the counter and watching and being allowed to touch and taste and participate. By being present while the cooking happens. The presence is the teaching. The teaching is the presence. I was not present in a Korean kitchen until I was twenty-two. Hana is present at twenty months. The difference is the whole project of my life.

James and I have a new evening ritual: after Hana is in bed, we cook something together. Not dinner — dinner is done, dinner was Hana's meal, practical and fast. This is a slow cook, a project cook, a "let's try something new" cook. This week: we attempted Taiwanese braised beef tendon, from a recipe James's uncle sent. The tendon took four hours. We played music. We drank tea. We stirred. We tasted. We talked about nothing and everything — about Hana, about the company, about Kevin's café, about whether we want another child. The tendon was extraordinary. The conversation was better.

The recipe this week is the braised beef tendon — because the ordinary deserves documentation too. Beef tendon, blanched and cleaned. Braised in soy sauce, rock sugar, star anise, cinnamon, Sichuan peppercorn, rice wine, garlic, ginger. Four hours at the lowest simmer. The tendon becomes gelatinous, glossy, meltingly tender. Served over rice with the reduced sauce. This is patient food. This is Tuesday-night food. This is the food of marriage: two people in a kitchen, cooking something slow, talking about everything, saying nothing important, meaning everything.

While the tendon braised — four hours of cinnamon and star anise and slow heat filling the apartment — James and I kept reaching for something warm to hold in our hands while we talked. Tea turned into this: honey cinnamon milk, which sounds almost embarrassingly simple but which tasted, that night, like exactly the right thing. It is the ordinary made warm. It is the fermentation in a cup — nothing dramatic, just time and sweetness and spice doing their quiet work.

Prep Time: 2 minutes | Cook Time: 5 minutes | Total Time: 7 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

2 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons honey, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of fine sea salt
Ground cinnamon or a cinnamon stick, for serving

Instructions

Warm the milk. Pour the milk into a small saucepan and set over medium-low heat. Warm gently, stirring occasionally, until steaming and just beginning to show small bubbles at the edges — about 4 to 5 minutes. Do not let it boil.
Add the flavorings. Whisk in the honey, ground cinnamon, vanilla extract, and pinch of salt until fully combined and the honey is dissolved.
Taste and adjust. Take a small sip and adjust honey or cinnamon to your liking. The milk should be gently sweet with a warm spice finish.
Serve. Pour into two mugs. Dust the top lightly with ground cinnamon or rest a cinnamon stick across the rim. Drink while warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Honey Cinnamon Milk — The Quiet Warmth of an Ordinary Tuesday Night