Marinated Beef Stir Fry

Daffodils in the front yard. The shiso starts pushing up. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 1, a small loud animal. She mostly eats rice and bananas. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Doenjang jjigae Tuesday. The fermented soybean paste. Anchovy stock. Zucchini, tofu, scallion. Jisoo's recipe.

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

I drank tea on the porch in the rain. Standard Seattle. The kitchen warm behind me.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

The doenjang jjigae with Jisoo stayed with me all week — the FaceTime, the same soup in two cities, eleven thousand miles and one pot. By Saturday I still had beef in the fridge and a need to stay close to the stove, to that same grounding pull of marinade and heat and something coming together in a pan. This stir fry is not Jisoo’s recipe. But it lives in the same kitchen logic: soy, sesame, a little fire, vegetables that hold their shape. It fed us. That was enough.

Prep Time: 30 min (includes marinating) | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 lb flank steak or sirloin, thinly sliced against the grain
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
1 medium zucchini, sliced into half-moons
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 cup broccoli florets
3 scallions, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 teaspoon sesame seeds, for garnish
Cooked rice, for serving

Instructions

Marinate the beef. In a medium bowl, whisk together soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, brown sugar, garlic, and ginger. Add sliced beef and toss to coat. Let marinate at room temperature for 20–30 minutes, or refrigerate up to overnight.
Make the slurry. Stir cornstarch into the 2 tablespoons of water until fully dissolved. Set aside.
Sear the beef. Heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in a wok or large cast-iron skillet over high heat until shimmering. Remove beef from marinade (reserve the marinade) and add to pan in a single layer. Sear 2–3 minutes without stirring, then toss and cook 1 minute more until browned. Transfer beef to a plate.
Stir fry the vegetables. Add remaining tablespoon of oil to the pan. Add broccoli and bell pepper; cook over high heat, stirring frequently, for 2–3 minutes. Add zucchini and cook 1–2 minutes more until vegetables are just tender with some bite remaining.
Bring it together. Return beef to the pan. Pour in reserved marinade and the cornstarch slurry. Toss everything to coat and cook 1–2 minutes, until the sauce thickens and coats the beef and vegetables. Add scallions and toss once more.
Serve. Spoon over steamed rice and scatter sesame seeds over the top. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Marinated Beef Stir Fry — The Kitchen That Holds Everything