Mediterranean Fettuccine

The adoptee meetup group is evolving. Helen proposed a new format: instead of monthly meetings, we'd add a monthly cooking session — everyone gathers at the community center kitchen and we cook Korean food together, teaching each other, sharing recipes, building the communal kitchen we were each denied as children. The idea was unanimous. The first cooking session is next week, and I volunteered to teach kimchi making. Teaching kimchi to Korean adoptees. The sentence is absurd and beautiful and exactly the thing I want to spend my time doing. Twenty people who look Korean and were raised by non-Korean families, learning to make kimchi from a Korean adoptee who learned from YouTube, in a community center kitchen in the Central District of Seattle. The comedy of it. The tragedy underneath the comedy. The redemption underneath the tragedy. All of it in a jar of fermenting cabbage.

At work, the food preference model generated an unexpected finding: customers who purchase kimchi for the first time tend to subsequently buy other fermented foods — miso, sauerkraut, yogurt — within the next six months. Kimchi as a gateway ferment. The data mirrors my own experience: kimchi was my gateway to doenjang, to gochujang, to making makgeolli, to the whole fermented universe of Korean cooking. One ferment leads to another. One culture leads to another. One identity leads to the next. The data is my biography.

Dr. Yoon and I talked about teaching. She said, "You're moving from receiving to giving. From learner to teacher. That's a different phase of identity — not building the self but sharing it." Sharing the self. The self that was absent three years ago, that was built through cooking and therapy and language and community, is now being shared — with the adoptee group, with Kevin (who made galbi twice since I taught him and texted photos of both), with Karen (whose Korean cooking vocabulary is now extensive), with Bellevue (which has eaten more Korean food in three years than in its previous fifty). The sharing multiplies the self rather than dividing it. The more I give, the more I have. That's not economics. That's food. That's love. That's the Park family dinner table, getting wider every year.

This week's cooking: I made janchi-guksu — Korean banquet noodles, a simple dish of thin wheat noodles in a clear anchovy broth, topped with zucchini, egg strips, and seaweed. Janchi-guksu is traditionally served at celebrations — weddings, birthdays, festivals — and the name literally means "feast noodles." The dish is humble: noodles, broth, garnish. But the humility is the celebration: the noodles represent long life, the simplicity represents gratitude, and the serving of them represents the host's wish for the guest's happiness. I made janchi-guksu this week not for a feast but for a Monday dinner, alone, and the making was its own celebration: I am here. I am alive. I am cooking feast noodles on a Monday. The feast is ordinary. The ordinary is the feast.

Saturday: Bellevue. Karen made tomato soup. I brought janchi-guksu. Two humble dishes. Two celebrations of simplicity. Karen slurped the noodles (Korean noodle-slurping is polite — I told her this and she's been slurping enthusiastically ever since, which David finds mildly distressing). The slurping was joy. The soup was joy. The Saturday was joy. Week 121. The joy continues.

Janchi-guksu reminded me that noodles don’t need a wedding or a birthday to mean something — the act of making them is the occasion. When I want that same spirit in a dish I can share with people who didn’t grow up eating Korean food, I reach for this Mediterranean fettuccine: thin noodles, a few bright pantry ingredients, humble and festive at once. I brought a version of this to Karen’s the same week I brought the janchi-guksu, and watching her slurp fettuccine with the same enthusiasm she’d given the Korean noodles told me everything — the feast is the noodle, whatever language it speaks.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

12 oz fettuccine
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (14 oz) artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and sliced
1/2 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and halved
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons reserved pasta cooking water

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook fettuccine according to package directions until al dente. Before draining, reserve 2 tablespoons of pasta cooking water. Drain and set aside.
Soften the aromatics. While pasta cooks, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and red pepper flakes; cook, stirring, for 1–2 minutes until fragrant but not browned.
Build the sauce. Add artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes to the skillet. Cook for 3–4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the artichokes begin to color at the edges. Add the olives and stir to combine.
Bring it together. Add the drained fettuccine to the skillet along with the reserved pasta water and remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil. Toss over medium heat for 1–2 minutes until everything is well coated and glossy.
Finish and serve. Remove from heat. Add lemon juice and toss once more. Plate the pasta and top with crumbled feta and fresh parsley. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Mediterranean Fettuccine — Feast Noodles for an Ordinary Monday