Mushroom-Stuffed Baked Brie

October. The kimchi crocks fermenting hard. 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.

Kimchi-making day Saturday. Twenty heads of napa cabbage. The annual fall ritual. Jisoo FaceTimed in.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

After a Saturday of hauling twenty heads of napa cabbage, packing kimchi paste into crocks, and watching the fermentation bubbles do their slow, certain work, Sunday dinner with David arriving at the door felt like the exhale the whole week had been building toward. I wanted something I could pull from the oven warm and whole — something that required no explaining, no translation, just hands reaching in together around the table. This mushroom-stuffed baked brie was exactly that: the kitchen doing its quiet, generous work while I finally sat still.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 wheel (8 oz) Brie cheese
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 oz cremini mushrooms, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon dry sherry or white wine
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
Crackers, sliced baguette, or apple slices for serving

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Cook the mushroom filling. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chopped mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until all moisture has evaporated and mushrooms are golden, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and thyme, stir, and cook 1 minute more. Deglaze with sherry or white wine and cook until liquid is absorbed, about 30 seconds. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.
Prepare the Brie. Using a sharp knife, slice the Brie wheel in half horizontally to create two equal rounds. Spread the cooled mushroom mixture evenly over the cut side of the bottom half. Replace the top half of the Brie, pressing gently to adhere.
Wrap in pastry. Unfold the thawed puff pastry on a lightly floured surface. Place the filled Brie in the center of the pastry sheet. Fold the pastry up and over the Brie, pressing and pinching the seams to seal completely. Trim any excess pastry and tuck neatly underneath. Transfer seam-side down to the prepared baking sheet.
Apply egg wash and bake. Brush the entire surface of the wrapped Brie evenly with the beaten egg. If desired, use pastry scraps to add decorative shapes on top and brush those as well. Bake for 20–25 minutes, until the pastry is deep golden brown and puffed.
Rest before serving. Allow the baked brie to rest on the pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a serving board. Cut into wedges at the table and serve immediately with crackers, sliced baguette, or crisp apple slices.

Nutrition (per serving)

Mushroom-Stuffed Baked Brie — The Warm Kitchen at the Center of Everything