Okonomiyaki (Japanese Pancake) -- Using My Hands Before My Hands Know What They’re Doing

I attempted kimchi jjigae at home and the result was — I'll be generous — instructive. The recipe I found online called for aged kimchi, which is apparently different from the fresh kimchi I bought at H Mart. Aged kimchi is more sour, more fermented, more pungent, and it's the sourness that gives the stew its backbone. My fresh kimchi made a jjigae that tasted bright and pleasant, like a spicy vegetable soup, but lacked the depth I'd tasted at Hodori, the funk that makes the dish feel old and wise and Korean in a way I can't articulate. I ate it anyway — two bowls — because mediocre homemade food made with intention is still worth more than perfect takeout made without it.

I've been doing research. Not casual Googling but the kind of systematic deep-dive I'd normally reserve for debugging a production issue. I found Maangchi — a Korean cooking YouTube channel run by a woman in New York who makes Korean food with the enthusiastic precision of someone who believes, correctly, that Korean home cooking can be taught to anyone willing to learn. I've watched fourteen of her videos this week. Fourteen. I watch them the way I used to watch MIT OpenCourseWare lectures: taking notes, pausing, rewinding, studying the way her hands move, the confidence in her knife cuts, the easy authority of someone who has made these dishes hundreds of times. She reminds me of the ajumma at Hodori — brisk, warm, utterly sure of what she's doing. I want that sureness. I want it badly.

The other thing I found is a blog by a Korean adoptee — a woman about ten years older than me, adopted to Minnesota, who writes about finding Korean food as an adult. Her writing hit me like a truck. She described the exact thing I've been feeling: the dissonance of being Korean-bodied and American-fed, of craving food you've never been taught to make, of walking into a Korean grocery store and feeling both at home and like a trespasser. She wrote: "Nobody prepares you for the grief of a cuisine. Nobody tells you that the food you didn't grow up eating is a loss, the same as any other." I read that sentence four times. I read it a fifth time. I haven't stopped thinking about it.

At work, the ML pipeline is coming together. I presented a progress update to the team — six engineers, Derek, and two PMs — and got positive feedback, which should have felt good and did feel good, in the thin, surface-level way that professional validation feels good when you're twenty-two and hollow. I keep waiting for the work to fill me up. It doesn't. It fills the engineering part of me — the part that loves systems and logic and the satisfaction of a clean solution — but it doesn't touch the other parts, the parts that are hungry for something that a recommendation algorithm can't provide.

Saturday: Bellevue. Karen made her famous chili, the one with the cinnamon (her secret ingredient, which she insists makes it "Midwest-style" though I've seen no evidence of this). David was working on a fence post in the backyard and came in with dirt on his knees and the satisfied expression of a man who has accomplished something physical in a world that increasingly asks him to be sedentary. We ate chili and watched a movie — Karen chose, as always, a romantic comedy from the early 2000s — and it was fine. Warm. Normal. The kind of Saturday that adoption brochures probably use as their stock photo: happy multicultural family enjoying an evening together, all complexities airbrushly removed.

On the drive home I stopped at H Mart. I bought: doenjang (fermented soybean paste), gochujang (fermented chili paste), dried anchovies, kelp, and a head of napa cabbage. I am going to make kimchi. Not buy it — make it. From scratch, with my hands, the way it's been made in Korea for centuries. Maangchi has a video. I've watched it three times. I've taken two pages of notes. I know, intellectually, every step: salt the cabbage, make the paste, stuff the leaves, ferment. Knowing intellectually is not the same as knowing in your hands, and my hands have never made kimchi, but they are Korean hands, and maybe — I know this sounds mystical, and I am not a mystical person, I am an engineer who debugs code for a living — but maybe they'll remember something my brain doesn't.

That's probably not how biology works. But I'm learning that food exists in a space where biology and emotion overlap in ways that science hasn't fully mapped, and I'm willing to be unscientific about this one thing. Just this one thing. Just kimchi. Just the most Korean food there is, made by a Korean woman who is learning to be Korean at twenty-two in a Capitol Hill kitchen with a Zojirushi rice cooker and a YouTube tutorial and two pages of notes in a text file. Just that.

The napa cabbage I bought at H Mart was sitting on my counter while I watched Maangchi’s kimchi video for the fourth time, and I realized I wasn’t ready — not yet, not tonight — but I still needed to cook something with my hands, something that asked me to shred and mix and flip and trust. Okonomiyaki isn’t Korean, and I know that, but it’s a dish that uses the same cabbage, the same willingness to layer savory things together and call it a meal, and it felt like a fair opening move. Consider it a rehearsal: my hands learning the feel of a hot pan, the weight of a spatula, the particular courage it takes to flip something you’re not sure is ready.

Okonomiyaki (Japanese Pancake)

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 2

Ingredients

• 3 cups napa cabbage, finely shredded
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup dashi stock (or water with a pinch of salt)
• 3 green onions, thinly sliced
• 3 strips bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces (optional)
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp neutral oil (vegetable or canola), for the pan
• For topping: okonomiyaki sauce or 2 tbsp ketchup mixed with 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• For topping: Japanese mayonnaise (Kewpie preferred)
• Optional garnish: dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi), dried seaweed flakes (aonori), pickled ginger

Instructions

1. Make the batter. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, eggs, dashi stock, and soy sauce until smooth. The batter will be fairly thick — that’s correct.
2. Fold in the filling. Add the shredded napa cabbage and sliced green onions to the batter. Fold everything together until the cabbage is fully coated. Season with salt. The mixture will look like mostly cabbage held together by a thin batter — that’s exactly right.
3. Heat the pan. Warm a large non-stick or cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat. Wait until the oil shimmers before adding the batter.
4. Cook the first side. Spoon half the mixture into the pan and press gently into a round pancake shape about 3/4 inch thick. If using bacon, lay the strips across the top now. Cook undisturbed for 5–6 minutes, until the edges look set and the bottom is deeply golden.
5. Flip carefully. This is the step that requires trust. Slide a wide spatula fully under the pancake, place another spatula or a plate on top, and flip in one confident motion. Press gently to re-flatten. Cook another 4–5 minutes until the second side is golden and the center is cooked through.
6. Sauce and serve. Transfer to a plate. Drizzle okonomiyaki sauce (or the ketchup-Worcestershire mixture) in zigzags across the top, then do the same with the mayonnaise. Add bonito flakes, aonori, and pickled ginger if using. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 11g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 35g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 610mg