Peachy Pork with Rice

January gray. The deepest, heaviest month, the month that requires the SAD lamp and the miso soup and the yoga mat and the medication and all five of my coping mechanisms deployed simultaneously. I am managing. Managing is my word for surviving with a plan. The plan: yoga at six, miso soup at seven, write at nine, cook at five, sleep at ten. The plan does not include "feel better." The plan includes "show up." Showing up is enough.

I made kakuni this week — Japanese braised pork belly, slow-cooked in soy sauce, sake, mirin, and ginger until the meat is so tender it dissolves on the tongue. It takes three hours to cook and the apartment smells like a Japanese grandmother's kitchen the entire time, which is both comforting and devastating because the Japanese grandmother whose kitchen it smells like is gone and the smell is a memory with a temperature. Kakuni is patient food. It asks you to wait. The waiting is the cooking. The waiting is also the grieving — you sit with it, you tend it, you check on it, and eventually it becomes soft where it was hard, tender where it was tough, edible where it was raw.

Miya has started pretending to cook. She has a toy kitchen set from the Callahans and she stands at it every afternoon, stirring imaginary soup, serving imaginary rice, saying "here, mama, eat" and handing me invisible food on invisible plates. I eat the invisible food with visible enthusiasm. I say, "Delicious!" She beams. The pretend cooking is more important than she knows — it is the first step in the chain, the beginning of the inheritance, the moment when a child moves from eating to making, from receiving to giving. She does not know she is learning. The learning is invisible, like the food she serves me. But it is real.

Brian's resolution is holding. Day twelve. He has had two beers total this week instead of the usual twenty-eight. The difference is visible — he is more present, more awake, more available for conversations that last longer than the time it takes to drink a Hazy IPA. I am cautiously hopeful, which is the most dangerous emotion I know, because caution and hope are oil and water and the emulsion never quite holds.

Kakuni is what I made, but this — this peachy pork with rice — is what I’ll share, because not everyone has three hours and a bottle of sake on a Tuesday in January, and the spirit of the thing is what matters: pork, low and slow, something sweet pulling against the savory, and rice underneath to hold it all together. It’s patient food, like kakuni, food that asks you to tend it and wait — and right now, tending and waiting is exactly the practice I need. Miya will stand at her toy kitchen while this simmers, and I will let her hand me invisible food while the real food takes its time.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless pork shoulder or pork loin, cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (15 oz) sliced peaches in juice, juice reserved
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with 2 tablespoons cold water
2 cups long-grain white rice, cooked, for serving
2 green onions, sliced, for garnish

Instructions

Season and sear the pork. Pat pork pieces dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add pork in a single layer and sear without moving for 3–4 minutes per side until golden brown. Work in batches if needed. Transfer to a plate.
Soften the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add sliced onion to the same pan and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes until softened and starting to turn golden. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more.
Build the braise. Pour in the reserved peach juice, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, ground ginger, and red pepper flakes if using. Stir to combine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
Return pork and braise. Nestle the seared pork back into the pan. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover, and cook over low heat for 30 minutes, until the pork is tender and cooked through.
Add peaches and thicken. Add the sliced peaches to the pan. Stir in the cornstarch slurry and cook uncovered for 3–5 minutes, stirring gently, until the sauce thickens to a glossy glaze.
Serve. Spoon pork and peach sauce over bowls of cooked white rice. Garnish with sliced green onions.

Nutrition (per serving)

Peachy Pork with Rice — When the Waiting Is the Whole Point