Pork Chop and Rice Casserole

A week of work. Heads-down, task-oriented, the kind of week where I remember that I am still a Principal Engineer at Amazon and that Amazon still pays me a salary and that there are teams depending on my architectural decisions. I led three design reviews, two sprint retrospectives, and a cross-org alignment meeting that lasted four hours and produced one decision. The decision was correct. The process was absurd. I love engineering. I do not love corporate engineering. The distinction becomes clearer to me every month.

James noticed. He said, on Wednesday, over dinner: "You come home from Amazon and your shoulders are around your ears. You come home from Banchan Labs and you're humming." I said, "I do not hum." He said, "You hum. You hum Korean songs. You don't even know you're doing it." I thought about this. He might be right. I might hum. The fact that I hum Korean songs without noticing is either charming or concerning, and I am choosing to find it charming.

Month four of trying. Still negative. I have stopped taking the tests with the same desperation. I take them with a kind of resigned efficiency — like checking the build status on a deployment. Green or red. Move on. Cook dinner. I am not numb to it. I am just learning that hope does not require performance. You can hope quietly. You can hope while making kimchi jjigae. You can hope while washing the dishes. Hope is not a thing you do with your face. It is a thing you carry in your body, and my body is carrying it, and I am letting it carry me.

Banchan Labs: the September subscription launch is on track. James has set up the payment infrastructure. I have finalized the first three months of recipe cards — September (Basics), October (Comfort), November (Celebration). The marketing plan is simple: email the waitlist, post on Instagram, let the product speak. James says we should run Facebook ads. I said no. He said why. I said, "Because I do not want customers who find us through ads. I want customers who find us through word of mouth, through recommendations, through a friend who says, 'This box made me cry.' That is the growth I want. Slow and meaningful." James looked at me. He said, "You are terrible at business." I said, "I know." He said, "It's working anyway." I said, "I know." We laughed. The spreadsheet was updated. The ads were not run.

Jisoo and I had a long phone call on Saturday. Her Korean, in my ear, is becoming more familiar — I can parse maybe 60% of what she says without pausing, which is up from 30% a year ago. She talked about her garden. She grows perilla (kkaennip) and green onions and chili peppers on her small balcony in Haeundae. She talked about the chili peppers with the pride of a woman who has grown something from seed, which is the same pride I feel when a batch of kimchi comes out right. We are the same person, Jisoo and I. Different decades, different countries, same hands. She said, at the end of the call, "Come visit. Come this fall." I said, "I'm planning to." She said, "Bring James." I said, "I will."

The recipe this week is a simple rice bowl that I made Tuesday night when I came home from Amazon with my shoulders around my ears and needed something that was not a meeting. Steamed rice. A fried egg. A spoonful of kimchi. A drizzle of sesame oil. A sprinkle of gochugaru. A few sesame seeds. A handful of seaweed snacks, crumbled. That is all. Five minutes. The bowl is not impressive. The bowl is not a recipe. The bowl is what you eat when you need to remember that food is simple and good and yours. I ate it at the counter. I hummed. I did not notice I was humming.

The Tuesday bowl I described — rice, egg, kimchi, sesame oil — is not really a recipe, and I know that. But the impulse behind it, the need for something warm and simple that asks nothing of you in return, that impulse is worth cooking toward properly. This pork chop and rice casserole is what I make when I have twenty more minutes and want that same grounded feeling but with a little more substance: everything goes into one dish, the oven does the work, and by the time I’ve changed out of my work clothes and answered one last Slack message I didn’t mean to answer, dinner is ready and my shoulders are back where they belong.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 50 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 bone-in pork chops (about 3/4 inch thick)
1 cup long-grain white rice, uncooked
1 can (10.5 oz) condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 1/4 cups water or low-sodium chicken broth
1 packet (1 oz) dry onion soup mix
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon neutral oil (such as canola or vegetable)
Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside.
Sear the pork chops. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season both sides of the pork chops with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Sear for 2–3 minutes per side until golden brown. They do not need to cook through — you’re building color, not finishing them.
Build the rice base. In a mixing bowl, stir together the uncooked rice, cream of mushroom soup, water or broth, and half the dry onion soup mix. Pour this mixture evenly into the prepared baking dish.
Arrange the pork chops. Nestle the seared pork chops on top of the rice mixture in a single layer. Sprinkle the remaining onion soup mix evenly over the top of the chops.
Cover and bake. Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil for the final 5 minutes if you’d like the tops of the chops to develop a little color.
Rest and serve. Remove from the oven and let the casserole rest, covered, for 5 minutes. The rice will finish absorbing as it sits. Garnish with chopped parsley if desired and serve directly from the dish.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pork Chop and Rice Casserole — The Bowl That Asks Nothing of You