Seafood Soup — A Bowl Thick Enough to Hold What Words Cannot

January. The 325Kamra submission is in. The GOA'L submission is ongoing. Two databases, two chances, two lines cast into the ocean of Korean adoption records, waiting for a bite. The waiting is familiar now — nine months with GOA'L, freshly submitted to 325Kamra — and I've developed a relationship with the waiting that is almost peaceful. Not accepting. Not resigned. Peaceful. The peace of a person who has done what she can do and is now living while the universe decides what happens next.

I presented the food preference ML model at the internal Amazon research conference. The presentation went well — the data is compelling, the visualizations are clean, the story is clear: food preferences form networks, and understanding the networks allows prediction of what a customer will want next. I didn't mention my personal connection to the topic. I didn't need to. The professional work stands on its own. But Derek came up afterward and said, "I didn't know you were so passionate about food." I said, "It's a hobby." He said, "It seems like more than a hobby." He's not wrong. But the Amazon version of "more than a hobby" and the actual version are different, and Derek doesn't need to know the actual version. The actual version involves kimchi and therapy and a DNA database and a woman in Korea I've never met. The Amazon version involves recommendation algorithms and click-through rates. Both versions are real. One pays the rent.

Korean class: Hyunjung introduced us to Korean poetry. We read a poem by Yun Dong-ju, a Korean poet who died during the Japanese occupation. The poem was called "Counting the Stars" (별 헤는 밤), and it's about longing and memory and the things we carry in the dark. I read it in Korean — slowly, decoding, looking up every third word — and the poem made me cry, which is not what I expected from a homework assignment. The poem is about missing things. Missing people. Missing a homeland. The poet was Korean, writing during occupation, missing the Korea that was being taken from him. I'm Korean, writing after adoption, missing the Korea that was taken from me before I could remember it. Different takings. Same missing. The poem understood me. Korean poetry understood me. The language is big enough to hold my grief. I didn't know that. I know it now.

This week I made chueotang — loach soup, a traditional Korean soup made with freshwater loach fish. I couldn't find loach in Seattle (obviously), so I substituted with a recipe variation that uses blended anchovy and tofu to approximate the texture. The soup is thick, earthy, deeply nutritious, and tastes like the Korean countryside. It's the kind of dish that's disappearing from modern Korean cooking — too traditional, too unfashionable — and making it felt like preservation, like keeping alive a recipe that might otherwise be lost. The cooking has evolved: I'm not just learning Korean food anymore. I'm preserving it. The teacher has become a curator.

Saturday: Bellevue. I brought the chueotang. Karen tried it and said, "This is very... substantial." Substantial. That's Karen's word for "thick and weird but I'm eating it because I love you." David declined. Some bridges remain unbuilt, and chueotang is the bridge David won't cross. That's okay. He crossed the galbi bridge and the jjigae bridge and the japchae bridge and the pork spine bridge. One uncrossed bridge doesn't undo the others.

The chueotang I made this week started as an act of substitution — loach isn’t sold in Seattle, so I built something close from what I could find — and it reminded me that preservation sometimes means adaptation, holding the spirit of a thing even when the letter of it isn’t available. This seafood soup is that same impulse made practical: thick, deeply savory, built around whatever the sea offers you, close enough to the original that you can taste the intention. Make it on a night when you need something substantial — Karen’s word, and she wasn’t wrong — and don’t apologize for it.

Seafood Soup

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 lb mixed seafood (shrimp, firm white fish fillet, and bay scallops)
• 4 cups seafood or fish stock
• 1 cup clam juice
• 1 block (14 oz) soft tofu, roughly crumbled
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 stalks celery, sliced
• 1 medium carrot, sliced into thin rounds
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges, for serving

Instructions

1. Build the base. Heat olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add onion and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
2. Add aromatics and vegetables. Stir in smoked paprika, red pepper flakes, and thyme, coating the vegetables. Add carrot and diced tomatoes, stir to combine, and cook for 3 minutes.
3. Build the broth. Pour in fish stock and clam juice. Raise heat to medium-high and bring to a gentle boil, then reduce to a steady simmer. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes to allow flavors to develop and broth to deepen.
4. Add tofu. Gently fold in the crumbled soft tofu. Simmer for 5 minutes — the tofu will absorb the broth and add body, thickening the soup to something substantial.
5. Add seafood. Add fish pieces first, cooking 3 minutes, then add shrimp and scallops. Cook just until shrimp are pink and curled and fish flakes easily, about 3–4 minutes more. Do not overcook.
6. Taste and finish. Season generously with salt and black pepper. Ladle into bowls, garnish with fresh parsley, and serve with lemon wedges on the side for brightness.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 34g | Fat: 10g | Carbs: 16g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 820mg