Sushi Rice — The Bowl That Holds the Week Together

Cold snap — twenty-eight overnight. Surprising for Seattle. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 1, a small loud animal. She mostly eats rice and bananas. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Oyakodon for dinner. Chicken and egg over rice. Quick weeknight bowl.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

The week held. The kitchen held. The two cultures shared the counter.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Oyakodon is only as good as the rice beneath it — and after the kind of week where two AM Lego injuries and eleven-thousand-mile FaceTime calls and therapy appointments all blur together, I needed the rice to be right. This is the sushi rice I come back to: short-grain, vinegar-seasoned, quietly perfect. It holds the chicken and egg. It holds the week. It holds whatever you need it to hold.

Sushi Rice

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes (plus 10 minutes resting) | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 cups short-grain Japanese sushi rice
• 2 1/4 cups cold water
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt

Instructions

1. Rinse the rice. Place the rice in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse under cold running water, stirring gently with your hand, until the water runs nearly clear — about 1 to 2 minutes. Drain well.
2. Cook the rice. Combine the rinsed rice and cold water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then immediately reduce heat to the lowest setting, cover tightly, and cook for 15 minutes. Do not lift the lid.
3. Rest. Remove the pot from heat and let it sit, still covered, for 10 minutes. This allows the steam to finish the cooking evenly.
4. Make the seasoning. While the rice rests, combine the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a small bowl or saucepan. Stir (or warm briefly) until the sugar and salt are fully dissolved.
5. Season the rice. Turn the cooked rice out into a wide, shallow bowl — a wooden bowl is traditional. Drizzle the vinegar mixture evenly over the rice. Using a rice paddle or flat spatula, fold the seasoning into the rice with gentle cutting and turning motions. Do not stir or mash. Fan the rice as you fold to help it cool and develop a slight sheen.
6. Serve. Use immediately as the base for oyakodon or rice bowls, or cover loosely with a damp towel and use within a few hours. Do not refrigerate — it will harden.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 280 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 62g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 290mg