Thai Salad with Peanut Sauce

August in Portland is a fever dream of beauty. The city is golden and dry and everyone is outside — at parks, on patios, floating down the river on inflatable things that should not be considered watercraft. I took Miya to Laurelhurst Park and sat under a tree and nursed her while dogs ran in the off-leash area and a man did tai chi on the grass and someone played a saxophone, badly, from a blanket. Portland in summer is a city that has decided it does not need to make sense, and I love it for this.

My birthday is next week. I will be thirty-one, which is not a significant age by any measure but feels significant because it is the first birthday where I am someone's mother. Thirty was the last year of the before. Thirty-one is the first full year of the after. I am not the same person I was at thirty, and I will never be that person again, and the grief and relief of that are tangled together like the roots of the shiso plant — you cannot separate them without killing the whole thing.

I made edamame this week, simply — boiled, salted, eaten from the pod while sitting on the balcony. It is the simplest Japanese food I know, barely a recipe, and it is the food I associate most with summer and with Fumiko, who always had a bowl of edamame on the counter in August, for anyone who walked through her kitchen, which was everyone. Fumiko's apartment was a place people came to, not because she invited them but because the door was always unlocked and there was always food. I want my kitchen to be like that. I want Miya to grow up knowing that a kitchen is a public space, that food is a language anyone can speak.

Couples therapy session two. Janet asked about our communication patterns. Brian said I overthink everything. I said Brian underthinks everything. Janet said, "So you are both seeing the same thing from different angles," which was infuriatingly neutral and also exactly right. We are two people looking at the same life from opposite sides. The question is whether we can build a bridge between the sides or whether we are going to keep shouting across the gap. I do not know the answer. I am not sure Brian knows there is a question.

I am writing more. The blog posts come faster now, more naturally, as if the combination of motherhood and anxiety and cooking has cracked something open in my writing that was not open before. I wrote about edamame and simplicity and it was the best thing I have written. Words coming from the new place, the mother place. I did not expect motherhood to make me a better writer. I did not expect any of this.

The edamame I made that week on the balcony — boiled, salted, eaten straight from the pod — reminded me that the best food doesn’t ask you to be more than you are. This Thai salad is that same spirit, stretched just a little further: it uses edamame as its anchor, surrounds it with crunch and color and a peanut sauce that tastes like it took effort even though it didn’t. It’s the bowl I make when I want Fumiko’s kind of generosity — something on the counter, always, for whoever walks through the door.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 5 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

3 cups shredded purple cabbage
2 cups shredded green cabbage
1 cup shelled edamame, cooked and cooled
1 cup shredded carrots
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
3 green onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves
1/4 cup chopped roasted peanuts, for topping
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, for topping
Peanut Sauce:
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 small garlic clove, minced
2–4 tablespoons warm water, to thin

Instructions

Cook the edamame. If using frozen shelled edamame, bring a small pot of salted water to a boil, add the edamame, and cook for 3–4 minutes until tender. Drain and set aside to cool.
Make the peanut sauce. Whisk together the peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, lime juice, honey, sesame oil, ginger, and garlic in a small bowl until smooth. Add warm water one tablespoon at a time until the sauce reaches a pourable, dressing-like consistency.
Assemble the salad. In a large bowl, combine the purple cabbage, green cabbage, edamame, carrots, red bell pepper, green onions, and cilantro. Toss gently to distribute evenly.
Dress and toss. Pour the peanut sauce over the salad and toss thoroughly until every piece is well coated. Taste and adjust with a little more lime juice or soy sauce if needed.
Top and serve. Divide into bowls and finish with chopped peanuts and sesame seeds. Serve immediately for the best crunch, or refrigerate undressed for up to two days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Thai Salad with Peanut Sauce — The Bowl I Made When Simple Was Enough