Solnal Celebration
Posted by Maureen on February 11, 2008
Don, Lizzie, and I went to our first Korean-type event here in South Central Pennsylvania. We were all a bit nervous, partially because we didn’t know anyone, but also because we didn’t really know what to expect.
A lovely buffet was provided by the Korean-American Wives Club. Five or so ladies, dressed beautifully in their hanboks, stood in line to serve all the guests. Some of the food we recognized from my attempts at Korean cooking, such as Japchae (잡채, below) and of course, Kimchi (김치), but others such as a sweet rice-cake dessert, we did not. In fact, the best part of the entire event was when these wonderful women sang and danced, impromptu as it was. It made me want to get up and put on my hanbok.
As far as traditional goes, we touched briefly upon some Korean things, such as the National Anthem, and the New Year’s bow, but as Stacey writes to me in an email, “Our take on things has been not to seek to reproduce exactly what would happen in Korea, either now or traditionally, but to celebrate our unique local Korean-American culture and community through events that are a fusion of many sources.”
Don and I stayed quiet most of the event, and we let Lizzie play some Korean game (I don’t know what it’s name was). I had a feeling that we were, in fact, the newcomers, and that most people either knew someone else there, or came with an extended group of people. We were perfectly content to sit and watch, though.
Lizzie, in all thing preteen, wondered when the next event was, if we could go, and could she have more food. I’m not really sure how often Ta-Ri has events, so I couldn’t answer her questions.
In the meantime, here’s a recipe I found from The Seattle Times for Japchae.
Makes 4 entrée servings or 8 to 10 servings as part of a multi-dish buffet menu
Ingredients
3/4 cup sliced, rehydrated dried shiitake mushrooms
½ loosely filled cup rehydrated, dried wood ear mushrooms (also called tree ear mushroom or black fungus)
2 ½ cups julienned white onion, divided
½ pound rib eye steak, very thinly sliced
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon toasted ground sesame seed
5 tablespoons soy sauce, divided
2 teaspoons plus 1 tablespoon Asian-style sesame oil, divided
2/3 to 1 cup light olive oil, or as needed
Organic Korean salt or kosher salt as needed
1 bunch green onion, trimmed and cut into 3-inch pieces
1 bunch spinach, cleaned, blanched, shocked in an ice bath, and squeezed well
1 ½ cups julienned carrot
1 package (6 ounces) dried vermicelli clear noodles (also called sweet potato starch noodles or yam noodles)
2 teaspoons sugar
Instructions
In a medium bowl, mix mushrooms, 1 cup white onion, meat, pepper, ground sesame seed, 2 tablespoons soy sauce and 2 teaspoons sesame oil. Set aside to marinate at room temperature for 20 minutes.
Heat a little olive oil in a medium nonstick saute pan or skillet over medium-high to high heat. Saute the remaining 1 ½ cups white onion, stirring frequently and sprinkling with a little salt, until lightly caramelized. Transfer to a large bowl, piling the onion in one side of the bowl. In the same saute pan, and without wiping out the pan in between ingredients, sauté in succession the green onion pieces, spinach, and carrot, adding a little oil as needed for each vegetable and lightly seasoning each separately with salt. Sauté each vegetable until just flash seared but still crisp and very colorful. As each is done, add it to the bowl with the onion, putting each vegetable in a separate pile.
Using the same saute pan and raising the heat to high, sauté the reserved meat mixture in a little olive oil but without adding any salt, just until the beef is no longer red, or until done to your liking. Add the beef to the bowl of vegetables. Set aside.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the noodles, and return to a boil. Reduce the heat but keep the water boiling, for 3 minutes. Drain in a large strainer or colander then immediately rinse in cold running water, moving the noodles through the water and rinsing thoroughly until all the starch is rinsed off. Drain well.
In a large heavy pan, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon sesame oil over high heat. Add the drained noodles and toss to coat evenly with the oil. Add 1 tablespoon soy sauce and mix thoroughly, turning the noodles over and over in the pan (you can use tongs for this) for 2 to 3 minutes, just to get a little color on the noodles. Add the noodles to the bowl of vegetables and meat.
Toss the ingredients in the bowl to mix evenly, then, lifting noodles by the handful, cut with kitchen shears into 6- to 8-inch lengths. In a small bowl, mix the sugar with the remaining 2 tablespoons soy sauce until sugar is dissolved, then toss this mixture with the noodles. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if needed, with soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Adapted from a recipe by Heejung Kim
Bridging the Gap
For those of you who don’t know, Ta-Ri (다리) means “bridge” in Korean. As such, one of the more interesting conversations of the day was with a woman named Helena, who shared with me her story of reunification with her birth siblings. I had lamented at some point that I always thought finding my birth family was fruitless because I was told that I was abandoned outside of a fire station. Helena told me that I shouldn’t consider this a stop to my efforts, because in fact, a lot of children are told that they were abandoned when this was clearly not the case. For those adoptees out there, that might give you some hope!
Taking her advice, and some more from my friend Rhonda, I used Holt’s email form to begin the search again. For anyone who doesn’t know, Rhonda told me that I would someday meet my mother and siblings (apparently I have a brother and a sister). Don, of course, thinks that I’m crazy for talking to Rhonda in the first place, but these series of events are hard to shake. The only way this would even be remotely possible is if both of us would be searching. And if not, at least this gives me something to think about.
Is it the dream of every adopted person to meet his or her parents, siblings, or cousins? Perhaps in a time of multicultural exploration, that gap isn’t so far, that a bridge can be made.
