In this kitchen

If you stand in this kitchen, you may cry. 

The first thing to make you cry will probably be the garlic. The beginning of any Korean dish is to sauté some fresh garlic in hot oil. The side effect is a pungent air that nips at your eyes and causes you to tear up. So now you’re not only crying in this kitchen, you also can’t see.

Standing in front of the stove is the captain of the ship: MasterChef Kay. A 5 '5ft, mid-40s Korean woman, she steers with two sticks. Both in one hand and laced between her fingers, the chopsticks work the kitchen like an industrial assembly line. Fish cakes in one pan, meat braising in the other, rice in the rice cooker and endless tupperware of pickled vegetables on the counter. 

MasterChef Kay is making my favorite Korean meal: Galbi-jjim (Korean braised short ribs), fresh white rice and an array of banchan (Korean side dishes). 

She is wearing slippers to avoid stepping on the inevitable splashes of water and fallen food on the floor. It’s almost like a game of hopscotch. She has on a tank top and shorts, not just to grant mobility in the high-stakes game of running a multi-chef kitchen as one, but because the Las Vegas sun is no friend in late August. Neither is the steam from the hot pans that dances in the rays of the thousand-degree sun. Another thing that may make you cry: it’s unbearably hot in this kitchen.

Then there’s me, standing next to the captain, who is my mom. My height grants me an aerial view of the sauteing vegetables and the top of my mom’s head. Mushrooms and carrots sizzling in the pan, and a few grey hairs on my mom’s head that I pretend not to see. My height is also what places me dead in the prime target area of the pops of oil. Sesame oil has a lower heat tolerance, so it pops like a violent gunshot. It’s a great way to test my instincts.

I’m diligently taking mental notes of every step my mom takes, trying to drill the recipes into memory. My days of unlimited, delicious home-cooked Korean meals are over– it’s time to learn for myself.

I’m crying in this kitchen. But not because of the hot air or sharp garlic aroma– I’m crying because it’s my last night with my mom before I move to college. Treating this meal as the Last Supper, I’m taking it all in.

I promised myself to hold the tears, because for that moment, I’d rather be hungry than sad. I still have 20 hours until departure. 

Until then, we use this next hour to feast. We sit around the table, deboning the meat, picking at the banchan and scooping up heaps of rice, just like we always had these past 18 years.  

“Try this,” my mom says to me, transporting the airborne spoon of broth into my mouth. 

It’s sweet, savory, nutty and, of course, garlicky. 

And a note I wasn’t expecting: salty. Like the ocean. It was a tear that fell from my eyes and into the spoon.