Okazu and the Untenable Contingency of Being Biracial

Let's get confused

A brief crisis of food and identity

I was frankly alarmed to learn that Wikipedia calls okazu “a side dish to accompany rice.” Rice was omnipresent in the Yoshioka household, so by that logic there are some truly deranged things that fall within the okazu designation. A non-exhaustive list of foods we ate with rice would include pizza, casserole, steak, and spaghetti. 

The dish that my grandmother calls okazu is decidedly an entrée. Her recipe combines pork, tofu, bean sprouts, Napa cabbage, and mushrooms in a sweet, salty, dashi-rich broth that, ok, yes — we ate with rice.

It is the defining dish of my childhood, so suspended in amber that I only thought to ask my grandmother for her recipe in composing this essay. It is my Proustian madeleine (see: Anton Ego taking a bite of Remy’s ratatouille). 

Digging a little deeper into the Google search results reveals dishes similar to the one my grandmother makes, but I can’t shake that initial moment of doubt. For a split second I was willing to question the entirety of my history with this dish. This is emblematic of the fractured ways in which I experience my identity. It’s a bit dramatic, sure! But the nested complexes and neuroses with which I’ve found myself saddled make me somewhat prone to dramatics.

A source of the author’s crises

I’m fourth-generation American and half-Japanese (we don’t use the word hapa because that steals from Indigenous Hawaiians and both sides of my racial heritage have done more than enough of that). What this means for me, in effect, is that I get the best and not-so-best of both worlds. 

To illustrate what I mean, here are some pros and cons: 

Pro: I am less likely to be the subject to the recent, more visible instances of anti-Asian violence. 

Con: I will, in the meantime, be the subject of slurs intended for other racial groups. 

Pro: I enjoy (highly conditional and contingent) acceptance in white spaces. 

Con: By contemporaneous racial policy standards, I definitely would’ve been put in the American concentration camps, and definitely would’ve failed the loyalty tests during my internment (Google it). 

Pro: I am the (unwilling) beneficiary of the sexual economy of being racially ambiguous. 

Con: I get to experience people consciously and subconsciously gaslighting me around my experiences as a person of color pretty much daily. 

The duality and liminality manifested in me means that I don’t feel I can take any part of my lived experience for granted. I needlessly challenge my own legitimacy, and any sense of belonging feels like shifting sands. It’s an existence of constant polarity which has made me a bedfellow of ambiguity, contradiction, paradox, and nuance. Accordingly, it is both critical weakness and profound strength.  

I’m also simultaneously a potential ally and inevitable traitor to white people and, I’ll be honest, I get off on it! But I also occupy this role for BIPOC, which is decidedly less erotic. The fact that I can joke about this itself a manifestation of my privilege, and I would simply choose to implode before I encouraging you to monetize me at all before establishing a reparations portfolio that centers Black trans women. 

For neither the first nor last time, the author digresses

What I want to accomplish here is to share recipes — the primary way in which I connect to (and make sense of) my background — in the deranged writerly tone that is truly mine. This, however, is a clever ruse that I shall employ to actually talk about serious topics about which I prefer to laugh rather than cry. If you stick around, I hope I’ll brainwash you into thinking I’m funny and share a voice and perspective you might not otherwise encounter. 

Finally, I encourage you to read the recipes as a continuation of the text, as the hilarity goes on uninterrupted despite the change in format.

Without further ado, here’s how to make Nancy Yoshioka’s okazu. 

The recipe

Okazu 

This dish comes together quickly once the prep work is done, and requires only a heavy-bottom Dutch oven-style pot. A crucial note on technique is that the goal here isn’t the Maillard reaction (browning), but rather to gently cook through and braise so that ingredients retain their shapes. The single edit I made to my grandmother’s recipe is the addition of fresh ginger, which lends a bit of nuance to the sweet broth in which the ingredients braise. The recipe easily accommodates some substitutions (e.g. omitting one vegetable for another) as, in the words of Nancy herself, “the important thing is the sauce.”  

Ingredients 

Neutral oil 

1lb pork loin chops

1 tablespoon sake (just eyeball it - use the amount you would use to spike your drink) 

4-5 cups Napa cabbage, about one half of a large head

1 9oz package mung bean sprouts 

1 large yellow onion 

6 green onions 

1 cup mushrooms (I used shimeji, but shiitake, enoki, or oyster would be delicious) 

2” piece of fresh ginger root

10oz firm tofu

Salt to taste (I used about 1 generous teaspoon of Diamond Crystal and was pleased with the result)

For the all-important sauce 

1/2 cup mirin 

1 tablespoon granulated sugar 

1 tablespoon sake 

5 tablespoons soy sauce 

1/2 teaspoon hondashi (granulated dashi broth) 

5 tablespoons water 

Directions 

Prepare the sauce, and then your other ingredients. For the sauce, combine all ingredients and stir until homogeneous, then set aside.

On a separate cutting board, slice the pork loin chops into thin strips, retaining any excess fat because why not. Set aside while you prepare the veg. 

Remove the fibrous core of the cabbage (like some sort of gay surgeon, I performed two diagonal cuts to remove it in a wedge shape) and cut into large chunks. These will reduce in size greatly upon cooking, so there is no need for precision here. Rinse and drain the mung bean sprouts and mushrooms. Half, and then quarter the onion and slice thinly. Artfully tear your mushrooms into bite-size pieces, which is more grammable, instead of slicing them. Roughly chop the green onions. Peel and finely dice or grate the ginger root. Toss all of these ingredients together and set aside for now — they’ll enter the pot at the same time. 

Slice the tofu into manageable strips of whatever size suits you. I chose thin, wide strips to mirror the size of the pork pieces. Set aside. 

With your mise all en place, heat enough neutral cooking oil just to cover the bottom of the pot (I used a tablespoons of sunflower oil) over medium heat. Again, not a place for precision as the heat will also render fat from the pork and everything will be nicely lubricated. When the oil is warm, but not spitting, add the pork. The goal here is to gently cook, and not to brown. Cook the pork until uniformly opaque and unnervingly flesh-toned. Don’t think about it too hard. At this point, you can fish out the pork slices, drain off the excess fat, and start fresh with another tablespoon or two or your oil. I am very rebellious and elected to proceed without this step. 

When the pork is finished, deglaze the pan with the sake and scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Then add the sauce. Pile the remaining ingredients, minus the tofu, atop the pork and cover. 

Cook this mixture on low-medium heat until the cabbage is wilted but not obliterated (me at the club), the mushrooms are tender (me always), and the onion transparent (me sometimes). This will depend on the size of your vessel and the power of your stove, but budget about 30 minutes. At this point, add the tofu and cook about five minutes more, until the tofu is heated through and becomes more pliant (definitely not me at the club). 

Serve with rice (duh). This ages like a fine wine in the refrigerator and is especially nice for a very hearty breakfast, if that’s your sort of thing. 

Postscript

I hope you enjoyed reading. This is the moment for me to propose a way to engage with this content, so here goes. If you liked this story and haven’t already subscribed, please do so! Share with like-minded friends! Make this recipe and tag me on Instagram @yearofthekyle! Send feedback on any viable channel. And stay tuned for the next installment in two weeks’ time.