#91. 나물 -- a uniquely Korean dish (and hipsters will be all over it in 10 years)

It's been a busy few weeks for me. I spent the past three weeks on the road for some work trips before the semester starts up again, and I'm now writing this post from my parents' house, where I spent the past couple of days before going back to work. As you might have guessed, the semester starting means that I will probably no longer update this blog on a daily basis, although I will aim for 2-3 updates a week, and more when I am less busy with work. The best way to stay connected might be to subscribe, or to follow my Twitter account, which updates automatically when I post something.

I'll admit that I was fairly ignorant of the Korean culture until a few years ago, and never appreciated many aspects of my own culture. After having started this blog, I am often struck by the mundane things that I used to take for granted.

나물 is one of these things that I always took for granted. I am not even sure if there is a word for this type of dish in English -- running them through various Korean-English dictionary just returns "herbs," which is a gross underestimation and a terrible description of these dishes that I am about to tell you about.

Let me start by giving you a recipe of one of my favourite dishes that my mom makes every time I come home. It's called "시금치 나물," or "spinach 나물." Note that I am not giving any measurements of the ingredients -- this is kind of intentional. Although every Korean eats this dish, it tastes differently in every household. You should feel free to add/take away any ingredients and adjust the amount so that it tastes good to you!

This isn't the picture of my mom's dish, unfortunately. I meant to take a photo but I had already eaten too much of it by the time I remembered!

Ingredients:

- spinach leaves

- minced garlic

- chopped scallions

- sesame seeds (if they're not already roasted, you should roast them in an ungreased pan to increase flavour)

- soy sauce

- sesame oil

- salt & pepper

 Steps:

- Boil water in a pot, and add a pinch of salt.

- Blanch the spinach leaves in the boiling water, just until the leaves don't have the crunchy feel to them anymore (Koreans call this state of vegetables "숨이 죽다" or "no longer breathing -- the more literal translation would be that their breaths have died.") Koreans say that it's important to leave the lid open while you do this, otherwise the colour of the spinach will not be as green, and also destroy some vitamins that are in the spinach (although I can't find anything credible that backs up this claim.)

-Drop the blanched spinach leaves into cold water to stop cooking. Wring out any excess water by squeezing them hard with your hands. You should only have a small handful of spinach leaves left at this point!

- Season the spinach leaves with the garlic, scallion and soy sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste (My mom prefers to season with soy sauce, because it's supposed to add the umami taste that is present in many Asian foods. But too much soy sauce ruins the look of the food sometimes, at which point she starts using salt.)

-Finally, drizzle sesame oil and decorate with roasted sesame seeds. Serve with rice and other 반찬. Use the sesame oil sparingly, as it has a fairly strong taste.

This is a typical recipe of a 나물. The word 나물 has two meanings. It can refer to all edible herbs/leaves/stem (not all vegetables are 나물, though! For examples, potatoes are definitely not 나물), but it an also refer to the blanched and seasoned herbes/leaves/stem.

Many traditional Korean markets will sell all kinds of 나물, and there are hundreds of different kinds! Not even Koreans would know all of these.

시금치 (spinach), 콩나물 (soybean sprouts; these are more common in Korea than bean sprouts and they are less crunchy), 숙주나물 (bean sprouts), and 미나리 (Korean parsley) are among the most popular kinds of 나물 that appear in the Koreans' dinner tables frequently.

The 나물 are not rich men's food. But meat of any kind was generally very expensive for the Koreans throughout our history, and so they needed ways to make their tables more interesting, not to mention that droughts and ensuing famine was a frequent occurrence. As Korea is home to hundreds of mountains, the easiest way to do this was to go into one of these mountains and scavenge for edible things.

A typical Korean table back in these days would often consist of a bowl of rice, a soup of some kind (called "국", also often made with some of these 나물), some kind of kimchi (김치, there are also hundreds of variety of this), and some 나물, as well as some kind of sauce such as 간장 (soy sauce), 된장 (soybean paste), or 고추장 (hot pepper paste) so that you can adjust the flavours yourself.

It still hasn't changed much. Now that food is abundant in Korea, people would often add a meat 반찬 to their tables, but still the 나물 are consumed on a daily basis. They are cheap, healthy, and easy to make. And depending on what kind of 나물 you use, the taste is amazingly varied! So, it is totally possible to set up a fancy dinner table with just the 나물, see for yourself:

This table is set with the spring herbs, or 봄나물 in Korean.

While I am glad that many Korean dishes such as 돌솥비빔밥, 불고기, and 잡채 are gaining popularity in the Western culture, I wonder whether people realize that these are not something that Koreans eat on a daily basis. They would have been a huge treat back in the day, and you would have gotten a taste of it if your village was having a festival of some sort.

The 나물, on the other hand, is what kept the Koreans alive through the difficult times, and I feel that it is uniquely Korean (and at some point, I hope that enough people will pick up on it for it to gain popularity!)

So, I hope you try out this humble yet delicious Korean dish in your kitchen. You can vary the seasoning as you wish -- that's exactly what our Korean forefathers would have done, when they got tired of eating the same 나물 over and over again. Of course, to get the authentic taste, you'd want to use some of the more Korean seasonings such as 간장, 된장, or 고추장 (and also sometimes vinegar), but really, 나물 is about making use of edible things that are otherwise not very interesting, and I don't think the Korean forefathers would be picky.