Day: September 25, 2020

Minari with doenjang and acorn jelly is mentioned in “Uhl-gool” by Julie Ae Kim in the Asian American and Feminist Collective Vol. 2 and is described as the author’s favorite food. Minari is also known as water dropwort, Korean watercress, Chinese celery, and Japanese parsley. This species of the dropwort genus is Oenanthe javanica and is grown in East Asia (China, India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Some other species of Oenanthe are actually poisonous and lethal. In Korea, water dropwort is called minari and is used for vegetable side dishes (vegetable side dish = namul, side dish = banchan) as well as a bibimbap topping. In addition to minari-muchim (seasoned minari), other popular namul are sigeumchi namul (seasoned spinach) and sukju namul (beansprout salad). Traditional Korean cuisine includes rice (bap), kimchi, a soup (guk) or stew (jjigae) (oftentimes doenjang-jjigae or doenjang-guk: fermented soybean paste stew, or kimchi jjigae), and various banchan. Sometimes a meat entrée is added. Banchan are essential and come in many varieties.

Kim describes her favorite meal as one cooked by her mother. The excerpt of Kim’s memoir tackles a seemingly simple concept: whenever a grown daughter visits home, her mother wants to go with her to get a facial, to do her uhl-gool. There’s obviously much more going on beneath the surface, including the growing up and out of one’s family, community, and culture. Secrets are an important concept in the excerpt, and Julie states that she “wasn’t ready for her [mother] to see the real me.” Hesitation ties in with secrecy, which accounts for Julie’s not wanting to come back home so quickly or to get the facial. I feel a sense of melancholy when reading the excerpt and thinking of her mother who seemingly just wants to see and spent time with her grown-up daughter. Cooking is a way to show one’s love for another, and the mother-cooking-for-child situation is very familiar to me. A sentence that captures much of this emotion between Julie and her mother is “the lack of English made up by the fluent and sharp Korean that could easily cut you with its bite or heal you with its unashamed love.” This description can be applied to the language expressed between Julie and her mother in general, as well as with the phrase “uhl-gool.” Julie does not know the Korean word for facial, but substitutes in “uhl-gool” which her mother calls it (the whole experience). On another note, minari can also fit this description of easily being able to “cut you with its bite or heal you with its unashamed love.” Most species of dropwort are poisonous, but minari is one of some edible species (and is somewhat bitter raw) that is a staple in simple but staple East Asian dishes.

For this week’s blog post, I chose to look at the use of banana leaves in Anee’s Homemade Khanom Jeen recipe on page 2-3 of Volume 2 of the AAFC zine even though it’s technically not an eaten ingredient. This Mon recipe calls for the rice to be sealed with banana leaves, which I noted was similar to many foods I’ve tried in the past from other areas of the world, like tamales. I thought it would be interesting to look at why banana leaves are used so commonly throughout the world in such similar cooking styles and techniques.

One of my favorite foods is lo mai gai, a Chinese steamed sticky rice dish served in a banana leaf. Another is chả lụa, a type of Vietnamese sausage sold wrapped in banana leaves. But since they’ve always been such an integral part of my diet, I’ve never really thought about the use of banana leaves in food before. Used in cooking all over the world from Asia to South America, banana leaves originated in Southeast Asia, quickly spreading through maritime trade routes. Many cultures all over the world have used banana leaves in their cuisine for thousands of years, but surprisingly, bananas have only been eaten in the United States since the 1800s. Much of today’s banana yield comes from Central and South America. In fact, fruit companies there are such a dominating presence that in the early 20th century, there was long conflict known as the Banana Wars, called that because banana companies like the United Fruit Company were such a big part of the international economic and political landscape.

I learned that banana leaves are ideal for cooking because they release a certain desired taste. They are also high in antioxidants which provide the same health benefits as drinking green tea. Banana leaves are additionally absorbent and waterproof, which is why they are sometimes used as roofing material. The use of banana leaves in cooking can be found most commonly in tropical regions where the fruit can understandably grow more easily, but I still thought it was very fascinating that despite being so far away from each other, cultures in Africa, South America, and Asia all had very similar ideas when it came to using banana leaves.

Citations:

“Banana Leaves.” Information, Recipes and Facts. Accessed September 25, 2020. https://www.specialtyproduce.com/produce/Banana_Leaves_3403.php.

Freitas, Karina, Carolina Osorio, Foodandroad, and Mónica. “How Banana Leaf Is Used for Cooking Around the World.” Food and Road, June 6, 2020. https://foodandroad.com/banana-leaf/.

Hays, Jeffrey. “BANANAS: THEIR HISTORY, CULTIVATION AND PRODUCTION.” Facts and Details, n.d. http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat54/sub343/item1577.html.